IF any of the boys and girls born in the United States were asked "Where is the land of gold?" they would answer "It is California," and if any of the children born in California were asked "What is El Dorado?" they would say "Why, that means the land of gold."  
So it does and for two reasons.
 
Cortez named it California after the heroine of a romance of chivalry he had read when he was in Spain. The book said there was an island on the right hand of the Indies very near the terrestrial Paradise, peopled with black women, who were Amazons, and wore gold ornaments in great profusion. Down in his heart Cortez cherished the hope that he might find the northwest passage to India, not because he cared very much for science, but because he believed the most extravagant stories about the silks, spices, sweet-smelling gums and rare gems to be found there. His ill-gotten Mexican 251 gold did him very little good, and was soon all expended, and he was anxious to find some other country to conquer. The very next year after the death of Montezuma, Cortez heard of the Land of Gold, and came over to a cove on the Pacific Coast of Mexico where he laid out a town and built some ships for the purpose of finding the new wonderland. All he ever discovered was the peninsula of Lower California, where the Indians already knew about the pearl fisheries. This was what he thought was an island, and what he named California.
 
One of his officers sailed around the island of St. Thomas, and on a Sunday morning he said he saw a merman swimming close to his ship.
 
"It came alongside the vessel," he declared, "and raised its head and looked at us two or three times. It was as full of antics as a monkey. Sometimes it would dive, and then raise up out of the water and wash its face with its hands. Finally a sea bird drove it away."
 
Of course he was mistaken, for what he really did see was either a walrus or a big seal as both animals abound in the Pacific Ocean.
 
It was more than three hundred years after Cabrillo sailed into the Gate of Palms at the entrance to the bay of San Diego, before gold was discovered in California. The country had been settled by Spanish Cavaliers and padres and there were missions for the teaching of the Indians. Mexico had rebelled against the King of Spain and 252 the United States had made war on Mexico and won. Then a man by the name of Marshall found some free gold. It was in the sand at the bottom of a ditch he was digging to get water to run a sawmill he was building. He knew at once that the bright yellow pebbles he held in his hands were gold, so he hurried to the men at work on the watershed and said:
 
"I have found it!" and that is what the motto, Eureka! on the state shield of California really means.
 
"What is it you have found, Mr. Marshall?" asked the men.
 
"Gold!" he exclaimed, excitedly. The men threw down their tools and gathered about him to examine the new find.
 
"No, no; you are mistaken," they said, when they had turned the pebbles over, and held them to the light, and hammered them with a stone.
 
"I am certain that it is," he stoutly maintained, but they only laughed at him. He paid no attention to them but turned on the water the next night. Then he picked up all the yellow lumps he found in the sand, and putting them into a little bag hastened to the man for whom he was building the mill, and said:
 
"I have found gold at the sawmill, and want you to come and see for yourself."
 
His employer tested and weighed the shining mass carefully, and finally said:
 
"You are right. It is real gold. Go back to 254 the mill, but say nothing until we get it finished. If you do the men will quit work and we shall have no one to take their places."
 
 
"THE DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY"
 
But the secret was too good to keep, and in a few days the whole country raised the same sordid cry of "gold, gold, gold," which had brought the Spaniards to the coast. In less than a year eighty thousand people came to California looking for gold. From an independent republic, California became a state and with its admission into the union the search for El Dorado passed from Spanish into American hands. Both the padres and Cavaliers in California as elsewhere in the Americas enslaved the Indians in a system of peonage which thinned out their ranks, and led to many hostile outbreaks before they were finally subdued. The gold seekers had to do some of the fighting, but they did not rob and pillage the country, nor were they allowed to be unnecessarily cruel. One of our great writers has said of the Indian:
 
"The red man of America has something peculiarly sensitive in his nature. He shrinks instinctively from the rude touch of a foreign hand. Like some of the dumb creatures he pines and dies in captivity. If today we see them with their energies broken we simply learn from that what a terrible thing is slavery. In their faltering steps and meek and melancholy aspect we read the sad characteristics of a conquered race."
 
His faith in the traditions of his forefathers, 255 the belief that the Golden Hearted would come again to bring him all that his heart desired finally enslaved and ruined him.
 
If we pity the Indian we must also feel sorry for the miserable ending of all the Spanish leaders who searched for El Dorado. Columbus spent the last years of his life in prison; Balboa, who discovered the Pacific Ocean, was treacherously executed and lies in an unknown grave near Panama; Pizarro was assassinated and buried in Peru; Magellan was killed by the natives in the Philippine Islands; Cortez was accused of strangling his wife to death, and finally deprived of all honors and wealth; Guzman died in poverty and distress while Coronado was said to be insane after his return to Mexico. For the crime and violence done by Spain in these expeditions she has not only lost all the revenues, but no longer owns a foot of land in any part of the new world.
 
Let us be thankful that the wisdom and liberty of our own government has saved us from making such terrible mistakes, and doing such grievous wrongs in our attempts to find El Dorado. The brave men and women who crossed the plains long before we had a railroad were willing to work for the riches they wanted. They did not come with the idea of robbing anybody, and when they found the gold they were generous and kind to less fortunate neighbors and friends.
 
"In this land of sunshine and flowers," they said, "we find gold in the crops of the chickens we 256 have for our Sunday dinners, and our children build doll-houses with the odd-shaped nuggets given to them by the big-hearted miners."
 
It is hard to imagine the stirring times that followed. Everybody had the gold fever, and in crossing the plains they heard the name El Dorado as soon as they came near where Coronado had been. Some of them made up a song about it, which wa............