loving-kindness of man toward man which heathen Athens never knew.

What will be the result of this outdoor life cannot yet be told; climate
has always had an active influence in shaping the character and type of
a people. With a climate mild and healthful, yet bracing; with a soil so
rich that the touch of irrigation makes even the sandiest places bloom
with the highest beauty of plant, tree, and vine; with an ocean warm and
gentle, and skies the kindliest in the world,--there is, if we judge by
the lesson history teaches, a promise of a future for California greater
and more noble than the world has yet known.



Chapter II.

The Story of the Indians



"Run, Cleeta, run, the waves will catch you." Cleeta scudded away, her
naked little body shining like polished mahogany. She was fleet of foot,
but the incoming breakers from the bosom of the great Pacific ran faster
still; and the little Indian girl was caught in its foaming water,
rolled over and over, and cast upon the sandy beach, half choked, yet
laughing with the fun of it.

"Foolish Cleeta, you might have been drowned; that was a big wave. What
made you go out so far?" said Gesnip, the elder sister.

"I found such a lot of mussels, great big ones, I wish I could go back