Far to north and south the foot-hills stand shining with
their golden coats of wild oats, a memorial of the seeds cast over
these fruitful mesas by Governor Caspar de Portala. He left San
Diego Mission in July, 1769, with sixty-five retainers, and first
reached the Golden Gate.
Beyond the Coast Range lies a "terra incognita." A few soldiers
only have traversed the Sacramento and San Joaquin. They wandered
into the vales of Napa and Sonoma, fancying them a fairyland.
The sparkling waters of the American, the Sacramento, the Yuba,
Feather, and Bear rivers are dancing silently over rift and ripple.
There precious nuggets await the frenzied seekers for wealth. There
are no gold-hunters yet in the gorges of these crystal streams.
Down in Nature's laboratory, radiated golden veins creep along
between feathery rifts of virgin quartz. They are the treasures
of the careless gnomes.
Not till years later will Marshall pick up the first nugget of
gleaming gold in Sutter's mill-race at Coloma. The "auri sacra
fames" will bring thousands from the four quarters of the earth to
sweep away "the last of the Dons."
A lovely land to-day. No axe rings in its forests. No steamboat
threads the rivers. Not an engine is harnessed to man's use in this
silent, lazy realm.
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