It was a region of splendid contrasts. A continental zone which presented in the wide range of its mere longitudinal extent a succession of physical features that were opposite and embraced a variety of climate, that by reason of meteorological diversity had carved and dressed those physical features into a series of natural wonders.

Far to the north rose a group of mountain peaks, so arranged that they appeared like successive steps of ascent to the swelling dome, central and dominant, over its gathered satellites, each of which was marvellous alone, but in this association seemed forgotten or remembered only as it increased by contrast the majesty of the great mountain mass it attended.

This superb elevation was itself broken up into radiating chasms, whose rocky sides rose in black keels of relief above the snow filled gorges they defined, while surmounting them all a keen shaft of granite, roseate in a hundred lights, or wrapped in pendulous and waving veils of mist, climbed steeply to the clouds.The crowded and crushed snow masses, nevÉ-like emerged upon all the lower shoulders of the huge crest in glacial fields of ice. Here their Arctic currents, sweeping around the lower summits, were reinforced by new accessions, springing from these lesser altitudes, which in confusion poured upon them, and by many avenues of obstruction and accidents of interference, repulse and rupture, converted the great multiplied ice zone, encircling the whole congery of peaks, and plunging outward over vertical escarpments to lower levels, into a stupendous spectacle of chaos. Icebergs crossed their pinnacles in the descent, the riven ice stream ejected blocks of ice hundreds of feet in length, and the split glacier, seamed by colossal cleavages to the abysses of its rocky floor, displayed its green depths. Detonations rose upon the air, caught by the waiting winds and drifted southward over the wild plains, the long indented coast and the far interior canons; south to forest lands and waving grass savannahs, while near at hand its rough roar startled the sleeping mastodon and brought terror to men.

From this glory, which in the Sun of that strange day shone like a titanic crown of jewels, the land areas fell suddenly away, and expanded southward into a long sea margin on the west, and arid and rocky wildernesses on the east, where deep canyons with vertical walls, a thousand feet high, held in their dark bosoms the frigid waters from the northern glaciers. An intermediate region, between the palisaded or tenuous coast-line and these mysterious untenanted rents and time, wind and water worn ravines, revealed scenes more mild and radiant, wherein the apparel of nature was more colored, and where she bore those features of appropriate beauty where river and lake, forest land and flowered field unite in their abundance to appeal to the hearts of men.

This hospitable land was varied. It slowly liberated itself, like an escaping captive, from the desolation of the East, where the plains were broken with chilled lava beds, jagged peaks, asperities of stone, standing like geologic spectres, canyons holding emprisoned and viewless rivers, wide and gloomy lakes around whose margins the struggling relics of an extinct flora seemed slowly confessing their defeat before phases of climate less lenient than their predecessors. It freed itself from broad depressions, the beds of ancient lakes swept by freezing winds from the northern ice country, and bare and empty, exposing to the sky their orb-like circumference, ghastly with white alkaline encrustation, like the pallid optic of a great leviathan, whitened with the films of decomposition.

From all this area, rigid with the articulate expression of Death, a land to the West began its fertile margins, tentatively uttering a new design, with grass grown hills, low vegetation, and modest, scarcely obvious brooks, loosening themselves in placid currents from the highlands. Then, as if it felt the assurance of an improving destiny, woods rose over ranges of increasing altitude, rivers swept in circling glory through narrow and alluvial valleys, and groves of great trees clustered over mountain terraces, defiled in green seas of leafy glory to the lowlands, where the rhythm of verdurous beauty was resumed in more open country, the reincarnated spirit of Nature loosened its power upon a coast line, washed by the restless ocean.

The coast was strangely beautiful. Wide coves paved with argent or golden sands opened the straight lines of its rocky and lofty shores with broad emarginations. These inviting bays, defended by crowning capes or jutting and attenuated peninsulas of dethroned basaltic columns, formed peaceful harbors wherein the fleeing surges of the sea often came to rest in limpid pulsations; or else, with diminished power, but greater speed and imposing crescent beauty, rolled upon them in avalanches of spray. The land came down to these charming regions in undulating surfaces, sometimes deeply wooded, though often more artificially indented with scattered or solitary trees. Not infrequently it accompanied, in its descent, the devious flow of rivers, expanding into estuaries of such proportions that the fleet of a modern nation might have floated safely within their borders.

The smaller coves furnished a more minute and exquisite interest. Here partially degraded escarpments of stone walled them in with steep ascents of talus, over which ambitious vegetation, almost baffled in its encounter with sea fogs and saline breezes, produced an irregular covering of green, and displayed the ample ingenuity of its struggle. This ingenuity was shown in the twisted roots of trees holding, like closed fists enwrapped boulders, by roots penetrating at obtuse angles the split surfaces of the palisades, or, entangled in a knot of mutually helpful buttresses, suspending some adventurous pine at a sharp angle above the splashing and murmurous tides below it. The dazzlingly clear water in these darkened and umbrageous coves, revealed with every shaft of light, the broad fronds of algae, floating like aprons in green sheets, rising upon dark stem-like roots from the cold waters. Here, upon the sides of detached masses of rock, sported companies of sea lions, their gleaming and undulated flanks formed for an instant into motionless groups of beauty, to be dissolved the next moment in revels of wreathed confusion. Far out beyond the shore, domes of rock, just covered by each swelling wave, broke the surface with areas of foam, and again beyond these stood, as the last vestige of the eroded coast frontier, some needle of stone, in whose fugitive and vanishing shadows sea-gulls rested, that again, by a sudden access of volition, swept over it in clouds of ascending and descending plumes.

The coast-line was itself the index of a varied origin. For miles the palisades of dark or frowning trap dikes rose precipitously above the tide, their columnar formation yielding only a stubborn concession to the incessant labors of air and ocean, though the scenic marvel of cathedral spires and excavated reverberating sea caves, left by their retreat, excused the tardy surrender to decay.

Wherever the sedimentary strata of slate or limestone, frequently but half consolidated, and therefore more easily attacked, formed the land surfaces, the country descended gently to the sea, and swept backward with dissected features to the coast ranges, gleaming distantly. Through these tracts the beds of rivers were formed, and their currents, under two contrasted phases, appeared upon the coast-line. They either flowed through degraded valleys, slowly expanding into the broad estuarine coves mentioned before, or, unable to reach the easily attacked mineral beds, and forced to flow outward upon the surface of dense igneous rocks, leaped into the sea by cascades walled in somber gorges, or broke with sudden splendor over precipices of unchanged basalt.

In that pleistocene day the region, now summoned before the eye by the familiar process of adaptive reconstruction, shrunk far northward into low lying and frigid plains, narrowly escaping, by their slight differential elevation, submergence from the western ocean. In this uninviting northland, which lay like a neck of transition between the ice mountains and their glacial precincts still farther north, and the southern country, scattered forests of scrub willow, beech and spruces, alternated with sand flats, cold bogs, and cairn-like moraines of stone and gravel. The latter, swept by ice winds, drenched in snow and rains, darkened by thunder clouds or lit by momentary blazes of the sun, held the resistant remnants of the ice sheet, as tottering and stranded fractions perched upon their harsh shoulders. They exposed gulches, radiating from their summits, each occupied by momentary torrents of water, from the melting ice cap, which, often collecting in lower basins, formed extended semi-glacial lakes, hesitatingly bordered by a thin growth of herbs, and in sections connected by narrow straits into chains of untenanted and gloomy pools.

Through the monotony of this wilderness wandered herds of the mastodon, and here on the edges of the frosted lakes stood the primeval elephant, the mammoth of those swiftly receding days now scarcely penetrated by the vision of science and imagination.These faunal restorations were yet further extended. To the east of this inhospitable and terrible zone, in cold and almost treeless sections scarred by ravine and canon, and trending upward into the abyssal recesses of the mountains, the cave bear secured an abiding home.

South over the edges of that sweeter land in which the crowded life of plants and animals, evicted from its northern habitat by the exactions of the cold, now strained its activity and device to maintain a simultaneous existence, in this prolific country, the pleistocene horse ranged in thronging bands. He scarcely impinged on the high terrains where the sabre-toothed tiger dwelt, but by preference traversed the grassy campus, following the streams, where their widened valleys, recently formed, were uninvaded by the forests, and sometimes forced an inquisitive path over the high country to the margins of the ocean.

A meteorological complexity reflected and rivalled all of these contrasts of position and occupation, and from within the sealed envelope of the earth’s crust, also, movements and voices responded to the ceaseless alternations of heat and cold, tempest and silence, serene and raging hours.

The warm southern winds sweeping from the broad Carribean Continent, gathering moisture from the wide gulf of the Mississippi, reached these more northern regions dense with saturation, and were suddenly chilled by rarefaction as they were lifted into higher elevations by the low lying flood of cold air, pouring in from the glaciated poles. The contact zone between these displaced masses of hot and moisture-laden air, and the underlying frosted and more slowly drifting atmosphere precipitated a meteorological violence, an exorbitant vigor of meteorological phenomena. Then ensued the tumult of storm and electrical perturbation.

The rivers rose upon their banks, the sinister and blackened skies emptied their bosoms of their watery contents, avalanches rolled down the mountain sides, the air smitten with a thousand forks of lightning vibrated with the internal electric charges that evoked all the echoes of canyon, peak and plain. Cyclonic winds tore through the forests and bent the crowded heads of the trees. Then the marshalled clouds fled in torrents of rain or were dissipated in the dazzling warfare, and then turquoise skies bent over the washed lands, a summer sun opened the petals of innumerable flowers, the cool air scarcely lifted from the ground the scent of its warm palpitations, and, to the detonations of the storm, succeeded the still unpacified but vanishing roar of the overladen streams.

In winter the petrifying touch of cold descended from the margins of the glaciers, and the denuded trees, the snow blankets of the higher land, the stilled streams and the pale skies imparted a sepulchral stare to the shrunk soil that turned its dead face upward to its leaden dome.

To the excitement and changes of external nature the unadjusted equilibria of the interior of the earth contributed new and dangerous surprises—earthquakes threw down the cliffs into foaming rivers, shook loose from their prehensile bases the towering pines upon the hillsides, or started in repetition the sundered strata from the mountains, and changed the face of nature with scarred exposures and inundated valleys. The earth opened along shivering seams, and the exuded lava rising from centres of stupendous pressure poured out in belts its half consolidated magmas.

Volcanic vents broke their seals and the uprushing tides of gas and steam and cinders turned the day to night, and signalized the distant craters with voluminous wreathes and columns and ash-filled whirlwinds; sometimes in a fierce intoxication of chaotic incident, emptying upon surrounding snowfields their hot and scorching rains.

Thus nature wore all the wardrobe of her almost exhaustless store, displayed all the properties of her acquisitions through ages of geological change, and assembled the most startling devices for awakening attention and vitalizing motion.

She seemed at this point on the earth’s surface so to arrange and direct her vast physical resources for rousing the mind, charging the heart, and stiffening the will, that the new being, arising from its cradle, and beginning the task of occupying the world, might be suddenly endowed with mind and heart and will, so vigorously organized, as to make that conquest easy.

Amidst these wide contrasts of climate and scene, of internal and external energy, of products and denizens, lived a race of prehistoric men and women thinly scattered in villages over the shoulders, the valleys and the alluvial terraces of the Sierra Nevadas in Central California, at a point where a broad ingress of the sea swept past the degraded and depressed Coast Ranges. Here, from the startling and multiplied expressions of nature, the full influence of environment encompassed at an impressionable instant the dawning powers, the pulses of its primal heat, the mental movements, the suddenly erected passions of this Glacial and Occidental Man, this strange and almost silent creature, appearing from the unknown, and moving forward on the listless feet of the centuries towards the powers and civilization of the orient.

Broadly reviewed, we have for the stage of this prehistoric drama, its pictures and stirring scenes of adventure and haphazard perils, the arctic glacial zone, the canyon country on the East, the Fair Land on the West and South, and beyond the unchanging ocean, as primal then as when it swept its fluctuating waves over Archaean ledges.The particular place where our eyes discover, in this vast area, the movements of men, was situated in a grove of giant trees upon an upland that formed a terrace on the sides of a mountain range almost wooded to its summit, where the dwindling vegetation exposed the naked precipices of an abrupt and overhanging crest. In front of the upland the ground slipped suddenly down in slanting and again vertical faces of rock and soil to a sort of bottom land, a long elliptical depression holding at its lower end a basin of water, which, as it indicated no visible source of supply, must have been fed from the streams formed in the heavy rain-falls, or from the springs issuing over its hidden floor. The land rose in a low swell beyond this, and upon the margin of the latter elevation the possible inhabitant gazed upon the sea from the edge of an intrusive dike of rock, which, wall-like, rose along the edge of the western wave, its anterior face marked in most places by rising piles of fragmental rock.

Northward it rose to steeper heights whose unencumbered exposures made sheer precipices above the frothing billows sweeping in at their feet. The grass crept to the very verge of these dizzy elevations, the mist rolled down upon them at moments, and again they described angular apices of dark stone against the clear blue or cloud flecked zenith. From these latter pinnacles of observation the Fair Land with its mountains and rivers and valleys could be well discerned on the east, and the glittering spire of the ice mountain with its wide skirts of ice imperfectly descried northward.

At the moment of time when the retrospective and imaginative eye of this narrator fell upon the secluded upland, mentioned above, a path led down to the valley and its lake, a path somewhat precariously conducted over overhanging walls of rock. It crossed the valley almost lost to sight in tall grass, rose upon the lower swell and seemed to carry its adventuresome follower straight over the edge of the trap dike into the sea.

A little reckless exploration would have shown, however, that it led to no such useless and careless termination. It became on the face of the trap dike a very broken and disjointed path indeed, but still a path.

It became a ladder of rocky steps, which, if successfully followed, brought the traveller to a beach of water-worn and rounded pebbles, which again southward disappeared into a more extended sand plain. Behind this sand plain the dike precipice visibly dwindled, until it too disappeared beneath the folds of a sparsely wooded shore. To any human eye, perhaps unwontedly addicted to piercing the air with its long vision, there would have been discerned far out to sea a line of foaming breakers careering upon jagged backs of rock, and again even beyond this, like ghosts, white ice-bergs, tilted or erect, following each other in a spectral march.

On the upland where the path we have thus traced to the shore, began, somewhat withdrawn into the shadows of the colossal trunks of trees, were a few covered spaces made habitable by skins and boughs of trees. Their design, if design could be applicable to so undesigned a structure, consisted in a few posts lightly driven in the soil, connected at their upper ends by long sapling stems, which were again connected by crossed boughs, on which the lesser twigs were left undisturbed, and on this light webbing were piled more boughs and leaves until the accumulation assumed a mounded shape. By the fertility of nature, seeds, falling in this nidus of gradually accumulating leaf mould, had started into life, and, augmented through the years, had converted it into a sort of herbal patch, which in the season of blossoming became gay and radiant with flowers.

Beneath this ornamental roof the slender equipment of an aboriginal camp was spread. A rude crane suspended from the roof, at a point where a chimney-like opening had been made in the surplusage of leaves and boughs, supported a stone vessel, pendent from it by cords of tree fibre or coarse grass. The stone vessel was blackened by repeated exposure to the dull fires made from leaves and peat moss, and resembled the few others which, discarded and broken, seemed carefully laid aside at one corner of this well ventilated apartment. The only other noticeable furnishment of the room were the skins of foxes and bears, rankly oleaginous and discolored, thrown down around the central fire place, where were gathered in a disorderly pile a few stone axes with wooden handles, some awkwardly made bows, and a few delicately chipped blades of stone, neatly united to shafts of wood by means of a black pitch.

No walls enclosed this defective suggestion of a house, and only on one side hung a woven mat of natural fibre hideously bedaubed with red paint or iron ochre, most shockingly constrained to portray a portentous animal rising hobby-horse like on its hind and abnormally lengthened legs.

It was thirty thousand years, more or less, before the birth of Christ that a woman stood leaning against one of the four corner posts of this simple habitation at the widened and worn opening of the highland path described above, and gazed upward to the sky, in whose sapphire depths the rising sun of day had begun to form clouds, sucked up from the broad western ocean.