PORT O' GOLD
A History-Romance of the San Francisco Argonauts
LOUIS J. STELLMAN
1922
As they looked the sunlight triumphed, scatteringthe fog into queer floating shapes, luminous and fraught with weirdsuggestions.... One might have thought a splendid city lay beforethem, ... impalpable, yet triumphant, with its hint of destiny.]
TO THE CITY OF MY ADOPTION AND REBIRTH SAN FRANCISCO
Oft from my window have I seen the day Break o'er thy roofs and towers like a dream In mystic silver, mirrored by the Bay, Bedecked with shadow craft ... and then a gleam Of golden sunlight cleaving swiftly sure Some narrow cloud-rift--limning hill or plain With flecks of gypsy-radiance that endure But for the moment and are gone again.
Then I have ventured on thy strident streets, Mid whir of traffic in the vibrant hour When Commerce with its clashing cymbal greets The mighty Mammon in his pomp of power.... And in the quiet dusk of eventide, As wearied toilers quit the marts of Trade, Have I been of their pageant--or allied With Passion's revel in the Night Parade.
Oh, I have known thee in a thousand moods And lived a thousand lives within thy bounds; Adventured with the throng that laughs or broods, Trod all thy cloisters and thy pleasure grounds, Seen thee, in travail from the fiery torch, Betrayed by Greed, smirched by thy sons' disgrace-- Rise with a spirit that no flame can scorch To make thyself a new and honored place.
Ah, Good Gray City! Let me sing thy song Of western splendor, vigorous and bold; In vice or virtue unashamed and strong-- Stormy of mien but with a heart of gold! I love thee, San Francisco; I am proud Of all thy scars and trophies, praise or blame And from thy wind-swept hills I cry aloud The everlasting glory of thy name.
PREFACE
This is the story of San Francisco. When a newspaper editor summoned mefrom the mountains to write a serial he said:
"I've sent for you because I believe you love this city more than anyother writer of my acquaintance or knowledge. And I believe the truestory of San Francisco will make a more dramatic, vivid, human narrativethan any fiction I've ever read.
"Take all the time you want. Get everything straight, and _put allyou've got into this story_. I'm going to wake up the town with it."
To the best of my ability, I followed the editor's instructions. Hedeclared himself satisfied. The public responded generously. The serialwas a success.
But, ah! I wish I might have written it much better ... or that RobertLouis Stevenson, for instance, might have done it in my stead.
"Port O' Gold" is history with a fiction thread to string its episodesupon. Most of the characters are men and women who have lived and playedtheir parts exactly as described herein. The background and chronologyare as accurate as extensive and painstaking research can make them.
People have informed me that my fictional characters, vide Benito, "tookhold of them" more than the "real ones" ... which is natural enough,perhaps, since they are my own brain-children, while the others aremerely adopted. Nor is this anything to be deplored. The writer, afterall, is first an entertainer. Indirectly he may edify, inform or teach.My only claim is that I've tried to tell the story of the city that Ilove as truly and attractively as I was able. My only hope is that Ihave been worthy of the task.
Valuable aid in the accumulation of historical data for this volume wasgiven by:
Robert Rea, librarian, San Francisco Public Library;
Mary A. Byrne, manager Reference Department, San Francisco PublicLibrary;
John Howell and John J. Newbegin, booksellers and collectors ofCaliforniana, for whose cheerful interest and many courtesies the authoris sincerely grateful.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
I Yerba Buena. II The Gambled Patrimony. III The Gringo Ships. IV American Occupation. V An Offer and a Threat. VI The First Election. VII The Rancheros Revolt. VIII McTurpin's Coup. IX The Elopement. X Hull "Capitulates". XI San Francisco is Named. XII The New York Volunteers. XIII The "Sydney Ducks". XIV The Auction on the Beach. XV The Beginning of Law. XVI Gold! Gold! Gold! XVII The Quest of Fortune. XVIII News of Benito. XIX The Veiled Woman. XX A Call in the Night. XXI Outfacing the Enemy. XXII Shots in the Dark. XXIII The New Arrival. XXIV The Chaos of '49. XXV Retrieving a Birthright. XXVI Fire! Fire! Fire! XXVII Politics and a Warning. XXVIII On the Trail of McTurpin. XXIX The Squatter Conspiracy. XXX "Growing Pains". XXXI The Vigilance Committee. XXXII The People's Jury. XXXIII The Reckoning. XXXIV The Hanging of Jenkins. XXXV The People and the Law. XXXVI Fevers of Finance. XXXVII "Give Us Our Savings". XXXVIII King Starts the Bulletin. XXXIX Richardson and Cora. XL The Storm Gathers. XLI The Fateful Encounter. XLII The Committee Organizes. XLIII Governor Johnson Mediates. XLIV The Truce is Broken. XLV The Committee Strikes. XLVI Retribution. XLVII Hints of Civil War. XLVIII Sherman Resigns. XLIX Terry Stabs Hopkins. L The Committee Disbands. LI Senator Broderick. LII A Trip to Chinatown. LIII Enter Po Lun. LIV The "Field of Honor". LV The Southern Plot. LVI Some War Reactions. LVII Waters Pays the Price. LVIII McTurpin Turns Informer. LIX The Comstock Furore. LX The Shattered Bubble. LXI Desperate Finance. LXII Adolph Sutro's Tunnel. LXIII Lees Solves a Mystery. LXIV An Idol Topples. LXV Industrial Unrest. LXVI The Pick-Handle Parade. LXVII Dennis Kearney. LXVIII The Woman Reporter. LXIX A New Generation. LXX Robert and Maizie. LXXI The Blind Boss. LXXII Fate Takes a Hand. LXXIII The Return. LXXIV The "Reformer". LXXV A Nocturnal Adventure. LXXVI Politics and Romance. LXXVII Aleta's Problem. LXXVIII The Fateful Morn. LXXIX The Turmoil. LXXX Aftermath. LXXXI Readjustment. LXXXII At Bay. LXXXIII In the Toils. LXXXIV The Net Closes. LXXXV The Seven Plagues. LXXXVI A New City Government. LXXXVII Norah Finds Out.LXXXVIII The Shooting of Heney. LXXXIX Defeat of the Prosecution. XC The Measure of Redemption. XCI Conclusion.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
As they looked, the sunlight triumphed, scattering the fog into queer,floating shapes, luminous and fraught with weird suggestions.... Onemight have thought a splendid city lay before them, ... impalpable, yettriumphant, with its hint of destiny.
"Ah, Senor," Inez' smile had faded, ... "they have cause for hatred".
Men with shovels, leveling the sand-hills, piled the wagons high withshimmering grains which were ... dumped into pile-surrounded bogs. SanFrancisco reached farther and farther out into the bay.
Samuel Brannan rode through the streets, holding a pint flask ofgold-dust in one hand ... and whooping like a madman: "Gold! Gold! Gold!From the American River".
Passersby who laughed at the inscription witnessed simultaneously therescue of an almost submerged donkey by means of an improvised derrick.
Broderick's commanding figure was seen rushing hither and thither...."You and two others. Blow up or pull down that building," he indicated asprawling, ramshackle structure.
There sat the redoubtable captain, all the ... austerity of his WestPoint manner melted in the indignity of sneezes and wheezes.... "Money!God Almighty! Sherman, there's not a loose dollar in town".
"Draw and defend yourself," he said loudly. He shut his eyes and alittle puff of smoke seemed to spring from the end of his fingers,followed ... by a sharp report.
In front of the building on a high platform, two men stood.... Ahalf-suppressed roar went up from the throng.
Terry, who had taken careful aim, now fired. Broderick staggered,recovered himself. Slowly he sank to one knee.
The concourse broke into applause. T
hen it was hysteria, pandemonium.Fifty thousand knew their city was safe for Anti-Slavery.
Half a thousand jobless workers, armed and reckless, marched toward thedocks. They bore torches.... "A hell-bent crew," said Ellis.
"My boy ... you're wasting your time as a reporter. Listen," he laid ahand upon Francisco's knee. "I've a job for you.... The new Mayor willneed a secretary".
"Perhaps I shall find me a man--big, strong, impressive--with a mindeasily led.... Then I shall train him to be a leader.... I shall furnishthe brain".
"I am going South," Francisco told his son. "I cannot bear this".
All at once he stepped forward.... Tears were streaming down his face.Then the judge's question, clearly heard, "What is your plea?" "Guilty!"Ruef returned.
A HISTORY-ROMANCE OF THE SAN FRANCISCO ARGONAUTS
PROLOGUE
THE VISION
"Blessed be the Saints. It is the Punta de Los Reyes." The speaker was abearded man of middle years. A certain nobleness about him like anermine garment of authority was purely of the spirit, for he was neitherof imposing height nor of commanding presence. His clothing hung abouthim loosely and recent illness had drawn haggard lines upon his face.But his eyes flashed like an eagle's, and the hand which pointednorthward, though it trembled, had the fine dramatic grace of one wholeads in its imperious gesture. He swept from his head the oncemagnificent hat with its scarred velour and windtorn plume, bending oneknee in a movement of silent reverence and thanksgiving. This was Gasparde Portola, October 31,1769.
Near him stood his aides. All of them were travel-stained, careworn withhardship and fatigue. Following their chieftain they uncovered andknelt. To one side and a little below the apex of a rocky promontorythat contained the little group, Christian Indians, muleteers andsoldados crossed themselves and looked up questioningly. In a dozenlitters sick men tossed and moaned. A mule brayed raucously, startlingflocks of wild geese to flight from nearby cliffs, a herd of deer on amad stampede inland.
Portola rose and swept the horizon with his half-fevered gaze. To thesouth lay the rugged shore line with its sea-corroded cliffs, indentedat one point into a half-moon of glistening beach and sweeping on againinto vanishing and reappearing shapes of mist.
Far to the northwest a giant arm of land reached out into the water,high and stark and rocky; further on a group of white farallones lay inthe tossing foam and over them great flocks of seabirds dipped andcircled. Finally, along the coast to the northward, they descried thosechalk cliffs which Francis Drake had aptly named New Albion, and stillbeyond, what seemed to be the mouth of an inlet.
Dispute sprang up among them. Since July 14th they had been searchingbetween this place and San Diego for the port of Monterey. "Perhaps thisis the place," said Crespi, the priest, reluctantly. "Vizcaino may havebeen amiss when he located it in 37 degrees."
"Yes," spoke Captain Fernando de Rivera, "these explorers are carelessdogs. One seldom finds the places they map out so gaily. And what dothey care who dies of the hunger or scurvy--drinking their flagons inMexico or Madrid? A curse, say I, on the lot of them."
Portola turned an irritated glance of disapproval on his henchmen. "Whatsay you, my pathfinder?" he addressed Sergeant Jose Ortega, chiefof Scouts.
"That no one may be certain, your excellency," the scout-chief answered."But," his eyes met those of his commander with a look of grimsignificance, "one may learn."
Portola laid a hand almost affectionately on the other's leather-coveredshoulder. Here was a man after his heart. Always he had been ahead ofthe van, selecting camp sites, clearing ways through impenetrable brush,fighting off hostile savages. Now, ill and hungry as he was, for rationshad for several days been down to four tortillas per man, Ortega wasready to set forth again.
"You had better rest, Saldado. You are far from well. Start to-morrow."
Ortega shrugged. "Meanwhile they mutter," his eyes jerked to theindiscriminate company below.
"When men march and have a motive, they forget their grievances. Whenthey lie in camp the devil stalks about and puts mischief into theirthought. I have been a soldier for fourteen years, your excellency."
"And I for thirty," said the other dryly, but he smiled. "You areright, my sergeant. Go. And may your patron saint, the reverend fatherof Assisi, aid you."
Ortega saluted and withdrew. "I will require three days with yourexcellency's grace," he said. Portola nodded and observed Ortega's sharpcommands wheel a dozen mounted soldados into line. They galloped pasthim, their lances at salute and dashed with a clatter of hoofs into thevalley below.
Young Francisco Garvez spurred his big mare forward till he rode besidethe sergeant. A tall, half-lanky lad he was with the eager prescience ofyouth, its dreams and something of its shyness hidden in the darkalertness of his mien.
"Whither now, my sergeant?" he inquired with a trace of pertness as helaid a hand upon the other's pommel. "Do we search again for thatelusive Monterey? Methinks Vizcaino dreamed it in his cups." He smiled,a flash of strong, white teeth relieving the half-weary relaxation ofhis features, and Ortega turning, answered him:
"Perhaps the good St. Francis hid it from our eyes--that we might firstdiscover this puerto christened in his honor. We have three days toreach the Punta de los Reyes, which Vizcaino named for the kingsof Cologne."
For a time the two rode on in silence. Then young Garvez muttered: "Itis well for Portola that your soldados love you.... Else the expeditionhad not come thus far." The sergeant looked at his companionsmolderingly, but he did not speak. He knew as well as anyone that theGovernor's life was in danger; that conspiracy was in the air. And itwas for this he had taken with him all the stronger malcontents. Yes,they loved him--whatever treachery might have brooded in their minds.His eyes kindled with the knowledge. He led them at a good pace forwardover hill and dale, through rough and briery undergrowth, fording hereand there a stream, spurring tired horses over spans of dragging sanduntil darkness made further progress impossible. But with the break ofday he was on again after a scanty meal. Just at sunrise he led hisparty up to a commanding headland where he paused to rest. His windedmount and that of Garvez panted side by side upon the crest while histroopers, single file, picked their way up the narrow trail. Below themwas the Bay of San Francisco guarded by the swirling narrows of theGolden Gate. And over the brown hilltops of the Contra Costa a greatgolden ball of sunlight battled with the lacy mists of dawn.
It was a picture to impress one with its mystery and magnificence. Thetwo men gazed upon it with an oddly blended sense of awe and exultation.And as they looked the sunlight triumphed, scattering the fog into queerfloating shapes, luminous and fraught with weird suggestions of castle,dome, of turret, minaret and towering spire. One might have thought asplendid city lay before them in the barren cove of sand-dunes, a cityimpalpable, yet triumphant, with its hint of destiny; translucent silverand gold, shifting and amazing--gone in a flash as the sun's fullradiance burst forth through the vapor-screen.
"It was like a sign from Heaven!" Garvez breathed.
Ortega crossed himself. The younger man went on, "Something like a voicewithin me seemed to say 'Here shall you find your home--you and yourchildren and their children's children.'"
Ortega looked down at the dawn-gold on the waters and the tree-ringedcove. Here and there small herds of deer drank from a stream or browsedupon the scant verdure of sandy meadows. In a distant grove a score ofIndian tepees raised their cone shapes to the sky; lazy plumes ofblue-white smoke curled upward. Canoes, rafts of tules, skillfully boundtogether, carried dark-skinned natives over wind-tossed waters, the endsof their double paddles flashing in the sun.
"One may not know the ways of God." Ortega spoke a trifle bruskly. "Whatis plain to me is that we cannot journey farther. This estero cuts ourpath in two. And in three days we cannot circle it to reach the ContraCosta. We must return and make report to the commander."
He wheeled and shouted a command to his troopers. The cavalcade rodesouth but young Francisco
turning in the saddle cast a farewell glancetoward the shining bay. "Port O' Gold!" he whispered raptly, "some daymen shall know your fame around the world!"
PORT O' GOLD
CHAPTER I
YERBA BUENA
It was 1845. Three quarters of a century had passed since youngFrancisco Garvez, as he rode beside Portola's chief of Scouts, glimpsedthe mystic vision of a city rising from the sandy shores of SanFrancisco Bay.
Garvez, so tradition held, had taken for his spouse an Indian maideneducated by the mission padres of far San Diego. For his service assoldado of old Spain he had been granted many acres near the Mission ofDolores and his son, through marriage, had combined this with anotherlarge estate. There a second generation of the Garvez family had lookeddown from a palatial hacienda upon spreading grain-fields, wide-reachingpastures and corrals of blooded stock. They had seen the Mission era waxand wane and Mexico cast off the governmental shackles of Madrid. Theyhad looked askance upon the coming of the "Gringo" and Francisco GarvezII, in the feebleness of age, had railed against the destiny that gavehis youngest daughter to a Yankee engineer. He had bade her choosebetween allegiance to an honored race and exile with one whom he termedan unknown, alien interloper. But in the end he had forgiven, when shechose, as is the wont of women, Love's eternal path. Thus the Garvezrancho, at his death became the Windham ranch and there dwelt Dona Anitawith her children Inez and Benito, for her husband, "Don Roberto"Windham lingered with an engineering expedition in the wilds of Oregon.
Just nineteen was young Benito, straight and slim, combining in hisfledgling soul the austere heritage of Anglo-Saxons with the leapingfires of Castile. Fondly, yet with something anxious in her glance, hismother watched the boy as he sprang nimbly to the saddle of his favoritehorse. He was like her husband, strong and self-reliant. Yet,--shesighed involuntarily with the thought,--he had much of the manner of herhandsome and ill-fated brother, Don Diego, victim of a duel that hadfollowed cards and wine.