The Land of Gold
IF any of the boys and girls born in the United States were asked "Where is the land of gold?" they would answer "It is California," and if any of the children born in California were asked "What is El Dorado?" they would say "Why, that means the land of gold."
So it does and for two reasons.
Cortez named it California after the heroine of a romance of chivalry he had read when he was in Spain. The book said there was an island on the right hand of the Indies very near the terrestrial Paradise, peopled with black women, who were Amazons, and wore gold ornaments in great profusion. Down in his heart Cortez cherished the hope that he might find the northwest passage to India, not because he cared very much for science, but because he believed the most extravagant stories about the silks, spices, sweet-smelling gums and rare gems to be found there. His ill-gotten Mexican gold did him very little good, and was soon all expended, and he was anxious to find some other country to conquer. The very next year after the death of Montezuma, Cortez heard of the Land of Gold, and came over to a cove on the Pacific Coast of Mexico where he laid out a town and built some ships for the purpose of finding the new wonderland. All he ever discovered was the peninsula of Lower California, where the Indians already knew about the pearl fisheries. This was what he thought was an island, and what he named California.
One of his officers sailed around the island of St. Thomas, and on a Sunday morning he said he saw a merman swimming close to his ship.
"It came alongside the vessel," he declared, "and raised its head and looked at us two or three times. It was as full of antics as a monkey. Sometimes it would dive, and then raise up out of the water and wash its face with its hands. Finally a sea bird drove it away."
Of course he was mistaken, for what he really did see was either a walrus or a big seal as both animals abound in the Pacific Ocean.
It was more than three hundred years after Cabrillo sailed into the Gate of Palms at the entrance to the bay of San Diego, before gold was discovered in California. The country had been settled by Spanish Cavaliers and padres and there were missions for the teaching of the Indians. Mexico had rebelled against the King of Spain and the United States had made war on Mexico and won. Then a man by the name of Marshall found some free gold. It was in the sand at the bottom of a ditch he was digging to get water to run a sawmill he was building. He knew at once that the bright yellow pebbles he held in his hands were gold, so he hurried to the men at work on the watershed and said:
"I have found it!" and that is what the motto, Eureka! on the state shield of California really means.