Slike strani
PDF
ePub

CHAPTER IX. .

EL DORADO.

Inveteracet hoc quoque; et quod hodie exemplis tuemur, inter exempla

erit.

-Tacitus.

So they called the country El Dorado, The Gilded; some of them so called it not knowing why; the name even fastening itself upon a political division of the

state.

Some of them knew that since the coming of the Spaniards, when Vasco Nuñez hunted for the golden temple of Dabaiba, and Juan Ponce de Leon searched for a fountain of perpetual youth, and Cortés freighted treasure ships from Mexico, and Pizarro from Peru, down to the silvery days of stock gambling, and the cold dull tyranny of railroad management, there has ever been in the minds of the greedy, somewhere a region ruled by El Dorado, or rather a place called El Dorado, or The Gilded. It was not necessary the gilt should be gold, or even that there should be gilding at all; indeed, the thing was rather of the Jack-a lantern order, or like the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, when ready to put your hand upon it, it was not there.

The true, or original El Dorado-that is, true so far as any aborginal or other mythology can be woven into sober story-was in South America, where, as some say, the micaceous quartz in the Essequibo valley, in Guiana, gilded the land. Or it may have been because the high priest of Bogotá sprinkled his person

CAL. INT. Poc. 15

(225)

with gold dust, thus originating the idea of a gilded humanity, that people came to think of the country as gilded.

The high priest, El Dorado, the lord of this magnificence for chief and country generally bore the same name was every day annointed with perfumed gum and bathed in gold-dust, so that his whole body glittered like the sun. His moving was as the moving of a golden statue, and his breathing was as of sublimated diamonds. Incredible it would ever seem, were not the truth verified by many witnesses, how long, and earnestly, and honestly men pretending to sanity sought this myth. Beginning with Sebastian de Belalcázar in 1535, and Gonzalo Pizarro in 1539, the valley of Dorado was the object of search by various expeditions fitted out from Peru, Quito, Brazil, New Grenada, and the Rio de la Plata, the infatuation continuing down to as late a period, in one instance at least, as 1775.

Coming to more definite statements, we know that a Spaniard named Martinez reported that having been adrift at sea he was thrown on the coast of Guiana, and taken to Manoa, the capital of the king of that region, who was an ally of the incas of Peru, that the roof and walls of the city, wherein he had resided seven months, were covered with the precious metals. Orellana, a lieutenant of Pizarro, who visited the valley of the Amazonas, 1540-1, spoke of a region where gold and silver abounded to a fabulous extent. He reported to have been in Manoa, and to have seen the immense treasures. Van Hutten, who commanded an expedition from Coro, on the coast of Venezuela, 1541-5, thought that he had caught a glimpse of the golden city, in search of which he had started. Several expeditions undertaken to reach the mythical region failed, notably one in 1560 under Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada from Bogotá. The fable has occupied men's minds, among others leading to results that of Sir Walter Raleigh, who undertook to find

THE GOLDEN KINGDOM.

227

the country in his expeditions to Guiana in 1595 and 1617. On all maps were to be seen traces of the pseudo discoveries of Martinez and others. There was one map, made much of by Raleigh, showing the capital of the golden kingdom, along the streets of which were no less than 3000 workers in precious metals, the sidewalks being flagged with the yellow kind, and the wagon way cobbled with the white kind; for at hand were situate a hill of gold, a hill of silver, and a hill of salt. I cannot speak of the royal palace of snow-white marble with pillars of porphyry and alabaster, all encircled by galleries of curiously wrought cedar and ebony, for description here is beyond the power of tongue or pen.

The Diccionario Historico, a Spanish translation of Moreri's French cyclopedia with valuable additions by Miravel, published in 1753, speaks of the province of El Dorado, as situated between the rivers Orinoco and Amazonas, containing the great lake Parimo, and a great city on its western shore, with mines of gold in great quantities; but adds that "todo lo dicho està encantado," and that all search for the same had thus far proved to be only "buenos desseos de los españoles." Humboldt proved that the lake was almost as fabulous as the city of Manoa.

Now, if in California we had not then the gilded king, and were obliged to be content with only a gilded country, we have had since then more of gilded humanity than ever the Essequibo valley could boast. And the coat of gilt has been getting thicker and thicker on many of them, until there is an inch thick coating of metal of some kind, base or otherwise; silver, gold, or brass, some being, indeed, all a casting, blood and bone, heart and brain, all cold dull earth, and nothing else. More than once we have thought to discover the veritable cave of Mammon, where dwelt the money-god himself.

After all, with such examples before us as the tulip mania, the South Sea bubble, the Mississippi bubble,

what may we not look for in the book of human follies?

The miseries of a miner might fill a chapter of woes. Digging and delving with eager anxiety day after day, up to the waist in water, exposed now to the rays of the burning sun, and now to cold, pitiless rains, with liberal potations of whiskey during the day, and mad carousals at night, flush with great buckskin bags of gold-dust, or toiling throughout the long summer without a dollar, indebted to the butcher, baker, and grocer, heart and brain throbbing and bounding with success, or prostrate under accumulated disappointments, it was more than a man with even an iron frame could endure. When disease made him its prey, there was no gentle hand to minister to his wants, no soft voice to whisper words of love and comfort, no woman's heart on which to rest his aching head. Lying on the hard earth, or rolling in feverish agony on the shelf-bed of his cabin, often alone and unattended throughout the livelong day, while the night was made hideous by the shouts and curses of rioters, the dying miner, with thoughts of home, of parents, wife, and sister, and curses on his folly, passed away. That was the last of him in this world, nameless, graveless, never heard from! Meanwhile, and for years after, those he left at the old home despairingly dwell upon his fate. his fate. Such cases were sad enough, but there were others still more melancholy. The patient, devoted wife, waiting and watching for the husband's return, toiling early and late for the support of their children, ever faithful, ever having him in her thoughts, and so passing her life away, until hope became charred and black, while the object of all this love, of this devotion, was, maybe, spending his substance with harlots, writhing under the delirium of drunkenness, without at any time bestowing even a thought upon that devoted wife and those abandoned children.

MISERIES OF THE MINER.

229

Not one, nor ten, but thousands, have thus lived and died. The disappointed miner would not write until he had something pleasing to communicate; the successful one preferred to carry home his own good news to sending it in a letter, which he did or did not; and thus many a poor heart at home ached on to the end. Some, and as a rule, the most pusillanimous, crept back, spectre-like, to their old homes, broken in body and spirit; some few returned in health, successful, and joyous; but by far the greater number, heartbroken and remorseful, laid their bones along the disturbed water-courses, on the cañon sides, in upturned gulches, or scattered them unburied over the wilderness of distant hills.

Some of the mountain towns, after having been dried up in the summer, were literally frozen up in the winter, thus leaving but little time comparatively in which to dig and wash out the gold. A frozen-up mining town in these days would be a curiosity. Work and business are at a standstill. Every day is more like Sunday than any Sunday the prosperous mining town ever sees. All is idleness; gaunt forms flit listlessly about the streets, sometimes gathering in groups to swear at the times, and breaking out in spasmodic sports when grumbling itself becomes unbearable. Even vice stagnates. Men have not the wherewith to play for money or whiskey, and so shuffle and deal the cards for fun. Money disappears from circulation, and a dun is looked upon as a man partially insane. Medical men drive a fair traffic as long as the liquor lasts, mending in the morning the broken heads, and setting the dislocated joints of the night previous; but when the fuel for that infernal fire is spent, then peace and good fellowship usually prevail.

It was by no means all chance that led to success or failure in the mines. Industry and economy, here as elsewhere, were nine times in ten to be rewarded in a greater or less degree. Multitudes of croakers sitting on their haunches encircled the valley of Cali

« PrejšnjaNaprej »