Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-02-04
THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALI
FORNIA

A correspondent observes : &c The report
"that Marshall was the first discoverer OF
"gold in California must be an error, |
"having read myself when a boy that
admiral Drake discovered traces of gold
and silver mines at his visit to this coast
Sin 1878" Our correspondent jumps too
rapidly to conclusions. 1t does not follow
| that Marshall is not entitled to the fame
of the discoverer of gold in California, be.
cause Drake is said to have found some
traces of the precious metals. The discov-
erer of thing is he who first directs it to
the uses of mankind, not he who merely
finds and then abandons. But in truth
there is great deal of uncertainty about
brakes discoveries. In the first place
California is supposed to have been first
discovered in the time of Cortez. 1t was
visited by Francisco de Ulloa, Ferdinando
Alarchin, Francisco Vasquez Coroneda and
Father Marco de Mica, in 1889 and 1910
Hakluyt states that these explorers were
as far north as the 37th degree of latitude,
which would bring them within fifty miles
of San Francisco Bay. In all. these &C.
counts, however, mention is made of
abundance of gold, and in one of them it is
stated that the natives used plates of gold
to scrape the perspiration from their bod.
les Who were these natives? Certainly
nothing in the descriptions of these earlier
voyagers suggests the remotest resemblance
between them and the present Indians.
The fullest account, however, appears in
the narrative of "The Famous Voyage of
Sir Francis Drake into the South Seas,
"etc., in 1877" Whereabouts Drake
landed on the California coast is to this
day moot question. He himself says
that having sailed northward till he was
in 43 degrees latitude, his men complained
so of the cold that he turned about and
sought land, and soon found it, mot
" mountains, but low plain land, till we
I" came within 80 degrees toward the line.
" In which hight it pleased God to send
" us into fine and goode baye, with good
&c wind to enter the same. In this baye we
" anchored" Here he says his " fine and
goode baye'' was in latitude 80 north,
and why it should be supposed that this
was San Francisco. which is in 81 AZ
north, we never could perceive. The
strong probability is that it was much lower
down the coast, while it is very doubtful
whether the earlier voyagers ever were
higher than Lower California. brakes
narrative, however, goes on to tell how
the natives came down, with their King,
and how they begged him to take their
province or kingdom into his hand, and
" become their King, making signs that
they would resign unto him their right
% and title of the whole land, and become
" his subjects" We have no doubt what
ever that all this is apocryphal.
The story is unnatural in the last
degree. Natives have never been
known to do anything of the kind,
and when the author goes on to
observe gravely that "the King and the
crest with one accord, and with great
reverence, joyfully singing a song. did
"set the crown upon his (Drake's) head,
encircled his neck with all their chains,
"and offered unto him many things" we
feel certain that the entire incident has
been fabricated. The too reckless chronicler
goes on to tell how Sir Francis " took
the scepter, crown, and dignities
"of the said countries into his hands,"
thus still further betraying his ignorance
of Indian civilization by the narrowness
of his invention, which could not pro.
vide these simple savages with any
other kind of ornaments and insignia
of royalty than gold chains, crowns and
seepters. However, Drake dubbed the
country Nova Albion, and that for two
causes the one in respect of the white
banks or cliffs, which lie toward the sea,
land the other, because it might have
"some afinities with our country in name,
(which sometime was so called" And
now we come to the statement re-
ferred to by our correspondent, and which
occurs in the following words There is
mo part OF earth here to be taken up,
wherein there is not some probable show
"of gold or silver" Il is obvious that it
will not do to credit Sir Francis
Drake with the discovery of gold in
California on the strength of such q
statement as this alone; and yet
this statement is his only contribution to-
wards the solution of the problem. It is
equally apparent that the reckless jumbling
together of "gold or silver" is Indicative
of ignorance of the conditions under which
the precious metals are found. Indeed it
is quite possible that the early discoveries
of gold really never saw anything more