Across the canon of the Middle Yuba the yellow earth of old
man Palmer's diggings shone like a trademark in the landscape,
proclaiming to the least initiated the leading industry of Sierra and
Nevada Counties, and marking for the geologist the height of the ancient
river beds, twenty-five hundred feet above the Middle Yuba and nearly at
right angles to it. Those ancient river beds were strewn with gold.
Looking in the other direction, one caught glimpses here and there of
the back-bone of the Sierras, jagged dolomites rising ten thousand feet
skyward. The morning air was stimulating, for at night the thermometer
drops to the forties even in midsummer. In a ditch by the roadside, and
swift as a mill-race, flowed a stream of clear cold water, brought for
miles from reservoirs up in the mountains.
Even Charley Chu, now that he was leaving the gold fields forever,
regarded the water-ditch with affection. It brought life--sparkling,
abundant life--to these arid hill-tops. Years ago, Charley Chu and
numerous other Chinamen had dug this very ditch. What would California
have been without Chinese labor? Industrious Chinamen built the railroad
over the Sierras to the East and civilization.
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