Such may have been the fate of the early inhabitants of the Pacific continent: certainly it would not be surprising, if the immense climatic and geographical changes which then took place would produce that result. Or it may be that but a scanty remnant lived on, absorbed by more vigorous, though less highly cultivated stocks of the same people, whose homes had been on the main-land of Asia—and the remnant left along the Pacific coast must have lived on under vastly different circumstance. The interior of North America was largely a dreary expanse of ice and snow down to the 39th parallel of latitude. It is quite true, this great glacier did not reach the Pacific Slope; but it must have exerted a powerful influence on the climate: and the evidence points, that the Sierra Nevada were occupied by local glaciers which reached down into the fertile expanse of the plains. This was certainly a far different climate, and a far different country, than that which sustained a vegetation of a tropical growth. It may well be that the people should, as a result of their changed conditions, have deteriorated in culture; or, at any rate, their progress toward civilization may have been stopped, and many thousands of years may have passed with no perceptible improvement. It may be objected, that man will improve under any state of existence, give him time enough. This is, doubtless, in the main true. But a race may early reach its limit of culture; in which case, as a race, it will not improve: we may do much with the individual, but nothing, or but very little, for the race.