The crying need of the country was a feeder to some transcontinental
railroad. By reason of natural barriers, Humboldt County was not
easily accessible to the outside world except from the sea, and even
this avenue of ingress and egress would be closed for days at a
stretch when the harbour bar was on a rampage. With the exception of
a strip of level, fertile land, perhaps five miles wide and thirty
miles long and contiguous to the seacoast, the heavily timbered
mountains to the north, east, and south rendered the building of a
railroad that would connect Humboldt County with the outside world a
profoundly difficult and expensive task. The Northwestern Pacific,
indeed, had been slowly building from San Francisco Bay up through
Marin and Sonoma counties to Willits in Mendocino County. But there
it had stuck to await that indefinite day when its finances and the
courage of its board of directors should prove equal to the colossal
task of continuing the road two hundred miles through the mountains
to Sequoia on Humboldt Bay. For twenty years the Humboldt pioneers
had lived in hope of this; but eventually they had died in despair or
were in process of doing so.
"Don't worry, Dad. It will come," Bryce assured his father. "It's
bound to."
"Yes, but not in my day.
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