Frances Fuller Victor

“ The whole of Alta California comprises a seaboard strip eight hundred miles in length by one or two hundred in width, marked off from the western earth's end of the temperate zone; it was the last to be occupied by civilized man, and, to say the least, as full of fair conditions as any along the belt. The whole area is rimmed on either side, the Coast Range rolling up in stony waves along the outer edge, and for background the lofty Sierra, upheaved in crumpled folds from primeval ocean. ”

“ Thus lay the valley of California a-dreaming, with visions of empire far down the vistas of time, when behold, the great awakening is already at hand t Even now noiseless bells are ringing the ingathering of the nations; for here is presently to be found that cold, impassive element which civilization accepts as its symbol of the Most Desirable, and for which accord- ingly all men perform pilgrimage and crusade, to toil and fight and die. ”

“ A large detachment of the late Mormon battalion, disbanded at Los An- geles, was on its way to Great Salt Lake, when, arriv- ing at Sutter's Fort, the men stopped to work a while, no less to add a little to their slender store of clothing and provisions than to await a better season for the perilous journey across the mountains. It was while thus employed that gold had been discovered. And now, refreshed and better fitted, as spring approached their minds once more turned toward the original pur
pose. ”

“ Great discoveries stand more or less connected with accident; that is to say, accidents which are sure to happen. Newton was not seeking the law of gravi- tation, nor Colunibus a new continent, nor Marshall gold, when these things were thrust upon them. And had it not been one of these, it would have been some one else to make the discovery. Gold fevers have had their periodic run since time immemorial, when Scythians mined the Ural, and the desert of Gobi lured the dwellers on the Indus ”

“ The Sierra could not have long retained her secret. ^° The discovery by Marshall was the first that can be called a California gold discovery, aside from the petty placers found in the southern part of the state. It is not impossible that white men may have seen gold in the Sierra foothills before him. This region had been traversed by trappers, by emigrants, and even by men of science; but if they saw gold, either they did not know it or they did not reveal it. ”

“ The intervening space is somewhere overspread with hills and vales, but for the most part comprises an oblong plain, the Valley of California, the northern portion being called the Sacramento Valley, and the southern the San Joaquin Valley, from the names of the streams that water the respective parts. The prospect thus presented opens toward the setting sun.
Humanity here is varied. There is already round San Francisco Bay raw material enough of divers types to develop a new race, howsoever inferior the quality might be. ”

“ Maria Antonia Pico de Castro, announcing from Monterey to her son Manuel in Mexico the grand discovery, says that everybody is crazy for the gold; meanwhile stock is comparatively safe from thieves, but on the other hand hides and tallow are worth nothing. ”

“ The first small flakes of gold that Captain Folsoni examined at San Francisco he pronounced mica; he did not believe a man who came down some time after with twenty ounces when he claimed to have gathered it in eight days. Some time in April Folsom wrote to Mason at Monterey, making casual mention of the existing rumor of gold on the Sacramento, In May Bradley, a friend of Folsom 's, went to Monterey, and was asked by Mason if he knew anything of this gold discovery on the American River. ”

“ To emigrants, among other attractions, .gold had been mentioned as one of the possible or prob- able resources of California; but to plodding agricul- turists or mechanics the idea of searching the wilder- ness for gold would have been deemed visionary, or the fact of little moment that some one somewhere had found gold.^ When so intelligent a man as Seni- ple at Benicia was told of it he said, "I would give more for a good coal mine than for all the gold mines in the universe." At Sonoma, Vallejo passed the matter by with a piece of pleasantry. ”

“ The interior of the houses is rough, with rafters and unpanelled walls, with benches and deal tables, the exception being the audience-room and private apartments of the owner, who has ob- tained from the Russians a clumsy set of California laurel furniture.^ In front of the main building, on the small square, is a brass gun, guarded by the sentinel, whose measured tramp, lost in the hum of day, marks the stillness of the night, and stops alone beneath the belfry-post to chime the passing hour. ”

“ I will only notice here, amidst the scenes now every day becoming more and more absorbing, bringing to the front the strongest passions in man s nature, how at the call of what they deemed duty these devotees of their religion unhesitatingly laid down their wealth-winning implements, turned their back on what all the world was just then making ready with hot haste and mustered strength to grasp at and struggle for, and marched through new toils and dangers to meet their exiled brethren in the desert. ”

“ Most of the gold-seekers could afford a horse, and even a pack-animal, which was still to be had for ^ fifteen dollars,^^ and thus proceed with greater speed to the goal, to the envy of the number that had to content themselves with wagons, which, though white- covered and snug, with perhaps a family inside, were cumbersome and slow, especially when drawn by oxen. Often a pedestrian was passed trudging along under his load, glad to get his effects carried across the stream by some team, although he himself might have to breast the current swimming, perchance holding to the tail of some horse. ”

“ The grass is not dead, but sleepeth. When the winter rains begin, in November, after a respite of six months, vegetal life revives; the softened soil puts on fresh garments; the arid waste blossoms into a garden. The cooler air of winter condenses the vapor-laden winds of ocean, which, during the preceding months, are sapped of their moisture by the hot and thirsty air. And all this is effected with only half the amount of rain fall- ing in the Atlantic states, the average at San Fran- cisco being little over twenty inches annually, at Sacramento one tenth less, and at San Diego one half ”

“ So far the withering influence of a strange civilization upon the true proprietors of the soil had emanated from Mexican incomers. Now a stronger phase of it is appearing in another influx, which is to overwhelm both of the existing races, and which, like the original invasion of Mexico, of America, is to consist of a fair-hued people from toward the rising sun. ”

“ Throughout the day the enclosure presents an animated scene of work and trafficking, by bustling laborers, diligent mechanics, and eager traders, all to the chorus clang of the smithy and reverberating strokes of the carpenters. ”

“ Sutter regarded the discovery as a misfortune. Without laborers his extensive works must come to a stop, presaging ruin. Gladly would he have shut the knowledge from the world, for a time, at least. With the men at the mill the best he could do was to make them promise to continue their work, and say nothing of the gold ^discovery for six weeks, by which time he hoped to have his Hour-mill completed, and
^*Bigler, Diary y MS., 65-6, gives a joke which they undertook to play on the Old Cap, as Marshall called Sutter. ”

“ At times sunk in isolation, at times it was stirred by the presence of a tribe of savages bearing its name, whose several generations here cradled, after weary roaming, sought repose upon the banks of a useful, happy, and some- times frolicsome stream. ”

“ In summer an equilibrium is approached; in winter the tiresome reserve is broken. By early autumn a wide-spread deadness obtains ; the hills wear a bleached appearance, the smaller streams are empty, the plain is parched and dusty, the soil cracked in fissures from excessive dryness ”

“ About the 21st of February, Bigler wrote to certain of his comrades of the Mormon battalion — Jesse Mar- tin, Israel Evans, and Ephraim Green, who were at work on Sutter's flour-mill — informing them of the discovery of gold, and charging them to keep it secret, or to tell it to those only who could be trusted. ”

“ Within a few days an exodus set in that startled those who had placed their hopes upon the peninsular metropolis.* "Fleets of launches left this place on Sunday and Monday," exclaims Editor Kemble, "closely stowed with human beings. . .Was there ever anything so superlatively silly ?"^^ But sneers, expostulations, and warnings availed not with a multi- tude so possessed.
The nearest route was naturally sought — by water up the Bay into the Sacramento, and thence where fortune beckoned. The few available sloops, lighters, and nondescript craft were quickly engaged and filled for the mines. ”

“ In the midst of the excitement, however, there were men who remained calm, and here and there were those who regarded not the product of the Sierra foothills as the greatest good. Luis Peralta, who had lived near upon a century, called to him his sons, themselves approaching threescore years, and said: "My sons, God has given this gold to the Americans. ”

“ The whole country from San Francisco to Los An- geles," exclaimed the former, " and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds to the sor- did cry of gold! gold I ! GOLDl ! ! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick- axes, and the means of transportation to the spot where one man obtained $128 worth of the real stuff in one day's washing, and the average for all concerned is $20 per diem." ”

“ Strewn lavishly about is what men most covet, those portions of nature's handiwork called wealth and wealth-making material, the acquisition of which is the great burden progressive men conventionally lay upon themselves as the price of their civilization. These resources reveal themselves in the long snow-clad uplands of the Sierra, with their timber and metals, in the nbrthern foothills, revelling in perennial spring, and in the semi-tropic vegetation of the central and southern valleys. ”

“ Many early writers mention gold in California, referring to Lower California, yet leading some to confound the two Californias, and to suppose that the existence of the metal in the Sierra foothills w^as then known. Instance Miguel Venegas, Shelvocke, and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries, and early encyclopaedia makers. It has always been a favorite trick of navigators to speak of things they either greatly feared or greatly desired as exist- ing. Vizcaino, Knight, and fifty others were certain that the mountains of California contained gold. ”

“ As a class they present a hardy, backwoods type of rough exterior, relieved here and there by bits of Hispano-Californian attire, in bright sashes, wide sombreros, and jingling spurs. The na- tives appear probably to better advantage here than elsewhere in California, in the body of half a hundred well-clothed soldiers trained by Sutter, and among his staff of steady servants and helpers, who have ac- quired both skill and neatness. A horde of subdued savages, engaged as herders, tillers, and laborers, are conspicuous by their half-naked, swarthy bodies ”

“ It is one of the most vitalizing of climates for mind and body, ever stimulating to activity and en- joyment. Land and sea vie with each other in life- giving supremacy, while man steps in to enjoy the benefits. When the one rises in undue warmth, the other frowns it down ; when one grows cold and sul- len, the other beams in happy sunshine. Winds and
•* Severe extremes are confined to a few torrid spots like Fort Yuma, and to the summits of the eastern ranges. ”

“ The mine at San Fernando, near Los Angeles, where work was begun in 1842, is about the only satisfactory instance on record of a knowledge of the existence of gold in Alta California prior to the discovery of Mar- shall. And this was indeed a clew which could not have failed to be taken up in due time by some one among the host of observant fortune-hunters now pouring" in, and forced by circumstances into the for
ests and foothills in quest of slumbering resources. ”

“ The upper part of the San Joaquin Valley had so far been shunned by fixed settlers, owing to Indian hostilit}^ toward the Spanish race. With others the aborigines agreed better; and gaining their favor through the mediation of the influential Sutter, the German Charles M. Weber had located himself on French Camp rancho, which he sought to develop by introducing colonists. ”

“ Occasionally instances occur where one's destiny, hitherto seemingly confined in the clouds, is let out in a Hood, and if weak, the recipient is overwhelmed and carried down the stream by it; if he be strong, and makes avail of it, his fortune is secured ”

“ Foothills — Hut and Camp life — Sunday in the Mines — Catalogue of California Mining Rushes — Mariposa, Kern, Ocean Beach, Nevada, Gold Lake, Lost Cahin, Gold Blu£^ Siskiyou, Sonora, Australia, Fraser River, Nevada, Colorado, and the Rest — Mining Laws and Regulations — Mining Tax — Discrimination against Foreigners ,. ”

“ An approximate affinity of blood and language here paves tlio way for the imaginative though superficial French- man and Italian, no less polite than insincere, yet cheerful and aesthetic. A few Hawaiian Islanders have been brought over, and are tolerated until prouder people press them back and under. ”

“ It is supported during the busy season by two other vessels, which make trips far up the Sacramento and San Joaquin. The ferry at the fort landing is merely a canoe handled by an Indian, but a large boat is a-building.^*^
Six miles up the American River, so called by Sut- ter as the pathway for American immigration, the Mormons are constructing a flour-mill for him,^ and another party are in like manner engaged on a saw- mill building and race at Coloma Valley, forty miles above, on the south fork. ”

“ Such are the unsightly marshes in different localities; the Colorado desert bordering the river of that name, and its link along the eastern declivity of the Sierra Nevada with the great basin of the interior, which in the south is marked by a dismal stretch of bare ridges and inter- vening valleys of sand and volcanic scoria, with occa- sional muddy salt pools and cracked surfaces frosted
with alkali, and in the south by a rugged lake basin. ”