The land of gold; reality versus fiction

by Hinton Rowan Helper

THE LAND OF GOLD.

CHAPTER I.
CALIFORNIA UNVEILED.

An intelligent and patriotic curiosity will find the history of few countries more interesting than that of California—which has at length realized those dreams of El Dorado that beguiled so many an early adventurer from the comforts and bliss of his fireside, to delude and destroy him. The marshes of the Orinoco, the Keys of Florida, and the hills of Mexico cover the bones of many of these original speculators in the minerals of the Western World. They sought wealth, and found graves. How many of the modern devotees of Mammon have done better in our newly opened land of gold?

To explain the causes of the frequent disappointment of these cherished hopes; to determine the true value of this modern El Dorado; to exhibit the prominent features of California and its principal cities, particularly San Francisco, and thus to enable those who still encourage golden dreams to form a proper estimate of their chances of success, without submitting to the painful teachings of experience—these have been the motives which have actuated the author of the present work.

The less to weary the reader, the book has been broken up into chapters, in which the author proposes to discourse familiarly upon what he has seen and felt, as he would in a friendly letter, rather than to write a formal essay or treatise upon California. In pursuing this plan, it is his intention to confine himself exclusively to facts, and to describe those facts as clearly as possible, so as to leave no ground for a conjectural filling up of those outlines which his negligence may have left vague and indistinct.

In this country, where almost every event that occurs is as momentous and unaccountable as the wonderful exploits of Habib’s and Aladdin’s genii, to deal with any thing aside from actual matters of fact, is at once as silly and profitless a business as that of whistling against the winds. Yet, in nine-tenths of the descriptions of life and times in California, truth and facts have been set aside, and the writers, instead of confining themselves to a faithful delineation of that which actually exists, have made astonishing and unwarranted drafts upon their imaginations. Instead of detailing facts, they have written fictions; instead of making a true record, they have interwoven falsehoods with the very web of their story. They have chronicled dreams instead of realities, and have registered vagaries as actual events and undeniable certainties. But they have themselves been deceived. They have been duped in listening to the delusive whispers of mischievous sirens, whose flattering suggestions and plausible stories have had such a magical influence upon their excited minds, that they have become accustomed to consider every thought of wealth that occurs to them a veritable mountain of gold;—that is to say, they have, by some strange hallucination, been converted to the belief that whatever California ought to be for their own particular ends and interests, it really is. In the night-time they have arranged and matured prodigious plans of profit, and although many days have dawned upon them since, that time has yet to come which shall reveal to them the utter nothingness of their nocturnal reveries. But the day will come, and it is fast approaching, when the spell must be broken. The iron utensils, which have been transmuted into golden urns and palaces night after night, shall once and for ever resume their true quality at the approach of day. The spell-bound shall be freed! The reverie shall be dissipated, the false wealth analyzed, and resolved into its component parts; and when these things are done, California will be seen in its true light. Then the eyes of the people will be opened. The golden haze which has hung over this land of romantic hopes and deadly disappointments will then be rolled away, and the clear, naked sunlight of Truth will shine upon this ugly cheat, revealing it in all its naked deformity to the eyes of the abused and misinformed public. Then, and not till then, will the full extent of popular delusion on this topic be known, and this mighty genie collapse into its original caldron.

The truth is, California has been much overrated and much overdone. She has been pressed beyond her limits and capacities. Her managers have been rash, prodigal and incompetent, and they have embarrassed her beyond hope of relief—though, it must be acknowledged, her condition was never very hopeful, but, on the contrary, I may say with the poet, she was only “half made up.â€� It is plain to be seen that she was never finished. She has never paid for herself. An overwhelming public debt now rests upon her shoulders, and she has nothing to show for it. She is bankrupt. Her resources are being rapidly exhausted, and there is but lank promise in the future. Her spacious harbors and geographical position are her true wealth; her gold fields and arid hills are her poverty. But commodious and safe as are her harbors when once entered, they are not the easiest nor safest of access in the world, as I shall hereafter prove by statistics of vessels wrecked upon this coast within the last six years. And, before I finish, I shall offer other statistical information of interest and importance relative to the State at large, in substantiation as well of what I have already said as of that which I have yet to say. I may remark here that, my curiosity having led me to collect and prepare these statistics with no little care and attention, and at no trifling sacrifice of time and means, they may be relied upon as correct.

A residence of nearly three years, during which time I have traveled over a wide extent of those parts of the State which are most highly esteemed for agriculture and minerals, has, I claim, enabled me to arrive at a pretty accurate estimate of her character and capacities; and I have no hesitation in avowing it as my candid opinion (and I have not been a very inattentive observer) that, balancing resource against defect, and comparing territory with territory, California is the poorest State in the Union. She has little to recommend her except her fascinating metal, the acquisition of which, however, in its first or natural state, seems always to require a greater sacrifice of moral and physical wealth than a single exchange of it afterwards can possibly restore. I know it has been published to the world that this country possesses extraordinary agricultural abilities; but this is an assertion wholly gratuitous, and not susceptible of demonstration. Taken altogether, it is no such thing. Some of her valleys are, indeed, exceedingly fertile; but, when we compare their superficies with the area of the State, we find they are but as oases in a desert. I seriously believe that a fair and thorough trial will show that she has more than three times as much sterile land, in proportion to her territory, than any of her sister States. On an average, a square rood of Carolina earth contains as much fertilizing nutriment as an acre of California soil. Comparatively speaking, she has neither season nor soil.

No rain falls between the first of April and the middle of November, in consequence of which the earth becomes so dry and hard that nothing will grow; and the small amount of grass, weeds, or other vegetation that may have shot up in the spring, is parched by the scorching sun until it is rendered as easy of ignition as prepared fuel. The valleys above mentioned are the only spots exempt from this curse. On the other hand, from the first of December to the last of March it rains, as a general thing, so copiously and incessantly, that all out-door avocations must be suspended; and as there is no mechanical or in-door labor, either of use or profit, to be performed, the people are subjected to the disagreeable and expensive task of idling away their time in hotels and restaurants, at the rate of from two to three dollars per day for board alone, other expenses being in the same ratio. More of the disadvantages of this unfortunate inconsistency of the seasons, and of the paucity of resources of employment here, will be noticed as we proceed. As for the valleys we have spoken of, they will afford a sufficient supply of breadstuffs to support sparse settlements, but the average or general surface of the country is incapable of sustaining a dense population.

If we inquire after the manufacturing and mechanical resources of the State, we will find that she has none whatever; in this respect she is as destitute as the aboriginal settlements of America. Nor can she establish, encourage or maintain these arts, for the reason that she would be under the necessity of importing, not only the machinery and raw materials, but also the fuel. She could not, therefore, compete with neighboring States, which have at least some of these indispensable requisites. Nor has she any advantages or facilities for either water or steam power. How, then, can she obtain a reputation for manufactures and mechanism, having neither the material to work, nor the force or means to work with? She has neither cotton nor flax, coal nor timber. She is rich in nothing, and poor in every thing. She has to import every thing she uses, but has nothing to export, except her gold, which, instead of being a blessing to her, is a curse. Even the ground she cultivates she has to inclose with imported fencing wire, not having timber suitable for railing or paling purposes. That which is esteemed her chief treasure, dependence and commodity, gold, seems to be the least subservient to her advancement and prosperity; for, comparatively speaking, she sends it all away, and retains none for home use or convenience; and thus it is that she has, in a measure, been a benefit to others, while she has blindly and foolishly impoverished herself. In this she has acted upon the principle of the cobbler, whose shoes are ever tattered, and of the blacksmith, whose horses always go unshod.