EL DORADO.
The city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold figures largely in
the story of Spanish discovery in America. The hardy soldiers who
crossed the Atlantic in caravels and cockboats, and toiled in leathern
doublets and plate armor through the jungle swamp of Panama, were lured
on through years of plague and famine by the dream of a country whose
rivers flowed with gold. Diego de Mendoza found the land in 1532, but it
was not till January, 1848, that James Marshall washed the golden sands
of El Dorado.
The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly paradise in
America. Not to speak of New Atlantis, the Canadian Indians have never
ceased to hand down to their sons a legend of western abodes of bliss,
to which their souls journey after death, through frightful glens and
forests. In their mystic chants they describe minutely the obstacles
over which the souls must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring.
These stories are no mere dreams, but records of the great Indian
migration from the West: the liquid-eyed Hurons, not sprung from the
Canadian snows, may be Californian if they are not Malay, the Pacific
shores their happy hunting-ground, the climate of Los Angeles their
never-ending spring.
The names The Golden State and El Dorado are doubly applicable to
California; her light and landscape, as well as her soil, are golden.
Here, on the Pacific side, nature wears a robe of deep rich yellow:
even the distant hills, no longer purple, are wrapt in golden haze. No
more cliffs and canyons--all is rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra,
which faces eastward, with four thousand feet of wall-like rock, on the
west descends gently in vine-clad slopes into the Californian vales, and
trends away in spurs toward the sea. The scenery of the Nevada side was
weird, but these western foot-hills are unlike anything in the world.
Drake, who never left the Pacific shores, named the country New Albion,
from the whiteness of a headland on the coast; but the first viceroys
were less ridiculously misled by patriotic vanity when they christened
it New Spain.
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE AMERICAN RIVER--THE PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS
FIRST FOUND.--P. 180.]
In the warm dry sunlight, we rolled down hills of rich red loam, and
through forests of noble redwood--the _Sequoia sempervirens_, brother to
the _Sequoia gigantea_, or Wellingtonia of our lawns. Dashing at full
gallop through the American River, just below its falls, where, in 1848,
the Mormons first dug that Californian gold which in the interests of
their church they had better have let alone, we came upon great gangs of
Indians working by proxy upon the Continental railroad. The Indian‘s
plan for living happily is a simple one: he sits and smokes in silence
while his women work, and he thus lives upon the earnings of the squaws.
Unlike a Mormon patriarch, he contrives that polygamy shall pay, and
says with the New Zealand Maori: “A man with one wife may starve, but a
man with many wives grows fat.” These fellows were Shoshonés from the
other side of the plateau; for the Pacific Indians, who are black, not
red, will not even force their wives to work, which, in the opinion of
the Western men, is the ultimate form of degradation in a race. Higher
up the hills, Chinamen alone are employed; but their labor is too
costly to be thrown away upon the easier work.
In El Dorado City we stayed not long enough for the exploration of the
once famous surface gold mines, now forming one long vineyard, but,
rolling on, were soon among the tents of Placerville, which had been
swept with fire a few months before. All these valley diggings have been
deserted for deep-sinking--not that they are exhausted yet, but that the
yield has ceased to be sufficient to tempt the gambling digger. The men
who lived in Placerville and made it infamous throughout the world some
years ago are scattered now through Nevada, Arizona, Montana, and the
Frazer country, and Chinamen and Digger Indians have the old workings to
themselves, settling their rights as against each other by daily battle
and perpetual feud. The Digger Indians are the most degraded of all the
aborigines of North America--outcasts from the other tribes--men under a
ban--“tapu,” as their Maori cousins say--weaponless, naked savages who
live on roots, and pester the industrious Chinese.
It is not with all their foes that the yellow men can cope so easily. In
a tiny Chinese theater in their camp near Placerville, I saw a farce
which to the remainder of the audience was no doubt a very solemn drama,
in which the adventures of two Celestials on the diggings were given to
the world. The only scene in which the pantomime was sufficiently clear
for me to read it without the possibility of error was one in which a
white man--“Melican man”--came to ask for taxes. The Chinamen had paid
their taxes once before, but the fellow said that didn‘t matter. The
yellow men consulted together, and at last agreed that the stranger was
a humbug, so the play ended with a big fight, in which they drove him
off their ground. A Chinaman played the over ’cute Yankee, and did it
well.
Perhaps the tax-collectors in the remoter districts of the States count
on the Chinese to make up the deficiencies in their accounts caused by
the non-payment of their taxes by the whites; for even in these days of
comparative quiet and civilization, taxes are not gathered to their full
amount in any of the Territories, and the justice of the collector is in
Montana tempered by many a threat of instant lynching if he proceeds
with his assessment. Even in Utah, the returns are far from
satisfactory: the three great merchants of Salt Lake City should, if
their incomes are correctly stated, contribute a heavier sum than that
returned for the whole of the population of the Territory.
The white diggers who preceded the Chinese have left their traces in the
names of lodes and places. There is no town in California with such a
title as the Coloradan City of Buckskin Joe, but Yankee Jim comes near
it. Placerville itself was formerly known as Hangtown, on account of its
being the city in which “lynch-law was inaugurated.” Dead Shot Flat is
not far from here, and within easy distance are Hell‘s Delight, Jackass
Gulch, and Loafer‘s Hill. The once famous Plug-ugly Gulch has now
another name; but of Chucklehead Diggings and Puppytown I could not find
the whereabouts in my walks and rides. Graveyard Canyon, Gospel Gulch,
and Paint-pot Hill are other Californian names. It is to be hoped that
the English and Spanish names will live unmutilated in California and
Nevada, to hand down in liquid syllables the history of a half-forgotten
conquest, an already perished race. San Francisco has become “Frisco” in
speech if not on paper, and Sacramento will hardly bear the wear and
tear of Californian life; but the use of the Spanish tongue has spread
among the Americans who have dealings with the Mexican country folk of
California State, and, except in mining districts, the local names will
stand.
It is not places only that have strange designations in America. Out of
the Puritan fashion of naming children from the Old Testament patriarchs
has grown, by a sort of recoil, the custom of following the heroes of
the classics, and when they fail, inventing strange titles for children.
Mahonri Cahoon lives in Salt Lake City; Attila Harding was secretary to
one of the governors of Utah; Michigan University has for president
Erastus Haven; for superintendent, Oramel Hosford; for professors, Abram
Sanger, Silas Douglas, Moses Gunn, Zina Pitcher, Alonzo Pitman, De
Volson Wood, Lucius Chapin, and Corydon Ford. Luman Stevens, Bolivar
Barnum, Wyllys Ransom, Ozora Stearnes, and Buel Derby were Michigan
officers during the war, and Epaphroditus Ransom was formerly governor
of the State. Theron Rockwell, Gershon Weston, and Bela Kellogg are
well-known politicians in Massachusetts, and Colonel Liberty Billings is
equally prominent in Florida. In New England school-lists it is hard to
pick boys from girls. Who shall tell the sex of Lois Lombard, Asahel
Morton, Ginery French, Royal Miller, Thankful Poyne? A Chicago man, who
was lynched in Central Illinois while I was in the neighborhood, was
named Alonza Tibbets. Eliphalet Arnould and Velenus Sherman are ranchmen
on the overland road; Sereno Burt is an editor in Montana; Persis
Boynton a merchant in Chicago. Zelotes Terry, Datus Darner, Zeryiah
Rainforth, Barzellai Stanton, Sardis Clark, Ozias Williams, Xenas
Phelps, Converse Hopkins, and Hirodshai Blake are names with which I
have met. Zilpah, Huldah, Nabby, Basetha, Minnesota, and Semantha are
New England ladies; while one gentleman of Springfield, lately married,
caught a Tartia. One of the earliest enemies of the Mormons was Palatiah
Allen; one of their first converts Preserved Harris. Taking the pedigree
of Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, as that of a representative New
England family, we shall find that his aunts were Lovisa and Lovina
Mack, Dolly Smith, Eunice and Miranda Pearce; his uncles, Royal, Ira,
and Bushrod Smith. His grandfather‘s name was Asael; of his great aunts
one was Hephzibah, another Hypsebeth, and another Vasta. The prophet‘s
eldest brother‘s name was Alvin; his youngest Don Carlos; his sister,
Sophronia; and his sister-in-law, Jerusha Smith; while a nephew was
christened Chilon. One of the nieces was Levira, and another Rizpah. The
first wife of George A. Smith, the prophet‘s cousin, is Bathsheba, and
his eldest daughter also bears this name.
In the smaller towns near Placerville, there is still a wide field for
the discovery of character as well as gold; but eccentricity among the
diggers here seems chiefly to waste itself on food. The luxury of this
Pacific country is amazing. The restaurants and cafés of each petty
digging-town put forth bills-of-fare which the “Trios Frères” could not
equal for ingenuity; wine lists such as Delmonico‘s cannot beat. The
facilities are great: except in the far interior or on the hills, one
even spring reigns unchangeably--summer in all except the heat; every
fruit and vegetable of the world is perpetually in season. Fruit is not
named in the hotel bills-of-fare, but all the day long there are piled
in strange confusion on the tables, Mission grapes, the Californian
Bartlet pears, Empire apples from Oregon, melons--English, Spanish,
American and Musk; peaches, nectarines, and fresh almonds. All comers
may help themselves, and wash down the fruit with excellent
Californian-made Sauterne. If dancing, gambling, drinking, and still
shorter cuts to the devil have their votaries among the diggers, there
is no employment upon which they so freely spend their cash as on dishes
cunningly prepared by cooks--Chinese, Italian, Bordelais--who follow
every “rush.” After the doctor and the coroner, no one makes money at
the diggings like the cook. The dishes smell of the Californian soil;
baked rock-cod à la Buena Vista, broiled Californian quail with Russian
River bacon, Sacramento snipes on toast, Oregon ham with champagne
sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things--these were the dishes on the
Placerville bill-of-fare in an hotel which had escaped the fire, but
whose only guests were diggers and their friends. A few Atlantic States
dishes were down upon the list: hominy, cod chowder--hardly equal, I
fear, to that of Salem--sassafras candy, and squash tart, but never a
mention of pork and molasses, dear to the Massachusetts boy. All these
good things the diggers, when “dirt is plenty,” moisten with Clicquot,
or Heidsick cabinet; when returns are small, with their excellent Sonoma
wine.
Even earthquakes fail to interrupt the triumphs of the cooks. The last
“bad shake” was fourteen days ago, but it is forgotten in the joy called
forth by the discovery of a thirteenth way to cook fresh oysters, which
are brought here from the coast by train. There is still a something in
Placerville that smacks of the time when tin-tacks were selling for
their weight in gold.
Wandering through the only remaining street of Placerville before I left
for the Southern country, I saw that grapes were marked “three cents a
pound;” but as the lowest coin known on the Pacific shores is the
ten-cent bit, the price exists but upon paper. Three pounds of grapes,
however, for “a bit” is a practicable purchase, in which I indulged when
starting on my journey South: in the towns you have always the hotel
supply. If the value of the smallest coin be a test of the prosperity of
a country, California must stand high. Not only is nothing less than the
bit, or fivepence, known, but when fivepence is deducted from a
“quarter,” or shilling, fivepence is all you get or give for change--a
gain or loss upon which Californian shopkeepers look with profound
indifference.
Hearing a greater jingling of glasses from one bar-room than from all
the other hundred whisky-shops of Placerville, I turned into it to seek
the cause, and found a Vermonter lecturing on Lincoln and the war to an
audience of some fifty diggers. The lecturer and bar-keeper stood
together within the sacred inclosure, the one mixing his drinks, while
the other rounded off his periods in the inflated Western style. The
audience was critical and cold till near the close of the oration, when
the “corpse revivers” they were drinking seemed to take effect, and to
be at the bottom of the stentorian shout, “Thet‘s bully,” with which the
peroration was rewarded. The Vermonter told me that he had come round
from Panama, and was on his way to Austin, as Placerville was “played
out” since its “claims” had “fizzled.”
They have no lecture-room here at present, as it seems; but that there
are churches, however small, appears from a paragraph in the Placerville
news-sheet of to-day, which chronicles the removal of a Methodist
meeting-house from Block A to Block C, _vice_ a Catholic chapel retired,
“having obtained a superior location.”
A few days were all that I could spend in the valleys that lie between
the Sierra and the Contra Costa Range, basking in a rich sunlight, and
unsurpassed in the world for climate, scenery, and soil. This single
State--one of forty-five--has twice the area of Great Britain, the most
fertile of known soils, and the sun and sea-breeze of Greece. Western
rhapsodies are the expression of the intoxication produced by such a
spectacle; but they are outdone by facts.
For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the palm between the
cracks and canyons of the Sierra and the softer vales of the Coast
Range, where the hot sun is tempered by the cool Pacific breeze, and
thunder and lightning are unknown. To one coming from the wilds of the
Carson Desert and of Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the
lower dells has for the eye the relief that travelers from the coast
must seek in the loftier heights and precipices of the Yosémite. The
oak-filled valleys of the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive repose
of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines and the Adriatic
from Rimini to Ancona; but California has the advantage in her skies.
Italy has the blue, but not the golden haze.
Nothing can be more singular than the variety of beauty that lies hid in
these Pacific slopes; all that is best in Canada and the Eastern States
finds more than its equal here. The terrible grandeur of Cape Trinité on
the Saguenay, and the panorama of loveliness from the terrace at Quebec,
are alike outdone.
Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery; but neither
need they go to California, or even Colorado. Those who tell us that
there is no such thing as natural beauty west of the Atlantic can
scarcely know the Eastern, while they ignore the Western and Central
States. The world can show few scenes more winning than Israel‘s River
Valley in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North Conway in the
southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can be more full of grandeur
than the passage of the James at Balcony Falls, where the river rushes
through a crack in the Appalachian chain; the wilderness of Northern New
York is unequaled of its kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the
Adirondacks. As for river scenery, the Hudson is grander than the Rhine;
the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse; the Schuylkill prettier than
the Seine; the Mohawk more enchanting than the Dart. Of the rivers of
North Europe, the Neckar alone is not beaten in the States.
Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but pretend that it is
wholly wanting in the interest that historic memories bestow. So-called
republicans affect to find a charm in Bishop Hatto‘s Tower which is
wanting in Irving‘s “Sunnyside;” the ten thousand virgins of Cologne
live in their fancy, while Constitution Island and Fort Washington are
forgotten names. Americans or Britishers, we Saxons are all alike--a
wandering, discontented race; we go 4000 miles to find us Sleepy Hollow,
or Kilian Van Rensselaer‘s Castle, or Hiawatha‘s great red pipe-stone
quarry; and the Americans, who live in the castle, picnic yearly in the
Hollow, and flood the quarry for a skating-rink, come here to England to
visit Burns‘s house, or to sit in Pope‘s arm-chair.
Down South I saw clearly the truth of a thought that struck me before I
had been ten minutes west of the Sierra Pass. California is Saxon only
in the looks and language of the people of its towns. In Pennsylvania,
you may sometimes fancy yourself in Sussex; while in New England, you
seem only to be in some part of Europe that you have never happened to
light upon before; in California, you are at last in a new world. The
hills are weirdly peaked or flattened, the skies are new, the birds and
plants are new; the atmosphere, crisp though warm, is unlike any in the
world but that of South Australia. It will be strange if the Pacific
coast does not produce a new school of Saxon poets--painters it has
already given to the world.
Returning to Placerville, after an eventless exploration of the
exquisite scenery to the south, I took the railway once again, for the
first time since I had left Manhattan City--1800 miles away--and was
soon in Sacramento, the State capital, now recovering slowly from the
flood of 1862. Near the city I made out Oak Grove--famed for duels
between well-known Californians. Here it was that General Denver, State
Senator, shot Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Congress, in a duel
fought with rifles. Here, too, it was that Mr. Thomas, district attorney
for Placer County, killed Dr. Dickson, of the Marine Hospital, in a duel
with pistols in 1854. Records of duels form a serious part of the State
history. At Lone Mountain Cemetery near San Francisco, there is a great
marble monument to the Hon. David Broderick, shot by Chief Justice
Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859.
A few hours’ quiet steaming in the sunlight down the Sacramento River,
past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the gap in the Contra Costa Range,
at which the grand volcanic peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel
watching over the Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and
west a vast mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in
unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the fortified
island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the opposite shores of
San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. At last I was across the continent,
and face to face with the Pacific.