They'll have a town there soon for the shipping. We'll grow up with
it, build it into a city, and as it gets richer so will we. It's going
to be a new empire, out here by the Pacific, with the gold rivers back
of it and the ocean in front. And it's going to be ours."
She looked over the foreground of hill and vale to the shimmering sweep
of the rich still land. Her imagination, wakened by his words, passed
from the log house to the busy rush of a city where the sea shone
between the masts of ships. It was a glowing future they were to march
on together, with no cloud to mar it now that she had seen the new look
in his eyes.
A few days later they were in the Sacramento Valley camped near the
walls of Sutter's Fort. The plain, clad with a drab grass, stretched
to where the low-lying Sacramento slipped between oozy banks. Here
were the beginnings of a town, shacks and tents dumped down in a helter
skelter of slovenly hurry. Beyond, the American river crept from the
mountains and threaded the parched land. Between the valley and the
white sky-line of the Sierra, the foot hills swelled, indented with
ravines and swathed in the matted robe of the chaparral.
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