Unexplored! Part 21

"I wonder why there is so much difference in Indians," mused Ace. "When Dad and I visited the Hopis, there, on our way to the Grand Canyon, we were impressed by their high degree of civilization. Like all the Pueblos, they raised good crops, had a regular government, and even an art. And look at these Digger Indians, filthy, thieving creatures, grubbing for roots like wild animals, eating slugs and lizards, because they are too lazy to cultivate a piece of ground!"

"I remember," said Norris, "one of my favorite professors at Yale always said that civilization was largely dependent upon civilization," and he pointed out the Indians as an ill.u.s.tration. Of course he gave due credit to what he termed inherent mental capacity. But to climate he laid the energy with which that capacity is developed,--always provided there were sufficient material resources. That is to say, even white men with fine brains could not evolve as high a degree of civilization in the Arctic Circle as they can where they have the material resources necessary to supply the physical needs.

"But I should think the material resources of the Arctic Circle were a result of the climate."

"In large part, they are. That just strengthens the point that climate has had a lot to do with civilization, and incidentally with the differences between different tribes of Indians. I wonder if I can give his theory straight! Well, anyway, here's the general idea. It applies quite as much to all nationalities as it does to Indians in particular.

"What is our conception of The n.o.ble Red Man? He is observant, he has unlimited physical endurance, but he does not adapt himself to our civilization, nor does he work out new methods for himself, as we have done since America was settled. He is conservative, in other words,--lacking in originality and inventiveness.

"Of course they came at some stage of their evolution from the primitive home of man in Asia. So also did the Scandinavians,--so also did the j.a.panese. But while both of these finally located in cold but not too cold climates, nor steadily cold, they were merely stimulated. The Indian, though,--the American Indian,--likely migrated by way of Bering Strait, and pa.s.sing generations in the Esquimo lands, where it is about all they can manage to keep alive at all during the long, dark winters.

The result? Those who were high strung nervously went insane,--just as many an Esquimo and many a white man does to-day, under the necessity of idling in a stuffy hut in the cold and darkness. It was only the mentally lazy who could survive that phase of their evolution. That accounts for certain differences between all Indians and all white men.

"Remember, it wasn't the sheer cold so much as the monotony of the unbroken cold and darkness. The negroes of Africa also failed to progress, but in their case it was the energy-inhibiting equatorial climate, and especially the monotony of unbroken equatorial conditions.

The European Nordics,--remember, of ancestral stock originating in that same Asiatic cradle,--had severe cold, and in summer, often, extreme heat,--but there was no monotony.

"The too active Hottentot soon killed himself off, and only the indolent survived. The races that have had long sojourns, in the course of their racial wanderings, under desert conditions, where patient endurance is an a.s.set, also suffered a decimation of their more alert members. The stolid were the more fit to survive desert conditions. You will find races now dwelling in favorable climates who may exhibit these unprogressive qualities, but back of them is a history of some experience that has weeded out the more active individuals.

"But am I getting too long-winded?"

"You haven't told us yet why one tribe of Indians will be so different from another, if they both came here via the Arctic Circle," urged Ace.

"Well, there is where another factor comes in,--that of material resources. What could an Arab have accomplished with nothing but desert sands to work with? What can the Esquimos accomplish with little but ice to grow crops? They must secure their food by hunting, and hunters must be nomadic. Nomads cannot carry many creature comforts with them, nor can scattered groups be much mental stimulus to one another. Nor can the arts develop when the mere struggle for animal existence demands one's whole energy.

"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 gra.s.shoppers 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 princ.i.p.al 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 j.a.pan."

"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 footstool. 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.

A little further on, the trail narrowed till they could see a tiny lake on either side, and a stone's throw below, pools as clear as mirrors reflecting the twisted growth about their brims. Then Ace gave a shout, for down a hollow between two ridges to the north lay a patch of snow.

Sliding,--on their feet if they could manage it,--and snow-balling, the boys were surprised to find how short of breath they were at this elevation, a trifle over ten thousand feet, Norris estimated,--for on their steady upward plod they had not particularly noticed it, or had not attributed their slightly unusual heaviness to alt.i.tude.

They were therefore willing enough to rest on top, though even at noon the wind blew cold upon them. Stretching almost north and south before them rose the main crest of the Sierras,--peak after peak that they could name from the map. They could see for at least a hundred miles. First the wild green gorges that made the peaks seem higher, then snow-capped and glacier-streaked alt.i.tudes rising one above another till they faded into purple nothingness.

They did their climbing single file, with arms free, having disposed of their lunch at timberline. But where Norris had led the way up, Pedro was the first to start back. "Come on, why not take a short cut?" he shouted in compet.i.tion with the wind.

"All right." Norris stepped on a rock at that moment that turned with him, barely escaping a wrenched ankle. He kept his eyes on his footing for some moments after that. It was therefore not surprising that he did not notice where Pedro was leading, till the latter called:

"Why, there's our lake, isn't it?"

The way began to be all bowlders, larger and larger ones. "Here, that isn't the way we came," cautioned Norris.

"I know it," Pedro a.s.sured him, "but see, Mr. Norris, we're just going around this middle peak instead of over it."

"Better not try any stunts," warned the Geological Survey man. Had he been by himself, he would have gone straight back till he came to the way they had gone up. But the boys were tired, and he hated to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, he did not want to discourage initiative in the Spanish boy.

But soon they found themselves scrambling over slabs so high that they had to take them on all fours, clambering over one as high as their heads, then letting themselves down into the cranny between that and the next.

"We sure never came over anything like this!" the rest of the party began complaining. But on they scuttled, leapt and sprawled, no one finding any better way.

"Hurry, there's our lake!" shouted Pedro finally. "I'll bet if I could throw a stone hard enough, it would scare the fish."

But Norris spoke in alarm: "We couldn't see any lake on the trail going up. On the contrary, we saw the peak to our left. Don't you remember?

Now see! That peak is on our _right_!"

"Fellows, we are on the wrong side of this ridge," he decided. "And what is more, instead of going back down the middle crest, we have gone clear on to the third peak." (For the ridge was a three peaked affair, the middle being the lowest.) "The best thing now is to circle around as near the top as we can go, till we strike the trail. If we keep circling, we are bound to strike it sooner or later. But let's not all go together, or we might start a rock-slide. Let's 'watch our step!' What would we do if one of you put his ankle out of commission?"

The boys had little breath to waste on comment. Probably none but Norris had any vivid realization of the danger they were in, but each fellow had a keen eye to keeping his footing. Rock-slides the three boys had never seen, but a sprained knee or a crushed foot was something they could understand. Pedro also had a weather eye out for rattlesnakes, to whom these rocks would have been paradise if it had not been such a chill elevation.

As the sun sank lower and lower, they began secretly to wonder what it would be to have to spend the night on this windy peak, without even an emergency ration,--unpardonable over-thought! They circled steadily, Norris now in the lead, the boys spreading out fan-wise as they followed, Pedro even getting clear to the foot of the granite where he thought he would have easier going through the woods, though he would also have a larger arc to traverse. He felt safer on solid ground, though had he measured, he might have seen that he had climbed as far in going down as did the others in circling around.

Once a huge bowlder that overhung a precipice rocked under Ted, and it was only by a swift spring that he saved himself. Many of the smaller rocks tipped warningly, and he frequently stumbled. How slow their progress seemed! How fast the sun was sinking in the west! And how astoundingly their shoes were wearing through! It was three hours later that Pedro, down in the edge of the woods, gave a shout and began waving his arms in the wildest manner. Then along the way that he picked in coming to meet them, Norris with his gla.s.ses could just make out the brown ribbon of the trail.

Fifteen minutes more and they were lined up ready for the homeward march, cured once and for all of short-cuts, and divided only as to whether it would be better to run, at the risk of a turned ankle, while there was light to see their footing, or walk, and have to go the last half of the way in darkness.

They finally did some of both, running where the trail lay free from stones, and eventually having to make their way by the feel of the ground under the feet, and the memory of the mountain meadows whose perfume they pa.s.sed, and the sound of the creek to their right. The stars were out, giving a faint but welcome light that served as guide when finally they stumbled into camp, bone-weary but safe, and nothing loth to set all hands for a square meal before tumbling in.

Throwing some of their reserve supply of fuel on the fireplace, they soon had the home fires burning cheerily, and Pedro was demonstrating his can-opener cookery.

Next day a glitter from beneath the water of a rivulet high on the mountainside, caught Ted's eye. Dipping with his tin cup, he brought up a specimen of sand and water. Could it be only mica that glistened so?

Saying nothing to Ace, (for he remembered Long Lester's tale of salting a mine once when "the boys" wanted some one of their number to stand treat by way of celebration of his new-found riches), he slyly slipped an aluminum plate from out the pack and began that primitive operation that used to be known as pan and knife working. Falling a little behind, he kept at it until he had separated out some heavy yellow grains that proved malleable when he set his teeth on them. It was coa.r.s.e gold!

It was now time to announce his find, which he did to the amazement of all but the old prospector. A more careful inspection of the bend where he had found it proved it to be only the tiniest of pockets, though under their combined efforts that day it yielded what the old man p.r.o.nounced to be about a hundred and fifty dollars' worth of dust. Still, even that was not to be sneezed at, as Long Lester put it, in terms of Ted's college fund,--for they all insisted on contributing their labor to his find.

Ted, though, insisted equally that it be their stake for another camping trip.

Later that same day they came to the remains of an old hut, now overgrown inside and out with vines and underbrush. In one corner the old man unearthed what he p.r.o.nounced to be the rusted mining tools of the early days. A fallen tree that lay across the doorway had to be chopped through and cleared away before they could enter, and on stripping a bit of the dry bark away for firewood, Pedro was puzzled to find what appeared like hieroglyphics on its nether side. He showed Norris, but what it could be he could not imagine, till Norris happened to try his pocket shaving mirror on it. Then, clear as carving, only inverted, they spelled out the legend:

"CLAME NOTISE--JUMPERS WILL BE SHOT."

These were evidently the letters that had been carved on the tree trunk--as they judged, about six feet above its base, and though the sap had long since obliterated the original, the bark still told the story where it had grown over the wound. By chopping through the log at that point and making a rough count of the annual rings of growth, they estimated that all this had happened forty years ago. What had become of the old miner? For such his tools acclaimed him. Why had he never come back? Had he been overtaken by bandits, robbed of his buckskin bag of dust, and murdered? Or had he struck a richer claim elsewhere?

They dug beneath what once had been his crude stone hearth, in the hope of buried treasure, but no such luck rewarded them, and finally they moved on up the mountainside, past vistas of green-black firs and yellow-green alders. As usual in these dry alt.i.tudes, the fiery sun of noon-day had grown chill at sunset, the wind stopped singing through the pines, and the weird bark of a coyote seemed to accentuate the loneliness that the wilderness knows most of all when some abandoned human habitation brings it home to one.