Free L'or by Blaise Cendrars Page B

Sutter, but they have heard that California is a land full of gold, pearls and diamonds. You just have to bend down and pick them up. So-and-so and what's-his-name have already made their way there, they are simply following in their footsteps, and others, many, many more of them, will be coming on behind them. Some of the early birds are already rich, it seems, worth millions. 'There is gold everywhere, Madame, they are simply shovelling it up . . .'
    Aspinwall. Heat, humidity, humidity, heat. There are seventeen steamers in the roads, flying the flags of nine different nations. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Portland, Charleston, New Orleans: the American hordes storm the little train from Panama. They shout, they yell, they jostle one another and while the engine is panting its way through the swamps, under a dense cloud of steam, passing the mud huts full of squint-eyed Indians and Negroes with suppurating limbs, a rude chant arises, keeping time with the rhythms of the train and bawled by a thousand male voices:
    To 'Frisco!
    To 'Frisco!
Sutter. Sutter. Sutter. Sutter.
Sutter. Sutter. Sutter. Sutter.
    To 'Frisco!
    Sszzzzz. K. Sszzzzz. K. Pug!
    Welcome back again!
    Anna Sutter clasps her daughter tightly in her arms. The boys lean out of the window to see the poisonous snakes in the swamps. A Dane and a German, coming down from New Brunswick, recount what they know of the great Captain Sutter. He is a king; he is an emperor.
    He rides on a white horse. The saddle is made of gold, the bit is gold, the stirrups, the spurs and even the horseshoes are also of gold. In his house, it is a perpetual feast-day and they drink brandy all day long. Frau Sutter faints away, her heart has ceased to beat. By the time she arrives in Panama, one lock of her hair has turned white.
    The sun is like a molten peach.
    Panama to 'Frisco aboard a sailing-ship. The crew are frightful-looking Kanakas, they fill her with dread. They are hideously maltreated. The skipper, an Englishman, cuts off the thumb of one of them to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe. As they draw near to the land of gold, the passengers become so excited that quarrels flare up over nothing and knives are quickly drawn. Frau Sutter is seized by an ague, a trembling in her limbs that lasts all the way to 'Frisco.
    In San Francisco, she learns that New Helvetia no longer exists and that Sutter has disappeared.
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    Women. There are women who work the gold-diggings, jolly, rough wenches who are no better than they should be and who toil and die of over-work just like the men. They slave, blaspheme, swear, smoke pipes, spit and chew coarse black tobacco while wielding the pick and shovel all day long, so that they can go boozing at night and lose their gold-dust at cards. One shouldn't admire them too much for they are even more vindictive and violent than the men; they are particularly touchy on affairs of honour and quite ready to defend  their virtue with bullets, like those two Frenchwomen, legendary figures in the history of California, of whom Monsieur Simonin speaks in his Relation d'un voyage en Californie published in the Tour du Monde of 1862:
    '. . . having spoken at length about the men, let us now spare a few words for the women, although their numbers in California are still very small.
    'I will mention one, amongst others, whom the miners have nicknamed Joan of Arc. She works at the diggings like a man and smokes a pipe.
    'Another, who is working a very productive claim, answers to the name of Marie Trousers, and owes this sobriquet to the masculine garment which she prefers to wear. . . .'
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    A blazing sun.
    A small group is climbing up to Fort Sutter, led by an old Mexican. Three young men and a young girl on horseback are escorting a litter slung between two mules.
    This journey has exhausted Anna Sutter. She cannot stop shivering. She is shaking with cold.
    Her eyes are glazed.
    'Yes, Madame, the Master is at his Hermitage, a property he has on