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Updated: June 4, 2025
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.
The task of climbing to the summit of this pass is of the most trying nature conceivable, and many gold-seekers have turned back in despair.
You had grown accustomed to freedom of action; while I, who had gone off with the first gold-seekers, was braving a thousand dangers in California, so as to win wealth and luxury for you more quickly. Fool that I was! No task seemed too hard or too distasteful when I thought of you and I was always thinking of you. My mind was at peace I had perfect faith in you.
Others who were not gold-seekers have left their impression of California in transition, such as Bayard Taylor in his Eldorado, 2 vols. , and J.W. Harlan in his California '46 to '88 . The latter was a member of Frémont's battalion. The horrors of the overland journey are told by Delano in the book already mentioned and by W.L. Manly, Death Valley in '49 .
Something glittered in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But, wonderful to relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore, fresh from Nature's crucible, but a bit of jeweler's handicraft in the form of a plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it bore the inscription, "May to Cass." Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. "Cass!"
When he was a young man he had been a colporteur for the American Bible Society among the Lake Superior Indians, and in that way had earned part of the money for his course at the University of Michigan; afterward he had gone with other gold-seekers to Pike's Peak, and had crossed the plains with oxen, in the company of many other adventurers; then, when President Lincoln called for troops, he had returned to enlist with the Michigan men, and had served more than three years with McClellan and Grant.
Before his plans were completed he fell in with certain disappointed gold-seekers returning from the Coast, and impressed by their representations, decided in favor of Kansas instead of California. Father had very extravagant ideas regarding vehicles and horses, and such a passion for equestrian display, that we often found ourselves with a stable full of thoroughbreds and an empty cupboard.
If he could hold them together under the alluring tales of gold-finds that were brought over the mountains, he had no longer any fear that they might fall away under mere physical hardship. And he held them, the supreme test of his power over the bodies and minds of his people. This passing of the gold-seekers was not, however, a blessing without drawbacks.
It is curious to reflect how nation succeeding nation tread in each other's footsteps, through the self-same valley, beneath the shadow of the old hills. Here they have trudged, old Dacian gold-seekers, returning from the daily labours of washing the auriferous sands of the mountain streams; here, too, have tramped victorious Roman soldiers Avars, Tartars, Turks, and other intruders.
English senors who come out here to shoot must be men with plenty of money; but likely enough they are not sportsmen, but gold-seekers. However, it matters little." "I protest against this," Harry said. "Our consul at Lima will demand satisfaction from the government." The other laughed. "Government!" he said, "there is no government; and if there were, they would have no power up in the hills."
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