L'or by Blaise Cendrars

looking for husbands, but they do not all stay. The first men to stake claims to the land are all in litigation with lawyers in New York, who are issuing title-deeds to the new arrivals. Everybody is bringing lawsuits. For myself, I do not know what to do, I don't want to be just like the rest, but what should I do? This is why I am writing to you.
    'This is the position:
    'I am ruined.
    'According to American law, one half of the gold extracted is mine by clear right, and we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars' worth. Moreover, I have suffered an incalculable loss through the discovery of gold on my lands; my property has been overrun, devastated and despoiled, I am therefore entitled to compensation. In the third place, I am the sole proprietor of the terrain on which San Francisco has been built (apart from a narrow strip of land along the ocean-front which belongs to the Franciscan Mission) and of other sites on which towns and villages have been built. I possess all the title-deeds to these lands, which were given to me in the time of the Mexicans by Governors Alvarado and Micheltorena by way of reward for my services and in payment of my expenses at the time of the wars with the Indians on my northern frontier. Fourthly, hordes of new settlers have taken possession of my plantations and exhibit title-deeds which are flagrantly new, whereas I was the one to bring this entire region under cultivation, and I paid the Russians dearly for their small farms when they left. And lastly, the bridges, the canals, the ponds, the locks, the tracks, the roads, the harbour, the landing stages and the mills that I had constructed at my own expense, today serve the public welfare, so the State legislature must pay me for them. There remains also the question of all the gold that will be mined during the next quarter of a century, and over which I have some rights.
    'What should I do?
    'It makes me ill to think of the sum that all this must represent.
    'The trouble is, if I begin, it will be not one but a thousand lawsuits I must bring all at once; I must attack tens of thousands of individuals, hundreds of communities, the legislature of the State of California and the government in Washington. If I begin, it will be not one, but ten, a hundred fortunes that I will have to spend, although it is true that what I am claiming would make it all worth while (even before the discovery of gold, I was on my way to becoming the richest man in the world). If I begin, it will not be one new country I shall have to conquer, as it was when I landed for the first time, all alone, on the sands of the Pacific, but the entire world. They would all be against me, and I should have to fight for years and years, and I am beginning to feel my age, I am already hard of hearing, I fear my strength might let me down, and it is for this reason that I have sent Emile, my eldest son, to the Faculty of Law, for it is on him that all this immense business of the gold will devolve and, being on the inside, so to speak, he will know better how to avoid the traps and pitfalls of the law, and those men of law whom his simpleton of a father greatly fears. Yes, I confess it.
    'As a matter of honour, I cannot lose everything, let it all go, just like that, without a word. It would be a crying shame, an injustice!
    'On the other hand, I often ask myself whether I have the right to intervene, or whether there are not too many human interests at stake which are beyond my understanding, and if God who reigns in Heaven has not some particular design for all these people whom He sends  into this country? And I myself feel that I am lost in His hand.
    'What should I do?
    'Gold brings misfortune. If I touch it, if I pursue it, if I claim what is mine by indisputable right, shall I not be damned in my turn, like so many others whose example I have before my very eyes and of whom I have already spoken to you?
    'Tell me, what should I do? I am ready for