L'or by Blaise Cendrars Read Free Book Online

parcelled out land to them, or employed them according to their various skills.
    Horses, hides, talc, wheat, flour, maize, dried meat, cheese, butter, planks and smoked salmon were embarked daily. Sutter sent his produce to Vancouver, Sitka, the Sandwich Islands and to all the ports of Mexico and South America, but, first and foremost, he provisioned the numerous ships that now came to drop anchor in the bay.
    It was in this state of bustling prosperity that Captain Frémont found New Helvetia when he came down from the mountains after his memorable crossing of the Sierra Nevada.
    Sutter had gone out to meet him with an escort of twenty-five splendidly-accoutred men. The horses were stallions. The riders' uniforms were made of a dark green cloth relieved by yellow braid. With their caps tipped over one ear, the lads had a martial look about them. They were all young, strong and well-disciplined.
    Countless flocks of prime beasts were grazing in the lush prairies. The orchards were glutted with fruit. In the kitchen-gardens, vegetables from the Old World grew side by side with those from tropical countries. There were springs and canals everywhere. The Kanaka villages were neat and clean. Every man was at his appointed task. A most pleasing order reigned everywhere. Avenues of magnolia, palm-trees, bananas, camphor-trees, oranges, lemons and pepper-plants traversed the vast cultivated tracts to converge on the ranch-house. The walls of the hacienda were smothered in bougainvillaea, rambler roses and fleshy geraniums. A curtain of jasmine hung down before the master's door.
    Sutter kept a splendid table. Hors-d'oeuvres; trout and salmon from the local rivers; baked ham à l'Ecossaise ; wood-pigeon, haunch of venison, bear's paw; smoked tongue; sucking-pig stuffed à la rissole and dredged with tapioca flour; green vegetables, cabbage-palm, okra salad; fruit of every kind, fresh and preserved; mountains of pâtisserie . Rhine wines and several bottles of fine old wines from France, which had been so carefully handled that they had travelled round the world without being spoiled. The food was served by young women from the Islands and young Indian half-breed women who brought in the dishes wrapped in napkins of a pristine whiteness. They came and went with an im-perturbably serious air, while a Hawaüan orchestra  played outlandish airs, the Marche de Berne , with thumb-beats on the backs of the guitars, the Marseillaise with the sonorities of the bugle in the strings. The heavy antique tableware was made of Castilian silver-plate and struck with the royal arms.
    Sutter presided, surrounded by his associates. Amongst the guests was Governor Alvarado.
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    Sutter was accredited with the most important banking-houses in both the United States and Great Britain. He made substantial purchases of materials, tools, arms and ammunition, seeds and plants. His transports travelled thousands and thousands of miles overland or came by sea after rounding Cape Horn. (Twenty-five years later, in the ranches in the hinterland, they still talked about a wagon pulled by sixty pairs of white oxen which, under heavy escort, crossed the entire American continent at its widest point; after crossing the prairies, the savannahs, the rivers, the fords, the mountain passes of the Rockies and the desert with its giant cactus-candelabra, it finally arrived safe and sound with its cargo, which consisted of the boiler and plant for the first steam-mill to be constructed in the United States. As will be seen later, it would have been better for John Augustus Sutter, then at the pinnacle of his success, wealth and prestige, if this wagon had never arrived, if it had foundered at the bottom of some river, if it had bogged down forever in some quagmire, if it had tumbled over some precipice or if its numerous teams of oxen had succumbed to an epidemic.)
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    However, political events were hastening forward.
    And although Sutter was now a man to be reckoned