L'or by Blaise Cendrars Page A

sides as 'The Ancestor'. The whole population of San Francisco comes out to meet him. The cannon booms, the bells ring, choirs celebrate his apotheosis. Men wave their hats in the air, women wave their handkerchiefs while showers of floral tributes flutter down from the balconies. Clusters of human beings, like bunches of grapes, are hanging out into the void, applauding, cheering and shouting hurrahs.
    At the Town Hall, Mayor Kewen, surrounded by the highest Federal and State officials, solemnly awards John Augustus Sutter the title of General.
    Then there is a procession through the town.
    It is the greatest fête that has ever been celebrated on the shores of the Pacific.
    All eyes are fixed on the tall old man who is riding at the head of the troops.
    John Augustus Sutter is mounted on a big white horse. He is holding his general's baton in his hand. Behind him come his three sons, then the First Californian Regiment, then the mounted artillery and the Light Cavalry.
    51
    General John Augustus Sutter parades through the streets of San Francisco at the head of the troops.
    He is buttoned up in a black frock-coat which is too tight for him; its long skirts flap over his horse's crupper. He is wearing checked trousers and boots with wide gussets. A broad-brimmed felt hat is rammed down on his skull.
    As he crosses the town, General John Augustus Sutter is prey to a strange emotion. All these ovations, the hurrahs, the wreaths of flowers that fall at his feet, the bells, the songs, the cannon, the fanfare, the multitude, the windows full of women, the houses, the office buildings, the first palatial edifices and the interminable streets, all seem to him unreal. It is less than six years since he was living here in the midst of savages, surrounded by his Indians and his Kanakas from the Islands.
    He thinks he must be dreaming.
    He closes his eyes.
    He does not want to see any more, he does not want to hear any more.
    He allows himself to be led.
    The procession carries him along to the Metropolitan Theatre where a monstrous banquet, and some fifty speeches, await him.
    52
    An extract from the speech by Mr Kewen, the first Mayor of San Francisco:
    '. . . This pioneer, full of high courage and spurred on by a strange presentiment, detaches himself from the happy memories of his youth, drags himself away from the charms of his own home, abandons his family circle, leaves his native land to come, by untrodden paths, and throw himself into a country full of danger and adventure. He crosses arid plains beneath a scorching sun, he traverses mountains, valleys, rocky chains. In spite of hunger, fever, thirst, in spite of bloodthirsty savages who lie in ambush for him, or stalk him on the open prairies, he travels onward, his eyes ever drawn to that point in the sky where the sun plunges every evening into the Western ocean. This point draws him on like a magnet, he keeps his eyes fixed on it, as the traveller in the Alps of his beautiful homeland keeps his eyes fixed on the summit of the mountain covered in eternal snows, thinking of nothing, as he crosses abysses and glaciers, but the grandiose panorama and the pure, refreshing air which is found at these altitudes.
    'And, like Moses on the summit of Pisgah in biblical times, he stands on the snowy crest of the sierra, and his vision clears and his soul rejoices; at last, he sees before him the Promised Land. But he is more fortunate than the Lawgiver of the Israelites, for to him it is given to enter this blessed land, and he descends from the mountain armed with new courage and fresh vigour to brave the solitude and the privations and, in gratitude, he dedicates this new land he has just discovered to God. To God, to liberty and to his beloved country, Switzerland.
    'In the history of vanished peoples, and of the centuries that are gone, the names of certain great men, whom one can never forget, stand out. Epaminondas, whose virtue and love of country shed a glorious light over the