Prosperity had settled upon the plains of Tasajara. Not only had the
embarcadero emerged from the tules of Tasajara Creek as a thriving town
of steamboat wharves, warehouses, and outlying mills and factories, but
in five years the transforming railroad had penetrated the great plain
itself and revealed its undeveloped fertility. The low-lying lands that
had been yearly overflowed by the creek, now drained and cultivated,
yielded treasures of wheat and barley that were apparently
inexhaustible. Even the helpless indolence of Sidon had been surprised
into activity and change. There was nothing left of the straggling
settlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt's old store
and dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary that
rose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for the
memory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete and
smiling obliteration of the past.
But Tasajara City, as the embarcadero was now called, had no previous
record, and even the former existence of an actual settler like the
forgotten Elijah Curtis was unknown to the present inhabitants. It was
Daniel Harkutt's idea carried out in Daniel Harkutt's land, with Daniel
Harkutt's capital and energy. But Daniel Harkutt had become Daniel
Harcourt, and Harcourt Avenue, Harcourt Square, and Harcourt House,
ostentatiously proclaimed the new spelling of his patronymic.
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