“But there is one region where Nature seems to offer herself as the willing nurse and bountiful step-mother of the feeble and unprotected. Of all countries on the globe, there is probably not one in which a little flock of very young children would find the means of sustaining existence more readily than in California. Its wonderful climate, mild and equable beyond example, is well known. Mr. Cronise, in his volume on the ‘Natural Wealth of California,’ tells us, that ‘the monthly mean of the thermometer at San Francisco in December, the coldest month, is 50°; in September, the warmest month, 61°.’ And he adds:—‘Although the State reaches to the latitude of Plymouth Bay on the north, the climate, for its whole length, is as mild as that of the regions near the topics. Half the months are rainless. Snow and ice are almost strangers, except in the high altitudes. There are fully two hundred cloudless days in every year. Roses bloom in the open air through all seasons.’ Not less remarkable than this exquisite climate is the astonishing variety of food, of kinds which seem to offer themselves to the tender hands of children. Berries of many sorts—strawberries, blackberries, currants, raspberries, and salmon-berries—are indigenous and abundant. Large fruits and edible nuts on low and pendent boughs may be said, in Milton’s phrase, to ‘hang amiable.’ Mr. Cronise enumerates, among others, the wild cherry and plum, which ‘grow on bushes;’ the barberry, or false grape (_Berberis herbosa_), a ‘low shrub,’ which bears edible fruit; and the Californian horse-chestnut (_Æsculus Californica_), ‘a low, spreading tree or shrub, seldom exceeding fifteen feet high,’ which ‘bears abundant fruit much used by the Indians.’ Then there are nutritious roots of various kinds, maturing at different seasons. Fish swarm in the rivers, and are taken by the simplest means. In the spring, Mr. Powers informs us, the whitefish ‘crowd the creeks in such vast numbers that the Indians, by simply throwing in a little brushwood to impede their motion, can literally scoop them out.’ Shell-fish and grubs abound, and are greedily eaten by the natives. Earthworms, which are found everywhere and at all seasons, are a favourite article of diet. As to clothing, we are told by the authority just cited that ‘on the plains all adult males and all children up to ten or twelve went perfectly naked, while the women wore only a narrow strip of deer-skin around the waist.’ Need we wonder that, in such a mild and fruitful region, a great number of separate tribes were found, speaking languages which a careful investigation has classed in nineteen distinct linguistic stocks?