The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

CHAPTER I.

THE PIECES AND THE BOARD.

We stand on Mexican soil. We are on the seaward skirt of its
westernmost State of Sonora, in the wild lands almost washed by the
Californian Gulf, which will be the formidable last ditch of the
unconquerable red men flying before the Star of the Empire.

Before us, the immensity of land; behind us, that of the Pacific...