Men with shovels, leveling the sand-hills, piled the wagons high with shimmering grains which were ... dumped into pile-surrounded bogs. San Francisco reached farther and farther out into the bay.
CHAPTER XVI
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!
San Francisco never could remember when the first rumor of gold reached it. Gold was to mean its transformation from a struggling town into a turbulent, riotous city, a mecca of the world's adventurers.
Benito Windham, early in the spring of '48 brought home an echo of it from San Jose. One of Sutter's teamsters had exchanged a little pouch of golden grains for a flask of aguardiente. Afterward he had told of finding it in the tail-race of Marshall's mill on the south fork of the American River. Little credence had been given his announcements. In the south, near San Fernando Mission, gold had long ago been found, but not in sufficient quantities to allure the fortune hunter.
"See, is it not pretty?" asked Benito, pouring out a handful of the shining stuff which he had purchased from the teamster.
"Pretty, yes, but what's it worth?" asked Adrian, dubiously.