[In the following essay, Swingle reviews the portrayal of the California gold rush in early fiction, chronicling U.S. as well as foreign works.]

The California Gold Rush had an appeal, immediate, monetary, and lasting, to the imaginations of many writers, good, bad, and indifferent. Almost from the moment of the first news from Sutter's Mill, books with a background of the Gold Rush began to turn up in the literary placers.

In 1849 appeared a fantastical pastiche entitled Aurifodina; or, Adventures In The Gold Region, by Cantell A. Bigly, which pseudonym masked the author's real name of George Washington Peck, and lightly concealed the statement: Can Tell A Big Lie.

The narrator in this tale is a mountain man (“I led a hunter's life up and down the wild region between Monterey and the mouth of the Columbia”) who had first heard accounts of “gold in the Sacramento valley” from an old trapper, who in turn had heard it from an Indian woman. What does he decide to do? To look for it. And after hardship and hunger, thirsty too, he falls upon hands and knees to drink from a mountain spring found providentially in the course of his travels.

Imagine my astonishment, when, as I looked into the shallow basin, I perceived that more than half the pebbles on its bottom were of bright gold … Some were worn into regular oblong shapes like eggs. …

A tribe of beings (they do not look like Indians for they are rather golden in color) appears and takes the hero to one of their cities in the Sierras. When he wakes the next morning, there is “a gold bathing-tub in my chamber.” In short order he learns the Aurifodinian tongue, and we enter a Utopian romance, in which, needless to say, gold is the cornerstone (literally, for the very buildings are made of it). In Aurum, the capital city, our friend visits a printing office, “where I saw compositors busily setting gold type, while the foreman was imposing a gold form on a gold stone. …” The end of the story comes when a balloon (ballooning is a favorite sport of the Aurums) snaps its tether, to carry the hero off and deposit him in Kentucky.

So ends the first (so far as I have been able to determine) of the fictional tales of the California Gold Rush. It is rapidly followed by others of growing verisimilitude.

Take Adventures of a Gold Finder, London, 1850, in three volumes, concerning an Englishman, Fortunatus Thompkins. It is a Dickensian type of story, seasoned with American dialect and a bit of the tall tale. Most of the California portion (found only in the third volume) deals with fights with California Indians, “Ingines,” as the author has his Americans call them; however, Fortunatus and his father do visit the diggins (as he constantly italicizes them), and the descriptions do have a sense of reality about them. There is an especially good portrait of a sharp-trading mining-town storekeeper.

At the end, the parent, acclimatized, I suppose, because he seems to have lost his English idiom, concludes:

“Fortunatus,” said he, in a very feeble voice. “I'm blowed if this aint a buster! Sich a run for gold the world aint seen since it was a world!”

And the last sentence in the book sums it up:

Indeed, what can Paris be, compared to Pekin? and what is there in Italy or the German Baths, half so attractive as a tour in the gold regions of California?

In 1851 appeared the first work of fiction of real consequence concerning the California Gold Rush—The Volcano Diggings by Leonard Kip, who had actually come to California in 1849, and who concealed his identity under the pseudonym, “A Member of the Bar.”

The novel contains a very early example, perhaps the earliest, of a note concerning the reality of the tale:

Many of the following descriptions of scenes and scenery have been drawn from the life. Those among our countrymen who have ever visited the Volcano diggings, will, it is hoped, recognize the picture—though, of course, understanding that the plot is entirely fictitious, and in no way to be identified with that locality more than with any other. Several of the characters are also drawn from actual observation or acquaintance; among which, Burschenwolt, Kentucky, and Pickle Jack, will be readily recalled by such of the author's friends as worked with him at the pick-axe and rocker.

The Volcano Diggings is a tale told in letters. We give some of its flavor in an excerpt below. A man has been accused of murder, and the narrator gets into a poker game with members of the jury:

I purposely lost as large a sum of money as I could afford, in order to put them into a good humor. …

“I ante two and stake two!—Well, by-the-way, what are you going to do with poor Hoffengel?”

“Hang him, of course,” said one of the men, with the utmost coolness. “There—see you two and go you three better!”

“I call!” I said, as I laid down my three dollars. “Why there's not a court in Christendom would think him guilty,” I added, rather off my guard.

“Courts be d—d!” said the fellow; “we don't want none of them here. What have you got?”

However, all ends happily in this, one of the first truly Californian Gold Rush stories.

In 1852 the first fictional account by a recognized author appeared—in France. The author was Alexander Dumas; the book, Un Gil Blas en Californie. Mystery surrounds the source of the work, which purports to be the journal of a young Frenchman who joins a company of his countrymen destined for the gold fields of California; but critics definitely see in it the hand of Dumas, although it may be based on an actual journal. There is very little dialogue in it, and it has great veracity.

Also in France in the 1850's were published delightfully illustrated and colorfully bound juveniles, of which we list two representative titles: Les Petits Voyageurs en Californie by H. de Chavannes de la Girandiere, Tours, 1853, which was issued both in pictorial boards and enameled cloth; Le Jeune Voyageur en Californie by J. B. J. Champagnac, Paris, no date.

In Germany as well there was an interest in the fictional portrayal of the Gold Rush scene. Gold! Ein Californisches Lebenbild aus dem Jahre 1849 by Friedrich Gerstäcker was published in Leipzig in 1858. Although listed by some authorities as factual, the mass of dialogue entitles it to inclusion among fiction.

Also published in Germany, although probably written by a Frenchwoman, and in English, was The German Emigrants or Frederick Wohlgemuth's Voyage to California by Dr. Dietrich. Translated by Leopold Wray. Printed by F. Fechner, Guben. (We give the entire title page because we do not have much reliance on the information given there.) This is another nice little juvenile picture book, mythical in character.

Another country to be heard from is The Netherlands with a title (which David Magee got for me), Frederick Wachter of Opkomst en Bloei Van San-Francisco, by G. J. Visser, Schiedam, no date (circa 1865). Whereas most travelers from abroad came all the way to California by ship, Frederick goes overland.

The overland approach is also found in an interesting example of the novel with a Californian title but with very little California in it indeed. (It may be said parenthetically that arrival in California was a suitable ending for many a story, and that I have never found a sequel to any of these.) The book under consideration is The Californian Crusoe; or The Lost Treasure Found, London and New York, 1854. Only in the last chapter does the hero reach California. Then, it is true, he finds pots of it, even “lumps of nearly a pound in weight.” We rejoice in his good fortune in California, but the real interest of the tale lies in his misfortunes among the Mormons.

In 1855, in Cincinnati, was published The Lady of the West, or, The Gold Seekers, by John Ballou. Here again we encounter the reality note: “Many of the scenes represented in the book came under my own observation; and in no instance is there a single fact related but what something similar did actually occur.” The note ends with a somewhat startling statement: “Lastly of the personages represented, I have mentioned no names that need to cause uneasiness, notwithstanding, many may perceive their characters portrayed more fully than they ever supposed any one to have a knowledge of.”

The Lady of the West is a very good bad novel. It has the ring of truth but the sound is dulled by the telling. One of the first of the novels of purpose which we find in Gold Rush fiction, it shows the unjust treatment of foreigners in California, saying things that could be more effectively said in fiction than in simple factual prose. By enlisting our sympathy for various characters who happen to be foreigners, the unjustness of their treatment by vicious Americans strikes us with a greater impact. And the author's use of local color heightens the effect. Yet it lacks cohesiveness, and there is no sense of artistic vision; it must be called a bad novel.

In 1861 appeared Philip Thaxter, the identity of the author unknown to me. It is perhaps best known for its fictional portrayal of the hanging of Juanita (who is called Carmelita in the story) at Downieville in 1851. But there are many other factual counterparts, and real personages may be identified easily. Philip Thaxter is a good work-a-day Gold Rush novel with great reality, and one wonders who the author really was. We would hazard a guess that he was a Californian with actual participation in some of the events he described.

Just the reverse was Mayne Reid, but let his wife tell the story (in Mayne Reid by Elizabeth Reid, London, 1890):

Towards the end of 1862 a singular being presented himself at Captain Reid's town house. He was attired in a rough blanket, with his head passed through a hole in the middle of it—a sort of “poncho”—and carried a brown paper parcel under his arm. … The parcel contained a story he had written. He had tried to get an audience of some publishers in London, but they would not look at him. His name was Charles Beach, otherwise “Cannibal Charlie.” Mayne Reid told him to leave his manuscript, and he would look at it, at the same time giving the man a sum of money and telling him to get himself a “rig-out,” as no doubt his appearance being so outlandish prejudiced those whom he called upon.

At the “cannibal's” next appearance, he was looking a little more civilized, and the manuscript in time, through the help of Captain Mayne Reid, developed into a three volume novel, published in 1864, under the title of “Lost Lenore; or the Adventures of a Rolling Stone.”

In the preface Mayne Reid scarcely takes sufficient credit to himself for the part he played; he had recast and nearly rewritten the whole work before it was placed in the publisher's hands.

This novel is another example of the secondhand observer at work, not an uncommon occurrence in California Gold Rush fiction, and Reid has succeeded quite well. We give a sample of his writing:

A few faint kicks, and his body hung motionless from the limb of the live oak.

An empty sardine box was nailed to the tree, on which the murderer was hanging. Above it was pinned a piece of paper—on which was written the words, “For the orphan.”

Many miners stepped up to the spot, opened their purses; and slipped a few dollars' worth of gold dust into the box.

Their example was followed by Stormy Jack; and from the quantity of yellow dust I saw him drop into the common receptacle, I could tell that his purse must have been three or four ounces lighter, when he came away from the tree.

One of the early California novels by a woman, The Gem of the Mines, A Thrilling Narrative of California Life, by Mrs. J. Blakeslee Frost, was published in Hartford in 1866. This time the reality note is placed not only in the preface, but on the title page itself:

Composed of scenes and incidents which passed under the immediate observation of the author during five years residence in that State in the early days.

The Gem of the Mines is also a novel of purpose, as the preface indicates:

If a recital of the sufferings and persecutions which attended our heroine and through which she passed unscathed, will add one jewel to that crowning diadem of woman, Constancy, Virtue, and Affection, or assist in making life, with its sorrows and cares, more bearable to some of the weaker ones of our sex, our purpose will be accomplished.

Alas, it is another good bad novel, a veritable melodrama, in which almost all the men are cads or weaklings or villains. One wonders what Mr. J. Blakeslee Frost thought of it. (Or was that he, thinly disguised as the heroine's worthless husband?)

One of the episodes of The Gem of the Mines is the capture of the heroine by a band of bandits, feasting on the gold they could plunder, led by “Joaquin” and Three-Fingered Jack. These two desperados of the California Gold Rush figure in several early California stories or novels, notably Joaquin, (The Claude Duval of California); or, The Marauder of the Mines, copyrighted in 1865, and which appeared in an undated edition and in one—much later—in 1888. It is full of action, but the style of writing may be judged by this sentence: “‘Strike me dastard!’ exclaimed the robber's mistress, flaming up into the spirited courtesan of younger days.”

Yes, it must be said that early California fiction often leaves much to be desired in style and in English usage. But from the year 1849 to 1867, we have seen the California Gold Rush portrayed in a variety of manners, sometimes with great fidelity, at times with burlesque overtones, sometimes with total unreality, yet interesting in a myth-making sense.

Yes, all of the early carpenters of the California Gold Rush novel were thumb-hitters.

It was time for genius and craftsmanship to appear, which they did, respectively, in the persons of Mark Twain, whose The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County And Other Sketches was published in 1867, and Bret Harte, whose The Luck of Roaring Camp was published in 1870.

To many people, perhaps most people, California Gold Rush fiction is thought to begin with these two, Mark Twain and Bret Harte, completely overlooking twenty years' work by less gifted writers, hacking away at the material.