"Hijo mio!" says an old padre. "We knew since 1838 that gold was dug at Franscisquita canyon in the south. If we had the old blessed days of Church rule, we could have quietly controlled this great treasure field. But this is now the land of rapine and adventure. First, the old pearl-fishers in the gulf of California; then the pirates lurking along the coast, watching the Philippine galleons. When your Americans overran Texas, and commenced to pour over the plains here, we knew all was lost. Your people have fought a needless war with Mexico; now they are swarming in here--a godless race, followed by outcasts of the whole of Europe. There is no law here but the knife and pistol. Your hordes now arriving have but one god alone--gold." The saddened old padre sighs as he gathers his breviary and beads, seeking his lonely cloister. He is a spectre of a day that is done. CHAPTER VI. LIGHTING FREEDOM'S WESTERN LAMP. Bustling crowds confuse Valois when he rides through San Francisco next day. One year's Yankee dominion shows a progress greater than the two hundred and forty-six years of Spanish and Mexican ownership. The period since Viscaino's sails glittered off Point Reyes has been only stagnation. Seventy-three years' droning along under mission rule has ended in vain repetition of spiritual adjurations to the dullard Indians. To-day hammer and saw, the shouts of command, the din of trade, the ships of all nations, and the whistle, tell of the new era of work. The steam engine is here. The age of faith is past. "Laborare est orare" is the new motto. Adios, siesta! Enter, speculation. 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.