It is true that many of these towns, improvised for the exigencies of the moment, are frequently deserted as rapidly as they were built; for the North American is the true nomadic race. Nothing attaches it to the soil: convenience alone can keep it at any given spot. It has none of those heart affections, none of those memories of childhood or youth, which induce us often to endure suffering in a place rather than quit it for others where we should be comparatively much better off. In a word, the American has no home, that word so endearing to Europeans. To him the most agreeable and comfortable abode is that where he can pile dollar on dollar with the greatest facility.
San Francisco, that city which now counts more than 60,000 inhabitants, and in which all the refinements of luxury can be found, is an evident proof of the marvellous facility with which the Americans improvise towns. We can remember bartering, scarce fifteen years back, with Flat-head Indians, beneath the shade of secular trees, on sites where splendid edifices now rise. We have fished alone in this immense bay, the finest in the world, which is at present almost too small to hold the innumerable vessels that follow each other in rapid succession.
At the period of our story San Francisco was not yet a city in the true acceptation of the word. It was a conglomeration of huts and clumsy cabins built of wood, and which afforded some sort of shelter to the adventurers of every nation whom the gold fever cast on its shores, and who only stopped there long enough to prepare for proceeding to the mines, or throw into the bottomless abysses of the gambling houses the nuggets they had collected with so much difficulty and suffering.
The police were almost non-existing: the stronger man made the law. The knife and revolver were the última ratio, and lorded it over this heterogeneous population, composed of the worst specimens the five parts of the globe could throw up.
A population incessantly renewed, never the same, lived in this Hades, a prey to that constant and fatal intoxication which the sight of that terrible metal called gold produces in even the strongest-minded men.
Still, at the period of which we are writing, the first fury of the race to the placers had somewhat cooled down. Owing to the impulse given by a few resolute men, gifted with lofty intellects and generous hearts, the normal life was beginning to be gradually organised; the bandits no longer daringly held the top of the causeway, honest men could at length breathe and raise their heads, all foreboded better days, and the dawn of an era of order, peace, and tranquillity had arrived.
About two months after the events we narrated in our preceding chapter we will lead the reader to a charming house built a little out of the throng, as if the inhabitants had sought to isolate themselves as much as possible; and after introducing him into a room modestly furnished with a few common chairs and a table, on which lay a large map of Mexico, we will listen to the conversation of the two men who were leaning over this map.
One of them is already well known to us, for he is the Count Louis; the other was a man of middle age, with a fine and intelligent face, whose eye sparkled with boldness and frankness; his manners were also very elegant. He appeared to be a Frenchman; at least he was talking in that language. At the moment we joined them the two gentlemen were inserting black-headed pins into certain districts of the map spread out before them.
"I am perfectly of your opinion, my dear count," the stranger said as he rose: "that road is the most direct, and at the same time the safest."
"Is it not?" Louis answered.