L'or by Blaise Cendrars

covers bear traces of fire. The ink has faded, the paper has yellowed, the spelling is shaky, the handwriting full of flourishes and curlicues; it is difficult to decipher, the language is full of idioms, phrases of Basle dialect and Amerenglish. While the hand that wrote it is touchingly awkward and full of hesitations, the narrative itself is told directly, simply, even stupidly. The writer has not one word of complaint, he confines himself to narrating the events, enumerating the facts just as they happened. He does not exaggerate in the slightest degree.
    I humbly translate:
    31
    'Towards the middle of January 1848, Mr Marshall, the carpenter from New Jersey who is building my mills, was working on the new sawmill at Coloma, high up in the mountains, fifty miles distant from the fort. Once the framework had been erected, I sent Mr Wimmer and his family up there, together with a number of workmen; Mr Bennett, from Oregon, accompanied them to oversee the installation and setting-up of the machinery. Mrs Wimmer did the cooking for the whole party. I still required a sawmill as I was short of planks for my large steam-mill, which was also under construction, at Brighton. The boiler and machinery for this had just arrived after a journey of eighteen months. God be praised, I had never expected to see a successful outcome to this enterprise, and all the oxen survived, thank the Lord. I also needed planks for the construction of other buildings and especially for a stockade around the village of Yerba Buena, at the far end of the bay, for there are now many vessels in the harbour and the crews are wild and unruly, given to looting, so that much of the livestock and provisions disappear, one knows not how.
    'It was on a rainy afternoon. I was sitting in my room at the fort writing a long letter to an old friend in  Lucerne. Suddenly Mr Marshall burst into the room. He was drenched to the skin. I was very surprised to see him back already, for I had just sent a wagon loaded with foodstuffs and scrap iron up to Coloma. He said he had something very important to tell me and that he wanted to communicate it to me in the utmost secrecy; he begged me to conduct him to some isolated place, far from any possibility of being overheard or surprised by some indiscreet person. We climbed to the top storey, as he kept insisting that we must shut ourselves away in a remote chamber, even though there was nobody else at the ranch except my bookkeeper, who was downstairs in his office. Marshall asked me for something, I believe it was a glass of water, and I went down to fetch it for him. When I came up again, I forgot to lock the door behind me. Marshall had just that moment taken a rag out of his pocket, and was in the process of showing me a lump of some yellowish metal that he had wrapped up in it, when my bookkeeper came into the room to ask me for some information. Marshall quickly hid the metal in his pocket. The bookkeeper apologized for disturbing us and left the room. "For God's sake, didn't I tell you to lock the door?" cried Marshall. He was beside himself and I had a hard time calming him down and convincing him that the bookkeeper had merely come in on business and not with the object of surprising us. This time, we bolted the door and even pushed a cupboard against it. And Marshall again took out the metal. He had several little grains of it, each weighing about four ounces.He told me he had said to the workmen that it might be gold, but they had all laughed at him and taken him for an idiot. I tested the metal in aqua regia , then I read the entire article on GOLD in the Encyclopaedia Americana . Thereupon, I announced to Marshall that  his metal was gold, virgin gold.
    'The poor boy almost went crazy. He wanted to jump on his horse at once and rush back to Coloma. He begged me to accompany him, post-haste. I pointed out that it was already dusk and that it would be better to spend the night at the fort. I promised to go with