“These Digger Indians came from the as yet unirrigated deserts around Los Angeles, with its long dry season, whereas Hopis and other Pueblos around Santa Fe, though up against as dry a climate, taking it in actual number of inches rainfall per year, have enough of their rain during the summer months to enable them to raise crops, and hence to establish permanent habitats, and hence to work out a form of government, a social system, an art and an organized religion.”
“But the Utes around Salt Lake City, who were living on grasshoppers when the Pueblos were eating squash and beans,—utter savages,—didn’t they have much the same climate as the Pueblos?”
“What I said of the Diggers of Los Angeles applies to them. Their rainfall did not come at the right time of year to raise crops, and of course in such desert conditions there were practically no wild fruits.
“The Indians of the more fertile parts of North America, like the early people of Europe, had wild vegetation to supply the means of subsistence. And the wild vegetation also gave wild game a means of subsistence, to say nothing of the means for clothing and shelter. Of course that is not the whole of the story. There is, for instance, coal and iron, but iron has to be smelted where there is forestation, and we come right back to climate, as one of the principal factors in civilization.
“There is also energy,—zeal, determination. But what about the effect of proper food and shelter on those qualities? And more important, what about the effect of climate?
“Elaborate tests have been made. Without going into all that, perhaps you will take my word for it. But the best climate for either physical or mental efficiency is one that is variable,—for change is stimulating,—and that goes to no unlivable extreme, but offers the cold, dry winter and the warm, slightly rainy summer of, say, for instance, the Eastern United States, or Central Europe, Italy, or Japan.”
“But why does a winter in Southern California do an invalid so much good?”
“The change. The beneficial effects wear off with time.
“And just one word more, while we are on the subject. I’d hardly do my old professor justice unless I mentioned that he lays that third factor in civilization, inherent mental capacity, to the climatic conditions, not of the present, but of the ancestral history of the past. But remember, the climate of, say, Greece, has not always been what it is to-day. Our Big Trees show, by an examination of their annual rings, the same story that the rocks tell,—and that history tells,—that there have been constant fluctuations of climate, within certain limitations. The records of geology lead us to believe that California and the Mediterranean countries have undergone the same climatic variations.”
The next day the boys were so tired of sleuthing for the fire-bugs that they decided to join the others in a holiday and explore one of the neighboring peaks, leaving the burros and outfit at their camp of the night before. About noon, the trail ended abruptly at a peak of granite blocks each no larger than a foot-stool. Off to the left they could see a peak higher than the one immediately before them. It seemed to be a ridge of three peaks, theirs the middle one, and once on the ridge, they could pick a course along the crest.