Part 13

"No wonder your horses ran away," said the padre. "It was quite enough to frighten anything."

"Finally we met some of the people who go around the country with the cows. They make tents of the hides and wear them for blankets, and keep huge dogs to carry their food and baggage. They were friendly to us, but knew nothing of Quivera and its treasures."

But the feeling of helplessness and desolation of the plains gradually left the Spaniards, and then they were ready to follow the Turk's lead again. This time they got lost in the desert, and many of them wandered off and died from thirst, and their bodies were eaten by wolves and coyotes. They kept going round and round in a circle until their tongues hung out of their mouths and they were delirious. In the hot, quivering air they imagined they saw cities, and lakes and springs of water, and they laughed and cried, and sung and danced in a raging fever. At last they began to suspect the Turk.

"He is purposely leading us astray," they said. "He is trying to lose us on these desolate plains where we will starve to death. He intends to desert and leave us here."

They put the Turk in chains, and then he confessed that he had never seen the big stone houses he said were in Quivera, but stoutly insisted that the country was rich in gold and silver.

The Prairie Indians begged Coronado to turn back.

"The land of Quivera is forty days' journey toward the north," they said, "and you will suffer from hunger long before you reach other tribes."

But Coronado had spent all his money and was in debt deeply, so he determined to take twenty-nine picked horsemen and go forward. Leaving the rest of the company to find their way back to Pecos, he engaged some new guides among the Prairie Indians and pushed on determined to find Quivera. They rode directly north until they came to a place in Kansas near where the city of Leavenworth is now located.

In the meantime the Pecos Indians went on the warpath and refused to receive or aid the Spaniards who left Coronado and went back to them. He found them encamped before the pueblo when he returned months after, weary, empty-handed, and disappointed.

"I have found Quivera and explored it well," he said, "but it has no permanent settlement, and no gold and silver. I was expecting to see houses several stories high, made of stone. Instead of that they are simple huts and the inhabitants are perfectly savage."

The Turk tried to secure his freedom by saying that the Pecos Indians had hired him to lose the Spaniards on the plains, but no one paid any attention to him. In revenge he said to the people of Quivera:

"Do not let one of these white men escape alive. They will bring others of their kind and rob you of all your possessions and ill treat your women and children. They have already killed many of the Pecos."

Some one told Coronado what was being said, and he ordered his soldiers to take the Turk out and hang him to the first tree they found, which they did.

Coronado spoke the truth about Quivera, but even the men who went with him believed that there was a land near by where they would find great riches, and they kept repeating all the stories about El Dorado until Coronado was obliged to promise them that he would make another effort to find it.

"If we go north again we can be certain of good food for the soil is the best that can be found for all kinds of crops. In Quivera we were given plums, nuts, very fine grapes, mulberries and flax. I really believe we shall make some important discoveries very soon."

One day at Pecos after he had made friends with the Indians, he was tilting with an officer in his command when his saddle girth broke while his horse was running at full speed. He fell on his head and was run over and so badly hurt that for days it was thought he would die. Before he got well news came from Mexico that the Indians behind him were on the warpath, and then he knew he must retreat as quickly as possible. So instead of going in quest of the roving band of Quivera Indians, he was obliged to return to the city of Mexico. Here the Viceroy received him coldly and upbraided him, saying:

"It is a source of keen disappointment and regret to me, that you, my trusted friend and favorite officer, should abandon the rich treasures of the north. I wish you to go to your estate and live in retirement for the remaining years of your life. I will try to find some one more worthy of my confidence for future work."

Reduced to poverty, with many debts unpaid, and disgraced by the Viceroy, the poor unfortunate nobleman lived only a few years on his estate in Mexico and died heartbroken over his failures.

Everybody in Mexico believed that he was mistaken, and several other expeditions set out to find the Kingdom of Quivera. More than a century afterward the legend settled around one of the missions founded by the padres, and for years people thought this was the Grand Quivera. Great treasures were supposed to be buried there by the missionaries when the insurrection of 1680 came. That year all the Indians in the region of Arizona and New Mexico organized a general uprising and they not only killed all the whites they could find but sacked and burned the missions. And that is the last ever heard of the one known as the Grand Quivera. No treasures were ever found in or near its ruins. There are ten curious maps of that time and each one locates the kingdom of Quivera in a different place. One of them brings it as far north as the Sacramento Valley in California.

Really Quivera is a will-o'-the-wisp, and from a roving band of Indians, has become a wandering treasure city, and a land of vague and mysterious proportions.

The Land of Gold

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 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 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 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."

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, 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 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 was for many years very popular among the men in the mining camps. This is one verse of it:

We'll rock the cradle around Pike's Peak In search of the gold dust that we seek, The Indians ask us why we're here We tell them we're born as free as the air, And oh! Boys ho! To the mountains we will go For there is plenty of gold Out West we are told In the new El Dorado.

Many of the emigrants sickened and died on the way; others were killed by the hostile Indians, and all were subjected to a life of hardship and toil, because they were the builders of a new commonwealth. Once in California they found many trying situations, not the least of which was an occasional fight with the huge grizzly bears that roamed through the forests. Many times the men were obliged to organize a hunt for the purpose of ridding a district of a nest of grizzlies. Not only would the bears fight ferociously, but they did not hesitate to go into a corral and carry off calves, hogs and sheep under the very eyes of the owner.

"Never for a moment imagine that a grizzly bear will run from you," said the leader of a hunting party filling his powder horn and putting a box of caps into his pocket. "Take good aim at the center of his forehead. Otherwise one shot will not kill him, and remember that he cannot climb. If you get into close quarters, try to get up a tree as fast as you can."

"We know his trail and we are going to send our dogs in to start him out of his den."

"Unless your dogs know how to attack him it is very unsafe to let them go near. One blow from a grizzly's paw will kill any dog, and we cannot afford to lose any of yours," said the leader, doubtfully.

"My dogs know all about bear hunting. They will keep well behind him, and after we have crippled him, they will snap at his heels and worry him so he cannot chase the last man who shoots at him."

"Will a grizzly do that?" asked a man who had never been in a bear hunt before.

"Indeed he will. If you watch closely you can tell how many times he is hit for he will fall down, roll over and slap himself wherever the bullet strikes him."

"I would not advise you to waste any time trying to find out who fired the last shot, for the bear will never make a mistake about it. He knows, and is always after the last one."

"Separate into pairs," said the leader, when he had finished examining the bear tracks in the path they were following. "Take your stations about a hundred yards apart, and when you hear the grizzly coming, aim as I have already told you, and then look out for trouble."

"Do you think we are likely to find him soon?" asked the newcomer, nervously.

"He is in that thicket where the dogs are keeping up such a loud barking. You will hear him snapping and growling in a few minutes."

"The grass and underbrush are so high I am afraid I will not be able to see him," said the timid, inexperienced hunter.

"You can tell by the way the dogs bark when he is coming, and you can easily hear the click of his sharp claws before he gets too near for comfort," said the leader, with a smile. "Make sure that the trigger of your gun is properly set, and you will be all right."

He had stationed other men farther up the ravine, and in a few minutes the dogs yelped warningly, and the man at the upper station shouted:

"Look out! here he comes!"

"Bang!" went the gun, and then the dogs rushed by in a solid pack with a huge she bear at their heels.

"There are two of them," somebody said, and in a moment everything was in the wildest confusion.

"Man alive! don't you see that wounded grizzly rolling in the grass. He is not badly hurt, but he will be after you in a second. Give him another dose, and run," said the leader excitedly, to the new hunter who was standing stock still and gazing around him helplessly. He did not seem to hear what was said, and before he recovered from his paralyzing fright, the bear grabbed him.

"Help! help! help! For God's sake come here! I am being killed!" he screamed.

"Lie perfectly still and pretend you are dead," said the leader. "Make no sound when I shoot, and crawl behind that big rock as soon as you get up."

The knowing dogs barked and raged around the bear until he could not tear the prostrate man. They kept him turning round and round, and the daring hunter coolly waited until his head was away from the wounded man's, and then he shot him through the fore leg. Down he fell and kicked and scratched the fallen hunter, but true to his instinct got up and gave chase to the leader, with the dogs in full cry behind him. The wounded man managed to reach the rock, and by scrambling up on its jagged sides was comparatively safe. From his height he could see what the other men were doing.

"I am all right," called the leader from a neighboring tree, "but how is it with you?"

"My powder-horn is crushed and broken and my arm is bitten through. There is blood running down my face too, but I think that is only scratches."

"Bang!" went a gun near by, and turning to look both men saw one of the party standing up in the saddle, on the horse brought along to carry the game.

"Get out of that thicket! You will be killed if you try to stay there," shouted the leader.

"My only chance is to shoot as I stand," answered the man, busy loading his gun. "I can not make this horse move. But for the Mexican stiff-bit in his mouth and a vigorous use of my big spurs he would lie down with me."

"I am coming to help you," said the leader, sliding down the limb of the tree to the ground. "I will ham-string the grizzly and then you can finish him."

He was an excellent shot, and soon the bear was dragging his hind quarters and showing signs of weakness from loss of blood. The man in the saddle deliberately aimed at his heart, and after a few convulsive struggles the grizzly lay dead.

The barking of the dogs and the reports of the guns brought the whole party together, and after bandaging the wounds of their companion, and sending him home on the horse the remaining men went in search of the she bear. They had wounded her and it was not hard to track her to a small stream, where they found her sitting on her haunches and groaning like a human being.

"That sounds too much like a woman's moans," said the men, "and we will slip away without being seen and let her alone."

As they walked home they took turns in carrying the skin of the grizzly they had killed.

"He would weigh two thousand pounds and could jump fully twenty feet," they said.

The New El Dorado

One day long after the gold excitement in California had subsided, a strange craft sailed into San Francisco bay flying a flag different from any other ship in the harbor. It was a yellow satin banner showing the imperial double eagles of the Russian Czar, and the guns at the forts fired a royal salute as the vessel passed by on its way to the wharf. On board was a man empowered by the Czar to sell Alaska to the United States, and waiting on shore to greet him was a Senator who was appointed to make an offer for the territory.

"You are very welcome, my friend," said the Senator, grasping the hand of the Diplomat, as he came ashore. "Your arrival gives my countrymen much pleasure, and I earnestly hope that we may be able to make the ties of friendship between your people and mine very much stronger."

"His Majesty, the Czar, charged me to make plain to you his sentiments of good will and his desire to render your government a service."

The two men pushed their way through the crowd and were soon being driven rapidly toward the Senator's residence. After dinner that evening, while sitting by the fire the Diplomat said:

"Do you know the Russian story of the discovery of Alaska, the Great Land, as we called it?"

"No," replied the Senator, "I do not. I only know that it was a curious freak of fortune that your people should be the ones to discover the fabled 'Straits of Anian' so long sought by the Spaniards, Portuguese and English navigators. Bering's Sea is very far from India, but it is the famous northwest passage, that separates Asia from America." The Diplomat said:

"While Europe was exploring and settling the Americas my countrymen were throwing off the yoke that made them subjects of the Khans of Tartary. Even at that time we had a great caravan trade with China and Persia, but our merchants suffered severely from the depredations of the Cossack freebooters roaming over the steppes of Siberia. These reckless horsemen would charge down on a caravan and rob it of all its silks, spices, teas and perfumes."

"Then you can sympathize with the galleons of Spain that were harassed by the buccaneers and pirates infesting the high seas ready to scuttle and sink any ship that fell into their hands," said the Senator, greatly interested.

"Our merchants had no redress and they complained bitterly to Peter the Great, who immediately undertook to chastise the unruly Cossacks. They fled into Siberia, and it was not long before they found rich silver mines on the Amoor river, and began to traffic in the ivory and sable skins which make that vicinity notable. As they advanced toward the Pacific Ocean they were able to slaughter herds of musk oxen, and before many years the fame of the ivory deposits brought hundreds of adventurers into that barren region. Diligent inquiry among the natives disclosed the fact that there was a Great Land toward the North Pole where remains of the hairy elephant were plentiful, and its beautiful tusks were heaped up in huge mounds."

"It was a desire for gold that brought the first white men to California," said the Senator, "and the building of the railroad across the continent is the result of having found it."

"Ivory and furs were the lure that nerved the Russian freebooter to brave the frozen sea and six months of night," said the Diplomat. "They went to sea in open boats made of planks tied together with rawhide straps and thongs. Their sails were of soft dressed reindeer skins, and in place of rope they used elk skin strips. The anchors were pieces of wood weighted with stones. They had no beds, and carried a wooden plate and spoon tied to the sash around their waists."

"They must have suffered very much from cold and hunger," said the Senator.

"They did; and many of them died with scurvy. They were greatly hindered by glaciers and icebergs, and would never have been able to make the journey at all except for the sleds and dogs furnished by the natives."

"Were the Eskimos and Aleuts always friendly?" asked the Senator. The Diplomat hesitated for a moment, then said with a smile:

"The freebooters found it necessary to fight after they had once ill-treated the natives. At first the white men were supposed to be superior beings, but they proved themselves unworthy of confidence and then there was serious trouble."

"We have had a somewhat similar experience in dealing with the Indians in this country," replied the Senator.