I can see the excitement which this title arouses as it is flashed
across the sierras, down the valleys, and into the various reading-rooms
and parlors of the Golden City of the Golden State. As the San Francisco
"Bulletin" announces some day, that in the "Atlantic Monthly," issued in
Boston the day before, one of the articles is on "The Queen of
California," what contest, in every favored circle of the most favored
of lands, who the Queen may be! Is it the blond maiden who took a string
of hearts with her in a leash, when she left us one sad morning? is it
the hardy, brown adventuress, who, in her bark-roofed lodge, serves us
out our boiled dog daily, as we come home from our water-gullies, and
sews on for us weekly the few buttons which we still find indispensable
in that toil? is it some Jessie of the lion-heart, heroine of a hundred
days or of a thousand? is it that witch with gray eyes, cunningly
hidden,--were they puzzled last night, or were they all wisdom
crowded?--as she welcomed me, and as she bade me good-bye? Good Heavens!
how many Queens of California are regnant this day! and of any one of
them this article might be written.
No, _Señores!_ No, _Caballeros!_ Throng down to the wharves to see the
Golden Era or the Cornelius's Coffin, or whatever other mail-steamer may
bring these words to your longing eyes. Open to the right and left as
Adams's express-messenger carries the earliest copy of the "Atlantic
Monthly," sealed with the reddest wax, tied with the reddest tape, from
the Corner Store direct to him who was once the life and light of the
Corner Store, who now studies eschscholtzias through a telescope
thirty-eight miles away on Monte Diablo! Rush upon the newsboy who then
brings forth the bale of this Journal for the Multitude, to find that
the Queen of California of whom we write is no modern queen, but that
she reigned some five hundred and fifty-five years ago. Her precise
contemporaries were Amadis of Gaul, the Emperor Esplandian, and the
Sultan Radiaro. And she _flourished_, as the books say, at the time when
this Sultan made his unsuccessful attack on the city of
Constantinople,--all of which she saw, part of which she was.
She was not _petite_, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large and
black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist
even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you
shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was
she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque,--your
first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of
the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed
_cap-à-pie_, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you
shall now see.
Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a
paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature
before it was given to our peninsula by Cortés. Cortés discovered the
peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it California then. But Mr.
Hale shows that twenty-five years before that time, in a romance called
the "Deeds of Esplandian," the name of California was given to an island
"on the right hand of the Indies." This romance was a sequel, or fifth
book, to the celebrated romance of "Amadis of Gaul." Such books made the
principal reading of the young blades of that day who could read at all.
It seems clear enough, that Cortés and his friends, coming to the point
farthest to the west then known,--which all of them, from Columbus down,
supposed to be in the East Indies,--gave to their discovery the name,
familiar to romantic adventurers, of _California_, to indicate their
belief that it was on the "right hand of the Indies." Just so Columbus
called his discoveries "the Indies,"--just so was the name "El Dorado"
given to regions which it was hoped would prove to be golden. The
romance had said, that in the whole of the romance-island of California
there was no metal but gold. Cortés, who did not find a pennyweight of
dust in the real California, still had no objection to giving so golden
a name to his discovery.
Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes antiquarians, does not go into
any of the details of the life and adventures of the Queen of California
as the romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to supply from
it this reticency of his essay.
The reader must understand, then, that, in this romance, printed in
1510, sixty years or less after Constantinople really fell into the
hands of the Turks, the author describes a pretended assault made upon
it by the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of Amadis and
Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes of chivalry with whom the novel
of "Amadis of Gaul" has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans,
"as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of
which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes
which describe California and its Queen.