CHAPTER V. — THE GOLDEN MAGNET.—FREE OR SLAVE?
Maxine Valois marvels not that the old navigators missed the Golden Gate. It was easy to pass the land-locked bay, with its arterial rivers, the Sacramento and San Joaquin. Fate hung a foggy curtain on the outside bar. Greenest velvet sward now carpets the Alameda hills. It is a balmy March day of 1847. The proceeds of his horse and trappings give the youth less than a hundred dollars—his whole fortune.
The Louisianian exile, with the world before him, is now a picture of manly symmetry. Graceful, well-knit physique, dark hair and eyes, and his soft, impassioned speech, betray the Franco-American of the Gulf States. While gazing on the glories of Tamalpais and the wooded mountains of Marin, he notes the little mission under the Visitacion hills. It's a glorious scene. All the world's navies can swing at ease in this superb bay. The only banner floating here is the ensign at the peak of the frigate Portsmouth. Interior wanderings give him a glimpse of the vast areas controlled by this noble sheet of water. Young and ardent, with a superior education, he may be a ruling spirit of the new State now about to crystallize. His studies prove how strangely the finger of Fortune points. It turned aside the prows of Captain Cook, La Perouse, Vancouver, and the great Behring, as well as the bold Drake, who tarried within a day's sail at his New Albion. Frenchman, Englishman, and Russian have been tricked by the fairy goddess of the mist. The Golden Gates in these later days are locked by the Yankees from the inside.
Leaping from the boat, Valois tosses his scanty gear on the strand. It is a deep, curving bay, in later years to be covered with stately palaces of commerce, far out to where the Portsmouth now lies.
A few huts make up the city of Yerba Buena. Reflecting on his status, he dares not seek the alcalde, Lieut. Washington Bartlett of the navy. From his escort he has heard of the many bickerings which have involved Sloat, Stockton, Fremont, and Kearney.
Trusting to Padre Francisco's letters, he hires a horse of a loitering half-breed. This native pilots him to the mission.
The priests receive him with open arms. They are glad for news of their brother of the Sierras. Maxime installs himself as a guest of the priests. Some current of life will bear him onward—whither he knows not.
Idle days run into weeks. A motley five or six hundred whites have gathered. The alcalde begins to fear that the town limits are crowded.
None of the wise men of the epoch dare to dream that in less than three years two hundred vessels will lie tossing, deserted in the bay; that the cove will be filled with ships from the four corners of the earth in five years.
Frowning hills and rolling sand dunes are to be thrown bodily into the reentrant bay. They are future coverings for sunken hulks. Where for twenty square miles coyote and fox now howl at night, the covert oaks and brambles will be shaved off to give way to a city, growing like a cloud-land vision.
Active and energetic, Valois coasts down to Monterey. He finds Fremont gone, already on his way east. His soldier wrists are bound with the red tape of arrest. The puppet of master minds behind the scenes, Fremont has been a "pathfinder" for others.
Riding moodily, chafing in arrest, at the rear of the overland column, the explorer receives as much as Columbus, Pizarro, or Maluspina did—only obloquy. It is the Nemesis of disgrace, avenging the outraged and conquered Californians.
A dark shade of double dealing hangs around the glories of the capture of California. The methods used are hardly justified, even by the national blessings of extension to this ocean threshold of Asian trade. The descent was planned at Washington to extend the domineering slave empire of the aspiring South. The secret is out. The way is clear for the surplus blacks of the South to march in chains to the Pacific under the so-called "flag of freedom."
Valois discovers at Monterey that no man of the staff of the "Pathfinder" will be made an official pet, They are all proscribed. The early fall finds him again under the spell of the bells of the Mission Dolores. Whither to turn he knows not.
Averse to manual labor, like all Creoles, the lad decides to seek a return passage on some trader. This will be hardly possible for months. The Christmas chimes of 1848 sound sadly on his ears.
With no home ties but his uncle, his memories of the parents, lost in youth, fade away. He feels the bitterness of being a stranger in a strange land. He is discouraged with an isolated western empire producing nothing but hides and tallow. He shares the general opinion that no agriculture can succeed in this rainless summer land of California. Hardly a plough goes afield. On the half-neglected ranchos the owners of thousands of cattle have neither milk nor butter. Fruits and vegetables are unattainable. The mission grapes, olives, and oranges have died out by reason of fourteen years' neglect. The mechanic arts are absent. What shall the harvest of this idle land be?
Valois knows the interior Indians will never bear the strain of development. Lazy and ambitionless, they are incapable of uniting their tribal forces. Alas for them! They merely cumber the ground.
At the end of January, 1848, a wild commotion agitates the hamlet of San Francisco. The cry is "Gold! Gold everywhere!" The tidings are at first whispered, then the tale swells to a loud clamor. In the stampede for the interior, Maxime Valois is borne away. He seeks the Sacramento, the Feather, the Yuba, and the American. He too must have gold.
A general hegira occurs. Incoming ships, little settlements, and the ranches are all deserted, for a wondrous golden harvest is being gleaned. The tidings go forth over the whole earth. Sail and steam, trains of creaking wagons, troops of hardy horsemen, are all bent Westward Ho! Desertion takes the troops and sailors from camp and fleet pell-mell to the Sacramento valley. A shabby excrescence of tent and hut swells Yerba Buena to a town. In a few months it leaps into a city's rank. Over the prairies, toward the sandy Humboldt, long emigrant trains are crawling toward the golden canyons of the Sierras. The restless blood of the Mexican War pours across the Gila deserts and the sandy wastes of the Colorado.
The Creole boy learns that he, too, can work with pick, pan, cradle, rocker, at the long tom, sluice, and in the tunnel drift. The world is mad for gold. New York and New Orleans pour shiploads of adventurers in by Panama and Nicaragua. Sailing vessels from Europe, fleets around the Horn, vessels from Chile, Mexico, Sandwich Islands, and Australia crowd each other at the Golden Gates.
In San Francisco six months show ten thousand madmen. Tent, hut, shanty, shed, even pretentious houses appear. Uncoined nuggets, glittering gold dust in grains and powder, prove the harvest is real.
The Indians and lazy Californians are crowded out of the diggings. The superior minds among the priests and rancheros can only explain the long ignorance of the gold deposits by the absolute brutishness of the hill tribes. Their knowledge of metals was absolutely nothing. Beyond flint-headed spears, their bows and arrows, and a few mats, baskets, and skin robes, they had no arts or useful handicraft. Starving in a land of plenty, their tribal career never lifted itself a moment from the level of the brute. And yet gold was the Spaniards' talisman.
The Mexican-descended rancheros should have looked for gold. The traditions even indicated it. Their hold on the land was only in the footprints of their horses and cattle.
Had the priests ever examined the interior, had a single military expedition explored the State with care, the surface gold deposits must have been stumbled on.
It remains an inexplicable fact, that, as early as 1841, gold was found in the southern part of the State. In 1843, seventy-five to one hundred ounces of dust were obtained from the Indians, and sent to Boston via the Sandwich Island trading ships. Keen old Sir Francis Drake's reports to good Queen Bess flatly spoke of these yellow treasures. They, too, were ignored. English apathy! Pouring in from the whole world, bursting in as a flood of noisy adventurers on the stillness of the lazy land of the Dons, came the gold hunters of California.
Already, in San Francisco, drinking booth, gambling shop, and haunts of every villany spring up—the toadstools of a night.
Women throng in to add the incantations of the daughters of Sin to this mad hurly-burly. Handsome Mexicans, lithe Chilenas, escaped female convicts, and women of Australia were reinforced by the adventuresses of New Orleans, Paris, New York, and Liverpool—a motley crowd of Paphian dames.
Maxime Valois, reaching Suiter's Fort by a launch, falls in with a lank Missouri lad. His sole property in the world is a rifle and his Pike county name of Joe Woods. A late arrival with a party of Mexican war strays, his age and good humor cause the Creole to take him as valuable, simply because one and one make two. He is a good-humored raw lad. Together in the broiling sun, half buried under bank or in the river-beds, they go through the rough evolution of the placer miner's art.
The two thousand scattered foreigners of the State are ten thousand before the year is out. Through the canyons, troops of gold seekers now wander. Sacramento's lovely crystal waters, where the silvery salmon leap, are tinged with typical yellow colors, deepening every month. Tents give way to cabins; pack trains of mules and horses wind slowly over the ridges. Little towns dot the five or six river regions where the miners toil, and only the defeated are idle.
From San Diego to Sonoma the temporary government is paralyzed. It loses all control except the fulmination of useless orders.
Local organization occurs by the pressure of numbers. Quaint names and queer local institutions are born of necessity.
At San Francisco the tower of Babel is duplicated. Polyglot crowds arrive in the craziest craft. Supplies of every character pour in. Shops and smiths, workmen of all trades, appear. Already an old steamboat wheezes on the Sacramento River. Bay Steamers soon vex the untroubled waters of the harbor. They appear as if by magic.
A fever by day, a revel by night, San Francisco is a caravansera of all nations. The Argonauts bring with them their pistols and Bibles, their whiskey and women, their morals and murderers. Crime and intrigues quickly crop out. The ready knife, and the compact code of Colonel Colt in six loaded chapters, are applied to the settlement of all quarrels.
While Valois blisters his hands with the pick and shovel, a matchless strain of good blood is also pouring westward. Young and daring men, even professional scholars, cool merchants, able artisans, and good women hopeful of a golden future, come with men finally able to dragoon these varied masses into order.
Regular communications are established, presses set up, and even churches appear. Post-office, banks, steamer and freight lines spring up within the year of the reign of gold. Disease raises its fevered head, and the physician appears by magic. The human maelstrom settles into an ebb and flood tide to and from the mines.
All over California keen-eyed men from the West and South begin to appropriate land. The Eastern and Middle States pilgrims take up trades and mechanical occupations. All classes contribute recruits to the scattered thousands of miners. Greedy officials and sly schemers begin to prey on the vanishing property rights of the Dons. A strange, unsubstantial social fabric is hastily reared. It clusters around the western peaks by the Golden Gate.
Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana are sending great contingents. Mere nearness, with a taste for personal adventure, causes the southern border element to brave the overland journey. The northwestern overland travellers are more cautious. They have longer roads to drag over. They come prepared for farming or trade, as well as rude mining. As soon as the two lines of Eastern steamers are established, the Eastern and Middle States send heavy reinforcements. They are largely traders or permanent settlers. From the first day, the ambitious, overbearing men of the slave States take the lead in politics. They look to the extension of their gloomy "institution," negro slavery.
Valois keeps much to himself. Resolutely he saves his golden gleanings. He avoids the gambling tables and dance-houses. Joe Woods works like a horse, from mere acquisitiveness. He fondly looks back to a certain farm in Missouri, where he would fain squire it when rich. Public rumor announces the great hegira of gold seekers. The rush begins. Horse stealing, quarrels over claims, personal encounters, rum's lunacy, and warring opinion cause frequent bloody affrays.
Already scattered mounds rudely marked prove the reign of grim King Death. His dark empire stretches even here unstayed, unchallenged. Winter approaches; its floods drive the miners out of the river beds. Joe Woods has aggregated several Pike County souls, whose claims adjoin those of the two young associates. Wishing to open communication with Judge Valois at Belle Etoile, Maxime ceases work. He must recruit for hardships of the next season. He leaves all in the hands of "partner Joe," who prefers to camp with his friends, now the "Missouri Company." Valois is welcome at the Mission Dolores. He can there safely deposit his splendid savings.
Provided with ample funds of gold dust, in heavy buckskin sacks, to send up winter supplies, Valois secures his half of the profits. It is in rudely sealed tin cans of solid gold dust. He is well armed and in good company. He gladly leaves the human bee-hive by the terrific gorges of the American River. He has now learned every trick of the mines. By pack train his treasure moves down to Sacramento. Well mounted, Maxime is the companion of a score of similarly fortunate returning miners. Name, nationality, and previous history of these free lances of fortune have been dropped, like Christian's bundle, on climbing these hills. Every man can choose for himself a new life here, under the spicy breezes of the Sierras. He is a law unto himself.
The young gold hunter sees, amazed, a cantonment of ten thousand people at the bay. He safely conveys his treasure to the priests at the mission. They are shaken from slumber of their religious routine by eager Argonauts. Letters from Padre Francisco at Lagunitas prove the formation of bands of predatory Mexicans. These native Californians and Indian vagabonds are driving away unguarded stock. They mount their fierce banditti on the humbled Don's best horses. Coast and valley are now deserted and ungoverned. The mad rush for gold has led the men northward.
No one dreams as yet of the great Blue Cement lead, which, from Sierra to Mariposa, is to unbosom three hundred millions from the beds of the old, covered geologic rivers. Ten thousand scratch in river bank and bed for surface gold. Priest and layman, would-be scientist and embryo experts, ignore the yellow threaded quartz veins buttressing the great Sierras. He would be a madman now who would think that five hundred millions will be pounded out of the rusty rocks of these California hills in less than a score of years.
The toilers have no curiosity as to the origin or mother veins of the precious metal sought.
Maxime Valois sits under the red-tiled porches of the mission in January, 1849. He has despatched his first safe consignment of letters to Belle Etoile. He little cares for the events which have thrown the exhaustless metal belt of the great West into the reserve assets of the United States. He knows not it is destined within fifty years to be the richest land in the world. The dark schemes of slavery's lord-like statesmen have swept these vast areas into our map. The plotters have ignored the future colossal returns of gold, silver, copper, and lead.
Not an American has yet caught the real value of the world's most extensive forests of pine and redwood. They clothe these western slopes with graceful, unmutilated pageantry of green.
Fisheries and fields which promise great gains are passed unnoticed. It is a mere pushing out of boundary lines, under the political aggression of the South.
Even Benton, cheering the departing thousands Westward, grumbles in the Senate of the United States, on January 26, 1840. As the official news of the gold discoveries is imparted, the wise senators are blind in the sunlight of this prosperity. "I regret that we have these mines in California," Benton says; "but they are there, and I am in favor of getting rid of them as soon as possible." Wise senator!
Neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet is he. He cannot see that these slighted mines in the future will be the means of sustaining our country's credit in a great war. This gold and silver will insure the construction of the overland railroads. The West and Northwest, sealed to the Union by bands of steel, will be the mainstay of the land. They will equalize a broader, grander Union than he ever dreamed of.
Benton little thinks he has found the real solution of the wearying strife of North and South. Turning the surplus population of these bitterly opposed sections to the unpeopled West solves the problem. His son-in-law, Governor Fremont, has been a future peacemaker as well as a bold pathfinder. For it is on the track of Fremont that thousands are now tramping west. Their wheels are bearing the household gods. Civilization to be is on the move. Gold draws these crowds. The gulfs of the Carribean, even the lonely straits of Magellan and the far Pacific, are furrowed now by keels seeking the happy land where plentiful gold awaits every daring adventurer. Martinet military governors cannot control this embryo empire. Already in Congress bills are introduced to admit California into the Union. A rising golden star glitters in the West; it is soon to gild the flag of the Union with a richer radiance.
Great leaders of the sovereign people struggle at Washington in keen debate, inspired by the hostile sections of the Union. They quarrel over the slavery interests in the great West. Keen Tom Corwin, loyal Dix, astute Giddings, Douglass the little giant, and David Wilmot fight freedom's battle with the great apostle of State rights, Calhoun. He is supported by President Polk, the facile Secretary of State Buchanan, and that dark Mississippi man of destiny, Jefferson Davis. The fiery Foote and all the ardent knights of the day champion the sunny South. Godlike Daniel Webster pours forth for freedom some of his greatest utterances. William H. Seward, prophet, seer, statesman, and patriot, with noble inspirations cheers on freedom's army. Who shall own bright California, the bond or the free? While these great knights of our country's round table fight in the tourney of the Senate over this golden prize, Benton sends back the "pathfinder" Fremont. He is now freed from the army by an indignant resignation. He bears a letter to Benton's friends in the West to organize the civil community and prepare a constitution.
While Valois watches for news, the buds and blossoms of early spring call him back to the American River. The bay whitens with the sails of arriving thousands. Political combinations begin everywhere. Two years have made Fremont, Kearney, Colonel Mason, General P. F. Smith, and General Bennett Riley temporary military governors. Maxime leaves with ample stores; he rejoins the "Missouri Company," already reaping the golden harvest of the golden spring.
Sage counsel reaches him from Padre Francisco. He hears with delight of the youth's success in the mines. The French missionary, with a natural love of the soil, advises Valois to buy lands as soon as good titles can be had.
The Mexican War ends in glory to the once despised Gringos. Already the broad grants of the Dons are coveted by the officials of the military regency. Several of the officers have already served themselves better than their country. The entanglements of a new rule amount to practical confiscation of the lands of the old chieftains. What they saved from the conqueror is destined later to fatten greedy lawyers.
The spoliated Church is avenged upon the heirs of those who worked its temporal ruin. For here, while mad thousands delve for the gold of their desire, the tramping feet of uncontrolled hosts are heard at the gates of the Sierras. When the fleets give out their hordes of male and female adventurers, there is no law but that of force or duplicity; no principle but self-interest. Virtue, worth, and desert meekly bow to strength. Wealth in its rudest form of sacks of uncoined gold dust rules the hour.
The spring days lengthen into summer. Maxime Valois recoils from the physical toil of the rocky bars of the American. His nature is aristocratic; his youthful prejudices are averse to hand work. Menial attendance, though only upon himself, is degrading to him. The rough life of the mines becomes unbearable. A Southerner, par excellence, in his hatred of the physical familiarity of others, he avails himself of his good fortune to find a purchaser for his interests. The stream of new arrivals is a river now, for the old emigrant road of Platte and Humboldt is delivering an unending human current. Past the eastern frontier towns of Missouri, the serpentine trains drag steadily west; their camp fires glitter from "St. Joe" to Fort Bridger; they shine on the summit lakes of the Sierras, where Donner's party, beset in deepest snows, died in starvation. They were a type of the human sacrifices of the overland passage. Skeletons dot the plains now.
By flood and desert, under the stroke of disease, by the Indian tomahawk and arrow, with every varied accident and mishap, grim Death has taken his ample toll along three thousand miles. Sioux and Cheyenne, Ute and Blackfoot, wily Mormon, and every lurking foe have preyed as human beasts on the caravans. These human fiends emulate the prairie wolf and the terrific grizzly in thirst for blood.
The gray sands of the burning Colorado desert are whitening with the bones of many who escaped Comanche and Apache scalping knives, only to die of fatigue.
By every avenue the crowd pours in. Valois has extended his acquaintance with the leading miners. He is aware of the political organization about to be effected. He has now about forty thousand dollars as his share of gold dust. An offer of thirty thousand more for his claim decides him to go to San Francisco. He is fairly rich. With that fund he can, as soon as titles settle, buy a broad rancho. His active mind suggests the future values of the building lots in the growing city.
He completes the rude formalities of his sale, which consist of signing a bill of sale of his mining claim, and receiving the price roughly weighed out in gold. He hears that a convention is soon to organize the State. On September 1, 1849, at Monterey, the civil fabric of government will be planned out.
Before he leaves he is made a delegate. Early July, with its tropical heat, is at hand. The camp on the American is agitated by the necessity of some better form of government. Among others, Philip Hardin of Mississippi, a lawyer once, a rich miner now, is named as delegate.
At Sacramento a steamer is loaded to the gunwales with departing voyagers. Maxime meets some of his fellow delegates already named. Among them is Hardin of Mississippi. Philip Hardin is a cool, resolute, hard-faced man of forty. A lawyer of ability, he has forged into prominence by sheer superiority. The young Creole is glad to meet some one who knows his beloved New Orleans. As they glide past the willow-shaded river banks, the two Southerners become confidential over their cigars.
Valois learns, with surprise, that President Polk sent the polished Slidell confidentially to Mexico in 1846, and offered several millions for a cession of California. He also wanted a quit-claim to Texas. This juggling occurred before General Taylor opened the campaign on the Rio Grande. In confidential relations with Sidell, Hardin pushed over to California as soon as the result of the war was evident. Ambitious and far-seeing, Philip Hardin unfolds the cherished plan of extending slavery to the West. It must rule below the line of the thirty-sixth parallel. Hardin is an Aaron Burr in persuasiveness. By the time the new friends reach San Francisco, Maxime has found his political mentor. Ambition spurs him on.
Wonders burst upon their eyes. Streets, business houses and hotels, dwellings and gaudy places of resort, are spread over the rolling slopes. Valois has written his friends at the mission to hold his letters. He hastens away to deposit his treasures and gain news of the old home in the magnolia land.
Hardin has the promise of the young Louisianian to accompany him to Monterey. A preliminary conference of the southern element in the convention is arranged. They must give the embryo State a pro-slavery constitution. He busies himself with gaining a thorough knowledge of the already forming cabals. Power is to be parcelled out, places are to be filled. The haughty Mississippian cares more for this excitement than digging for mere inert treasure. His quick eye catches California's splendid golden star in the national constellation.
Valois finds he must wait the expected letters. He decides to take no steps as to investment until the civil power is stable.
With a good mustang he rides the peninsula thoroughly. He visits the old Presidio on the outskirts of the growing city. He rides far over the pass of Lake Merced, to where the broken gap in the coast hills leaves a natural causeway for the railway of the future.
Philip Hardin, fisher of men, is keeping open house near the plaza. Already his rooms are the headquarters of the fiery chivalry of the South. Day by day Valois admires the self-assertion of the imperious lawyer. The Mississippian has already plotted out the situation. He is concert with leaders like himself, who are looking up and drawing in their forces for the struggle at the convention.
Valois becomes familiar with the heads of the Northern opposition. Able and sturdy chiefs are already marshalling the men who come from the lands of the northern pine to meet in the peaceful political arena the champions of the palmetto land. Maxime's enthusiasm mounts. The young Southerner feels the pride of his race burning in his veins.
In his evening hours, under the oaks of the Mission Dolores, he bears to the calm priests his budget of port and town. He tells of the new marvellous mines, of the influx of gold hunters. He cannot withhold his astonishment that the priesthood should not have discovered the gold deposits. The astute clergy inform him calmly that for years their inner circles have known of considerable gold in the possession of the Indians. It was a hope of the Church that some fortunate turn of Mexican politics might have restored their sway. Alas! It was shattered in 1834 by the relentless Hijar.
"Hijo mio!" says an old padre. "We knew since 1838 that gold was dug at Franscisquita canyon in the south. If we had the old blessed days of Church rule, we could have quietly controlled this great treasure field. But this is now the land of rapine and adventure. First, the old pearl-fishers in the gulf of California; then the pirates lurking along the coast, watching the Philippine galleons. When your Americans overran Texas, and commenced to pour over the plains here, we knew all was lost. Your people have fought a needless war with Mexico; now they are swarming in here—a godless race, followed by outcasts of the whole of Europe. There is no law here but the knife and pistol. Your hordes now arriving have but one god alone—gold."
The saddened old padre sighs as he gathers his breviary and beads, seeking his lonely cloister. He is a spectre of a day that is done.