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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) http://tinyurl.com/HThoreau

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Satan's Kingdom

From The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, 1962.

Reader: Kevin Hearle

American transcendalist Henry David Thoreau had a reputation for contrarian thinking, so it's no surprise he took a dim view of going to see the elephant.

In an 1851 journal entry, Thoreau recorded his thoughts on the California Gold Rush, which he rather colorfully described as an enterprise of the devil.

The recent rush to California and the attitude of the world, even of its philosophers and prophets, in relation to it appears to me to reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to get their living by the lottery of gold-digging without contributing any value to society, and that the great majority who stay at home justify them in the both by precept and example!. . .

Did God direct us to get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would perchance reward us with lumps of gold? It is a text, oh! for the Jonahs of this generation, and yet the pulpits are as silent as immortal Greece, silent, some of them, because the preacher is gone to California himself! The gold of California is a touchstone which has betrayed the rottenness, the baseness of mankind. Satan, for one of his elevations, showed mankind the kingdom of California, and they entered into a compact with him at once.

Henry David Thoreau began writing a journal in the 1830s, a project that eventually ran to over two million words.