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.