Company. They did it because they were that sort of men, and had to
express themselves. Everything worth while is done that way.

Do they raise that breed now? Never doubt it! You need only find your
keel-boats or their equivalents, and the men will come around for the
job, I'm sure. But when you speak enthusiastically of the old Greek
doers of things, I'd like to put in a few words for those old up-river
men. They belong to the unwritten American epic.

And then the keel-boats and the bull-boats and the mackinaws and the
up-river men flashed out--like a stereopticon picture when the man moves
the slide; and I saw a little ragged village of log houses scattered
along the water front. I saw the levees piled with merchandise, and a
score or more of packets rushing fresh cargoes ashore--mates bawling
commands down the gangplanks where the roustabouts came and went at a
trot. Gold-mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted streets of this raw
little village, the commercial center of a vast new empire. Six-horse
freighters trundled away toward the gold fields; and others trundled in,
their horses jaded with the precious freight they pulled. And I saw
steamers dropping out for the long voyage back to the States, freighted
with cargoes of gold dust--really truly story-book treasure-ships that
would have made old Captain Kidd's men mad with delight.

As I lay dreaming in the bunch-grass, it all grew up so real that I had
to get up and take my first look, half expecting to find it all there
just as in the old days.

We stood at the rim of the bluff and looked down into a cup-like valley
upon a quiet little village, winking with scattered lights in the
gloaming. Past it swept the river--glazed with the twilight and