amiliar faces, gulches, canyons, bar-rooms, and boozy stage-drivers;
smelt nothing but whisky and tobacco in every flower by the wayside;
aspired to nothing but Congress and the suffrages of my
fellow-citizens. I was once again in my own, my beloved California.

"Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first, best country ever is at home."

CHAPTER XIX.

CIVILIZATION IN RUSSIA.

It may be a little startling to set out with the general proposition
that Russia is not only very far from being a civilized country, but
that it never can be one in the highest sense of the term. The remark
of Peter the Great, that distance was the only serious obstacle to be
overcome in the civilization of Russia, was such as might well be made
by a monarch of iron will and unparalleled energy, at whose bidding a
great city arose out of the swamps of Courland, where Nature never
intended a city to stand. But the remark is not true in point of fact.
Distance can be annihilated, or nearly so; and although Peter the
Great was probably aware of that fact, he might well have reasoned
that facility of intercommunication is not so much the cause as the
result of civilization. The wilderness may be made to blossom as the
rose through human agency, but it can only be done by divine
permission. I think that permission has been withheld in the case of a
very considerable portion of Russia. No human power can successfully
contend against the depressing influences of a climate scarcely
paralleled for its rigor. Where there are four months of a summer, to
which the scorching heats of Africa can scarcely bear a comparison,
and from six to eight months of a polar winter, it is utterly
impossible that the moral and intellectual faculties of man can be
brought to the highest degree of perfection. There must, of course,
always be exceptions to every general rule; but even in the dark and
bloody history of Russia we find that the exceptions of superior
intelligence and enlightenment have been chiefly confined to those who
availed themselves of the advantages afforded by more temperate
climes. Peter himself, the greatest of the Czars, and certainly the
most gifted of his race in point of intellect, perfected his education
in other countries, and in all his grand enterprises of improvement
availed himself of the intellect and experience of other races. Every
important improvement introduced into Russia during his reign was the
produc