William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

Chapter 6: White conquerors.

“guess you'll say here's a place,” whispers Colonel Brown, a settler in these parts. “If this valley had a little more rain, a little more soil, and a little less sun and wind, it would be a place! You bet?”

Leaving the open sewers and pretty balconies of Monterey behind, we cross the amber dunes, and twenty miles from the sea we strike the Rio Salinas, near the base of Monte Toro, and a few steps farther, on a creek called Sanjon del Alisal, we find a new city, called Salinas, rising from the earth.

Nine years ago the Rio Salinas flowed through a desert, over which wild deer and yet wilder herdsmen roved in search of grass and pools. The soil was dry, the herbage scant. Bears, foxes, and coyotes disputed every ravine with the hunters. Ducks and widgeons covered the lagunes and creeks. A trapper's gun was rarely heard among these hills,