midday
Beneath , lower than the river , stretched broad , flat land , far as the eye could see . Roads ran in every direction , and she saw countless farmhouses of which she had never dreamed when sailing on the lonely river a few feet the other side of the willowy fringe . Three weeks they spent among the rich farm islands , which heaped up levees and pumped day and night to keep afloat . It was a monotonous land , with an unvarying richness of soil and with only one landmark -- Mt. Diablo , ever to be seen , sleeping in the midday azure , limping its crinkled mass against the sunset sky , or forming like a dream out of the silver dawn . Sometimes on foot , often by launch , they criss-crossed and threaded the river region as far as the peat lands of the Middle River , down the San Joaquin to Antioch , and up Georgiana Slough to Walnut Grove on the Sacramento . And it proved a foreign land . The workers of the soil teemed by thousands , yet Saxon and Billy knew what it was to go a whole day without finding any one who spoke English .