Dreamy-eyed senoritas in amazement watch the growing town. Hundreds
are throwing the drifted sand dunes into the shallow bay to create
level frontage. Swarthy riders growl a curse as they see the lines
of city lot fences stretching toward the Presidio, mission, and
potrero.
Inventive Americans live on hulks and flats, anchored over water lots.
The tide ebbs and flows, yet deep enough to drown the proprietors
on their own tracts, purchased at auction of the alcalde as "water
lots."
Water lots, indeed! Twenty years will see these water lots half a
mile inland.
Masonry palaces will find foundations far out beyond where the
old CYANE now lies. Her grinning ports hold Uncle Sam's hushed
thunder-bolts. It is the downfall of the old REGIME.
Shed, tent, house, barrack, hut, dug-out, ship's cabin--everything
which will cover a head from the salt night fog is in service. The
Mexican adobe house disappears. Pretentious hotels and storehouses
are quickly run up in wood. The mails are taking orders to the
East for completed houses to come "around the Horn." Sheet-iron
buildings are brought from England. A cut stone granite bank arrives
in blocks from far-off China.
Vessels with flour from Chile, goods from Australia, and supplies
from New York and Boston bring machinery and tools.
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