Read Online L'or by Blaise Cendrars - Free Book Online
Authors: Blaise Cendrars
Tags: Biographical fiction, Fiction, Literary, Historical fiction, General, Historical, California, Gold mines and mining, Sutter; John Augustus, Pioneers
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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. We had just travelled twenty-five miles, through gold, silver, platinum and iron mines. The road was suitable for vehicles, even a town carriage could have negotiated it easily, and it ran through fairy-tale landscape, decked in flowers and traversed by thousands of little streams. I found a thousand white men there, busy panning gold. The average yield is about one ounce per man per day, and each prospector makes about sixteen dollars. The deeper one digs, the higher the yield. At the moment, the record for the luckiest strike is held by a man who made himself two hundred dollars in a single day. The nuggets come in all sizes: the largest that has been extracted weighed sixteen ounces. All the mountains in this area contain gold and platinum. At a distance of five miles from this sawmill, they have just discovered the richest seam of silver ever known. These treasures are inexhaustible. . . .'
33
At news of these prodigious lodes, the Yankee spirit of enterprise came to the boil. In New York and Boston, ten thousand emigrants gathered, bound for California. In New York City alone, sixty-five societies were founded to exploit this new business. Sons of the wealthiest families invested in it and the capital amassed was counted in millions. In the space of a fortnight, one small hotel on Broadway saw five hundred men file through its rooms, and every one of them was on his way to the Far West. By October, twenty-one vessels had already left the great port of the East destined for the Pacific coast; forty-eight others were preparing to set sail; on the 11th December, the hundredth sailed out of the Hudson. 'The whole of
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. We had just travelled twenty-five miles, through gold, silver, platinum and iron mines. The road was suitable for vehicles, even a town carriage could have negotiated it easily, and it ran through fairy-tale landscape, decked in flowers and traversed by thousands of little streams. I found a thousand white men there, busy panning gold. The average yield is about one ounce per man per day, and each prospector makes about sixteen dollars. The deeper one digs, the higher the yield. At the moment, the record for the luckiest strike is held by a man who made himself two hundred dollars in a single day. The nuggets come in all sizes: the largest that has been extracted weighed sixteen ounces. All the mountains in this area contain gold and platinum. At a distance of five miles from this sawmill, they have just discovered the richest seam of silver ever known. These treasures are inexhaustible. . . .'
33
At news of these prodigious lodes, the Yankee spirit of enterprise came to the boil. In New York and Boston, ten thousand emigrants gathered, bound for California. In New York City alone, sixty-five societies were founded to exploit this new business. Sons of the wealthiest families invested in it and the capital amassed was counted in millions. In the space of a fortnight, one small hotel on Broadway saw five hundred men file through its rooms, and every one of them was on his way to the Far West. By October, twenty-one vessels had already left the great port of the East destined for the Pacific coast; forty-eight others were preparing to set sail; on the 11th December, the hundredth sailed out of the Hudson. 'The whole of
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