after nine o'clock at
night and dark before they reached the west bank of the Sacramento River
opposite Sacramento City. Here they found a hundred wagons and many
animals and men ahead of them, waiting to be ferried across the river;
and, to their very great disappointment, they were obliged to wait until
the next morning before crossing over to Sacramento City.

"Well, we are within sight of Sacramento City anyhow," declared Thure,
when Jud Smith returned from the ferry with the news that they would be
obliged to camp on that side of the river for the night; "and, I reckon,
it is just as well that we don't cross over to-night. I'll feel just a
little better entering a town like that in the clear light of day," and
his eyes looked in astonishment and wonder across the dark waters of the
river to where the myriad lights of Sacramento City shone along the
opposite bank.

The last time Thure had stood where he was now standing, only a little
over a year ago, and looked across the Sacramento River, not a sign of a
human habitation was in sight where now shone the thousands of lights of
a busy city!

"Isn't it a wonderful sight!" exclaimed Bud, as the two boys stood a
little later on the river bank, staring, with fascinated eyes, across
the water. "Looks more like a dream-city, or a scene in fairyland, than
it does like a real town inhabited by real people."

And Bud was right. It was a marvelous sight that the two boys were
looking at, a sight the like of which, probably, no human eye will ever
look upon again.

Along the river bank for a mile or more and stretching back from the
water's edge up the slope of the low-lying hills, glowed and sparkled a
city of tents, pitched in the midst of a virgin forest of huge oak and
sycamore trees. It is impossible for words to convey to the mind the
mystic charm of this wonderful city of light, when seen by night across
the dark waters of the river. Nearly all the houses were but rude frames
walled with canvas, or merely tents; and, in the darkness, the lights
within transformed these into dwellings of solid light, that glowed in
rows along the river front, their lights reflected in the water, and
straggled in glowing rows of light up the hillsides and underneath the
dark overhanging branches of great trees, while here and there through
the general glow shone out brilliant points of light, the decoy-lamps of
the gambling-houses and the saloons. And, for a background to all this,