L'or by Blaise Cendrars

Author:Blaise Cendrars [Cendrars, Blaise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, Fiction, General, Literary, Historical, California, Biographical Fiction, Gold mines and mining, Sutter; John Augustus, Pioneers
ISBN: 9780720611755
Publisher: P. Owen
Published: 2011-09-09T00:39:02+00:00

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NINTH CHAPTER

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32

On the 17th of June, 1848, General Mason, the new American Governor, leaves Monterey to go and see for himself how much truth there is in the fantastic rumours that are circulating about the gold-mines discovered in the Sacramento basin. On the 20th, he is in San Francisco. The town, recently so crowded, is now completely empty and deserted; the entire male population has gone up to the diggings.

'On the 3rd of July,' says his report, 'we arrive at Fort Sutter. The mills are standing silent. Immense herds of beef cattle and horses have trampled down their enclosures and are grazing peacefully in fields of wheat and maize. The farmhouses are falling into ruins, a nauseating odour wafts from them. The fort itself is very busy. Ferries and barges embark and disembark mountains of merchandise of every kind. There are camps of covered wagons all around the outer perimeter. Whole convoys arrive and depart again. People are paying a hundred dollars a month rent for a tiny room, and five hundred dollars a month for a wretched, single-storey hovel. The blacksmith and the shoeing-smith, who are still in Sutter's service, earn up to fifty dollars a day. Over an area of more than five miles, the slopes of the hills are covered with a multitude of tents that dazzle the eye in the glaring sunlight. The whole district is swarming with people. Everyone is panning gold, some with the aid of little saucepans or tightly-woven Indian baskets, others with the aid of the famous "cradles".'

The Polynesian, a newspaper issued in Honolulu, publishes a letter from which we quote the following extract:

'From San Francisco, our road led us through the valley of the Puebla as far as San José, a distance of some fifty miles. Never had I seen a more seductive country. The ground was dotted with flowers, a myriad of watercourses criss-crossed the prairies, the hills were covered with flocks of sheep. I had never seen such beautiful scenery. Then we passed the dilapidated buildings of the Santa Clara Mission, whose tiled roofs had caved in. We reached the banks of the San Joaquin, which we crossed by a ford; then we went up towards Fort Sutter, through country of astonishing fertility, which could support a huge population. But we did not encounter a single human being. All the farms were abandoned: the Americans, the Californians, the Indians, everybody was at the mining sector. After leaving Fort Sutter, we followed the steep banks of the American River and soon climbed the first foothills which rise up in terraces to the Sierra Nevada. At midday, we halted for lunch and a cup of coffee. While we were waiting for the water to boil, one of our company dipped his tin mug into a small creek that was running at our feet; it came up full to the brim with sand; he washed it and found four grains of gold at the bottom. By sunset, we had reached Captain Sutter's sawmill, where the first gold was discovered.

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