A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Little Lady of Lagunitas

R >> Richard Henry Savage >> The Little Lady of Lagunitas




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.

Great leaders of the sovereign people struggle at Washington in
keen debate, inspired by the hostile sections of the Union. They
quarrel over the slavery interests in the great West. Keen Tom
Corwin, loyal Dix, astute Giddings, Douglass the little giant, and
David Wilmot fight freedom's battle with the great apostle of State
rights, Calhoun. He is supported by President Polk, the facile
Secretary of State Buchanan, and that dark Mississippi man of destiny,
Jefferson Davis. The fiery Foote and all the ardent knights of the
day champion the sunny South. Godlike Daniel Webster pours forth
for freedom some of his greatest utterances. William H. Seward,
prophet, seer, statesman, and patriot, with noble inspirations
cheers on freedom's army. Who shall own bright California, the
bond or the free? While these great knights of our country's round
table fight in the tourney of the Senate over this golden prize,
Benton sends back the "pathfinder" Fremont. He is now freed from
the army by an indignant resignation. He bears a letter to Benton's
friends in the West to organize the civil community and prepare a
constitution.

While Valois watches for news, the buds and blossoms of early
spring call him back to the American River. The bay whitens with
the sails of arriving thousands. Political combinations begin
everywhere. Two years have made Fremont, Kearney, Colonel Mason,
General P. F. Smith, and General Bennett Riley temporary military
governors. Maxime leaves with ample stores; he rejoins the "Missouri
Company," already reaping the golden harvest of the golden spring.

Sage counsel reaches him from Padre Francisco. He hears with delight
of the youth's success in the mines. The French missionary, with
a natural love of the soil, advises Valois to buy lands as soon as
good titles can be had.

The Mexican War ends in glory to the once despised Gringos. Already
the broad grants of the Dons are coveted by the officials of the
military regency. Several of the officers have already served
themselves better than their country. The entanglements of a new
rule amount to practical confiscation of the lands of the old
chieftains. What they saved from the conqueror is destined later
to fatten greedy lawyers.

The spoliated Church is avenged upon the heirs of those who worked
its temporal ruin. For here, while mad thousands delve for the
gold of their desire, the tramping feet of uncontrolled hosts are
heard at the gates of the Sierras. When the fleets give out their
hordes of male and female adventurers, there is no law but that of
force or duplicity; no principle but self-interest. Virtue, worth,
and desert meekly bow to strength. Wealth in its rudest form of
sacks of uncoined gold dust rules the hour.

The spring days lengthen into summer. Maxime Valois recoils from
the physical toil of the rocky bars of the American. His nature
is aristocratic; his youthful prejudices are averse to hand work.
Menial attendance, though only upon himself, is degrading to him.
The rough life of the mines becomes unbearable. A Southerner, par
excellence, in his hatred of the physical familiarity of others,
he avails himself of his good fortune to find a purchaser for his
interests. The stream of new arrivals is a river now, for the old
emigrant road of Platte and Humboldt is delivering an unending
human current. Past the eastern frontier towns of Missouri, the
serpentine trains drag steadily west; their camp fires glitter
from "St. Joe" to Fort Bridger; they shine on the summit lakes of
the Sierras, where Donner's party, beset in deepest snows, died
in starvation. They were a type of the human sacrifices of the
overland passage. Skeletons dot the plains now.

By flood and desert, under the stroke of disease, by the Indian
tomahawk and arrow, with every varied accident and mishap, grim
Death has taken his ample toll along three thousand miles. Sioux
and Cheyenne, Ute and Blackfoot, wily Mormon, and every lurking
foe have preyed as human beasts on the caravans. These human fiends
emulate the prairie wolf and the terrific grizzly in thirst for
blood.

The gray sands of the burning Colorado desert are whitening with
the bones of many who escaped Comanche and Apache scalping knives,
only to die of fatigue.

By every avenue the crowd pours in. Valois has extended his
acquaintance with the leading miners. He is aware of the political
organization about to be effected. He has now about forty thousand
dollars as his share of gold dust. An offer of thirty thousand
more for his claim decides him to go to San Francisco. He is fairly
rich. With that fund he can, as soon as titles settle, buy a broad
rancho. His active mind suggests the future values of the building
lots in the growing city.

He completes the rude formalities of his sale, which consist of
signing a bill of sale of his mining claim, and receiving the price
roughly weighed out in gold. He hears that a convention is soon to
organize the State. On September i, 1849, at Monterey, the civil
fabric of government will be planned out.

Before he leaves he is made a delegate. Early July, with its
tropical heat, is at hand. The camp on the American is agitated
by the necessity of some better form of government. Among others,
Philip Hardin of Mississippi, a lawyer once, a rich miner now, is
named as delegate.

At Sacramento a steamer is loaded to the gunwales with departing
voyagers. Maxime meets some of his fellow delegates already named.
Among them is Hardin of Mississippi. Philip Hardin is a cool,
resolute, hard-faced man of forty. A lawyer of ability, he has
forged into prominence by sheer superiority. The young Creole is
glad to meet some one who knows his beloved New Orleans. As they
glide past the willow-shaded river banks, the two Southerners become
confidential over their cigars.

Valois learns, with surprise, that President Polk sent the polished
Slidell confidentially to Mexico in 1846, and offered several
millions for a cession of California. He also wanted a quit-claim
to Texas. This juggling occurred before General Taylor opened the
campaign on the Rio Grande. In confidential relations with Sidell,
Hardin pushed over to California as soon as the result of the war
was evident. Ambitious and far-seeing, Philip Hardin unfolds the
cherished plan of extending slavery to the West. It must rule below
the line of the thirty-sixth parallel. Hardin is an Aaron Burr in
persuasiveness. By the time the new friends reach San Francisco,
Maxime has found his political mentor. Ambition spurs him on.

Wonders burst upon their eyes. Streets, business houses and hotels,
dwellings and gaudy places of resort, are spread over the rolling
slopes. Valois has written his friends at the mission to hold his
letters. He hastens away to deposit his treasures and gain news of
the old home in the magnolia land.

Hardin has the promise of the young Louisianian to accompany him to
Monterey. A preliminary conference of the southern element in the
convention is arranged. They must give the embryo State a pro-slavery
constitution. He busies himself with gaining a thorough knowledge
of the already forming cabals. Power is to be parcelled out, places
are to be filled. The haughty Mississippian cares more for this
excitement than digging for mere inert treasure. His quick eye catches
California's splendid golden star in the national constellation.

Valois finds he must wait the expected letters. He decides to take
no steps as to investment until the civil power is stable.

With a good mustang he rides the peninsula thoroughly. He visits
the old Presidio on the outskirts of the growing city. He rides
far over the pass of Lake Merced, to where the broken gap in the
coast hills leaves a natural causeway for the railway of the future.

Philip Hardin, fisher of men, is keeping open house near the plaza.
Already his rooms are the headquarters of the fiery chivalry of
the South. Day by day Valois admires the self-assertion of the
imperious lawyer. The Mississippian has already plotted out the
situation. He is concert with leaders like himself, who are looking
up and drawing in their forces for the struggle at the convention.

Valois becomes familiar with the heads of the Northern opposition.
Able and sturdy chiefs are already marshalling the men who come from
the lands of the northern pine to meet in the peaceful political
arena the champions of the palmetto land. Maxime's enthusiasm
mounts. The young Southerner feels the pride of his race burning
in his veins.

In his evening hours, under the oaks of the Mission Dolores, he
bears to the calm priests his budget of port and town. He tells of
the new marvellous mines, of the influx of gold hunters. He cannot
withhold his astonishment that the priesthood should not have
discovered the gold deposits. The astute clergy inform him calmly
that for years their inner circles have known of considerable gold
in the possession of the Indians. It was a hope of the Church that
some fortunate turn of Mexican politics might have restored their
sway. Alas! It was shattered in 1834 by the relentless Hijar.

"Hijo mio!" says an old padre. "We knew since 1838 that gold was
dug at Franscisquita canyon in the south. If we had the old blessed
days of Church rule, we could have quietly controlled this great
treasure field. But this is now the land of rapine and adventure.
First, the old pearl-fishers in the gulf of California; then the
pirates lurking along the coast, watching the Philippine galleons.
When your Americans overran Texas, and commenced to pour over
the plains here, we knew all was lost. Your people have fought a
needless war with Mexico; now they are swarming in here--a godless
race, followed by outcasts of the whole of Europe. There is no law
here but the knife and pistol. Your hordes now arriving have but
one god alone--gold."

The saddened old padre sighs as he gathers his breviary and beads,
seeking his lonely cloister. He is a spectre of a day that is done.






CHAPTER VI.

LIGHTING FREEDOM'S WESTERN LAMP.





Bustling crowds confuse Valois when he rides through San Francisco
next day. One year's Yankee dominion shows a progress greater
than the two hundred and forty-six years of Spanish and Mexican
ownership. The period since Viscaino's sails glittered off Point
Reyes has been only stagnation.

Seventy-three years' droning along under mission rule has ended in
vain repetition of spiritual adjurations to the dullard Indians.
To-day hammer and saw, the shouts of command, the din of trade,
the ships of all nations, and the whistle, tell of the new era of
work. The steam engine is here. The age of faith is past. "Laborare
est orare" is the new motto. Adios, siesta! Enter, speculation.

Dreamy-eyed senoritas in amazement watch the growing town. Hundreds
are throwing the drifted sand dunes into the shallow bay to create
level frontage. Swarthy riders growl a curse as they see the lines
of city lot fences stretching toward the Presidio, mission, and
potrero.

Inventive Americans live on hulks and flats, anchored over water lots.
The tide ebbs and flows, yet deep enough to drown the proprietors
on their own tracts, purchased at auction of the alcalde as "water
lots."

Water lots, indeed! Twenty years will see these water lots half a
mile inland.

Masonry palaces will find foundations far out beyond where the
old CYANE now lies. Her grinning ports hold Uncle Sam's hushed
thunder-bolts. It is the downfall of the old REGIME.

Shed, tent, house, barrack, hut, dug-out, ship's cabin--everything
which will cover a head from the salt night fog is in service. The
Mexican adobe house disappears. Pretentious hotels and storehouses
are quickly run up in wood. The mails are taking orders to the
East for completed houses to come "around the Horn." Sheet-iron
buildings are brought from England. A cut stone granite bank arrives
in blocks from far-off China.

Vessels with flour from Chile, goods from Australia, and supplies
from New York and Boston bring machinery and tools. Flour, saw, and
grist mills are provided. Every luxury is already on the way from
Liverpool, Bordeaux, Havre, Hamburg, Genoa, and Glasgow. These
vessels bring swarms of natives of every clime. They hasten to a
land where all are on an equal footing of open adventure, a land
where gold is under every foot.

Without class, aristocracy, history, or social past, California's
"golden days" are of the future.

Strange that in thirty years' residence of the sly Muscovites at
Fort Ross, in the long, idle leisure of the employees of the Hudson
Bay station at Yerba Buena Cove from 1836 to 1846, even with the
astute Swiss Captain Sutter at New Helvetia, all capacities of
the fruitful land have been so strangely ignored.

The slumber of two hundred and fifty years is over. Frenchman,
Russian, Englishman, what opiate's drowsy charms dulled your eager
eyes so long here? Thousands of miles of virgin lands, countless
millions of treasures, royal forests and hills yet to grow under
harvest of olive and vine--all this the mole-like eyes of the olden
days have never seen.

Even the Mormons acted with the supine ignorance of the foreigners.
They scorned to pick this jewel up. Judicious Brigham Young from
the Great Salt Lake finally sends emissaries to spy and report. Like
the wind his swift messengers go east to divert strong battalions
of the Mormon converts from Europe, under trusted leaders, to
San Francisco. Can he extend his self-built empire to the Pacific
Slope? Brigham may be a new Mahomet, a newer Napoleon, for he has
the genius of both.

Alas! when the Mormon bands arrive, Sam Brannard, their leader,
abandons the new creed of "Mormon" for the newer creed of
"Mammon." He becomes a mercantile giant. The disciples scatter as
gold-seekers. California is lost to the Mormons. Even so! Fate,
providence, destiny, or some cold evolution of necessary order, draws
up the blue curtains of the West. It pins them to our country's
flag with a new, glittering star, "California."

With eager interest Valois joins Philip Hardin. There is a social
fever in the air. His friends are all statesmen in this chrysalis
of territorial development. They are old hands at political
intrigue. They would modestly be senators, governors, and rulers.
They would cheerfully serve a grateful State.

A band of sturdy cavaliers, they ride out, down the bay shores.
They cross the Santa Clara and Salinas valleys toward Monterey.

Valois' easy means enable him to be a leader of the movement. It
is to give a constitution and laws to the embryo State.

Hardy men from the West and South are taking up lands. Cool traders
are buying great tracts. Temporary officials have eager eyes fixed
on the Mexican grants. At all the landings and along the new roads,
once trails, little settlements are springing up, for your unlucky
argonaut turns to the nearest avocation; inns, stables, lodging-houses
and trading-tents are waited on by men of every calling and
profession. Each wanderer turns to the easiest way of amassing
wealth. The settlers must devise all their own institutions. The
Mexicans idly wrap their serapes around them, and they avoid all
contact with the hated foreigner. Beyond watching their flocks and
herds, they take no part in the energetic development. Cigarito in
mouth, card playing or watching the sports of the mounted cavaliers
are their occupations. Dismounted in future years, these queer
equestrian natures have never learned to fight the battle of life
on foot. The law of absorption has taken their sad, swarthy visages
out of the social arena.

The cavalcade of Southerners sweeps over the alamedas. They dash
across the Salinas and up to wooded Monterey. There the first
constitutional convention assembles.

Their delighted eyes have rested on the lovely Santa Cruz mountains,
the glorious meadows of Santa Clara, and the great sapphire bay
of Monterey. The rich Pajaro and Salinas valleys lie waiting at
hand. Thinking also of the wondrous wealth of the Sacramento and
San Joaquin, of the tropical glories of Los Angeles, Philip Hardin
cries: "Gentlemen, this splendid land is for us! We must rule this
new State! We must be true to the South!"

To be in weal and woe "true to the South" is close to the heart of
every cavalier in Philip Hardin's train.

The train arrives at Monterey, swelled by others faithful to that
Southern Cross yet to glitter on dark fields of future battle.

The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo closed a bloody Conflict on February
2, 1848. It is the preamble to a long struggle. It is destined in
the West to be bloodless until the fatal guns trained on Fort Sumter
bellow out their challenge to the great Civil War. It is only then
the mighty pine will swing with a crash against the palm.

Hardin knows that recruits, true of blood, are hastening to the
new land of El Dorado. As he leads his dauntless followers into
Monterey his soul is high. He sees the beloved South sweeping in
victory westward as proudly as her legions rolled over the fields
of Monterey and Buena Vista.

The convention assembles. All classes are represented on September
1, 1849. The first legal civil body is convoked west of the Rockies.
Men of thought are here. Men destined to be world-famous in the
unknown future. Settlers, hidalgos, traders, argonauts, government
officials of army and navy, and transient adventurers of no mean
ability. A little press already works with its magical talking
types. A navy chaplain is the Franklin of the West. Some order and
decorum appear. The calm voice of prayer is heard. The mingled amens
of the conquerors thank God for a most unjustifiable acquisition
of the lands of others. They are ours only by the right of the
strong against the weak--the world's oldest title.

The South leads in representative men. Ready to second the secret
desires of Polk, Buchanan, and Calhoun is the astute and courtly
Gwin, yet to be senator, duke of Sonora, and Nestor of his clan.
Moore of Florida, Jones of Louisiana, Botts, Burnett, and others
are in line. On the Northern side are Shannon, an adopted citizen;
wise Halleck; polished McDougall; gifted Edward Gilbert, and other
distinguished men--men worthy of the day and hour.

As independent members, Sutter, General Vallejo, Thomas O. Larkin,
Dr. Semple, Wright, Hastings, Brown, McCarver, Rodman S. Price,
Snyder, and others lend their aid. From the first day the advocates
of slavery and freedom battle in oratorical storm. The forensic
conflict rages for days; first on the matter of freedom, finally
on that of boundary.

Freedom's hosts receive a glorious reinforcement in the arrival of
John C. Fremont.

After bitter struggles the convention casts the die for freedom.
The Constitution of the State is so adopted. While the publicists,
led by Fremont and Gwin, seek to raise the fabric of state, the
traders and adventurers, the hosts of miners springing to life
under the chance touch of James W. Marshall's finger, on January
24, 1848, are delving or trading for gold.

Poor, ill-starred Marshall! He wanders luckless among the golden
fields. He gains no wealth. He toils as yet, unthinking of his days
of old age and lonely poverty. He does not look forward to being
poor at seventy-three years, and dying in 1885 alone. The bronze
monument over his later grave attests no fruition of his hopes. It
only can show the warm-hearted gratitude of children yet unborn,
the Native Sons of the Golden West. Cool old borderers like Peter
Lassen, John Bidwell, P. B. Redding, Jacob P. Leese, Wm. B. Ide,
Captain Richardson, and others are grasping broad lands as fair
as the banks of Yarrow. They permit the ill-assorted delegates to
lay down rules for the present and laws for the future. The State
can take care of itself. Property-holders appear and aid. Hensley,
Henley, Bartlett, and others are cool and able. While the Dons are
solemnly complimented in the convention, their rights are gracefully
ignored.

The military governor, General Bennett Riley, stands back. He justly
does not throw his sword into the scales. Around him are rising men
yet to be heroes on a grander field of action than the mud floors
of a Monterey adobe. William T. Sherman, the only Northern American
strategist, is a lieutenant of artillery. Halleck, destined to be
commander-in-chief of a million men, is only a captain of engineers
and acting Secretary of State. Graceful, unfortunate, accomplished
Charles P. Stone is a staff officer. Ball's Bluff and Fort Lafayette
are far in the misty unknown.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.