handsome in clutching it; but nobody is
so silly as to speak of "the days of '49" as a disgrace to us. Some
lamentable pages there were; but when California suddenly tipped up the
continent till the strength of the east ran down to her, she opened one
of the bravest and most important and most significant chapters in our
national story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary thing, and
a very worthy one, as long as we remember that it is a means and not an
end, a tool and not an accomplishment,--which point of business
common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall Street as in the
mines.

We have largely to thank this universal and perfectly proper fondness
for gold for giving us America,--as, in fact, for civilizing most other
countries.

The scientific history of to-day has fully shown how foolishly false is
the idea that the Spaniards sought merely gold; how manfully they
provided for the mind and the soul as well as the pocket. But gold was
with them, as it would be even now with other men, the strong motive.
The great difference was only that gold did not make them forget their
religion. It was the golden finger that beckoned Columbus to America,
Cortez to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru,--just as it led us to California,
which otherwise would not have been one of our States to-day. The gold
actually found at first in the New World was disappointingly little; up
to the conquest of Mexico it aggregated only $500,000. Cortez swelled
the amount, and Pizarro jumped it up to a fabulous and dazzling figure.
But, curiously enough, the gold that was found did not cut a more
important figure in the exploration and civilization of the New World
than that which was pursued in vain. The wonderful myth which stands for
the American Golden Fleece had a more startling effect on geography and
history than the real and incalculable riches of Peru.

Of this fascinating myth we have very little popular knowledge, except
that a corruption of its name is in everybody's mouth. We speak of a
rich region as "an Eldorado," or "the Eldorado" oftener than by any
other metaphor; but it is a blunder quite unworthy of scholars. It is
simply saying "an the," "the the." The word is Dorado; and it does not
mean "the golden," as we seem to fancy, but "the gilded man," being a
contraction of the Spanish _el hombre dorado_. And the Dorado, or gilded
man, has made a history of achievement beside which Jason and all his
fellow demi-gods sink int