Early in 1850 the first steps were taken toward an organized expedition of gold-seekers, and a sequence of events was set in motion that eventuated in a strange and [273] unexpected experiment in colonization. Three men, O. Eide, A. Finne, and N. C. Tischendorff, of Levanger, a small town north of Trondhjem on the west coast of Norway, conceived the idea of an expedition to California financed and equipped through the sale of shares; and in an invitation of January 19, 1850, published in various newspapers, they brought the scheme to the attention of the public. They declared that in a period of fabulous opportunity, Norwegians ought not be content with the role of spectators when by strength of will and farsightedness they could share the fruits of new discoveries. Why should Norway lag behind other peoples in enterprise? In other lands millions were poured into doubtful schemes; could not the Norwegians invest a more modest sum in an undertaking that offered profits of several thousand per cent? The advantage would be national; the new capital gained would stimulate science, art, industry, and the various trades. The three promoters proceeded to explain the situation of affairs in California and to answer numerous questions. Miners could be expected, to make profits of thirty to forty specie dollars a day. They did not fail to mention Christian Poulsen, who, they said, had brought back to Norway a fortune of twelve thousand specie dollars. They anticipated that the cost of living in California would not be high. The fact that the company would not be made up of American citizens would not cause any practical difficulty in acquiring the legal right to mine. But if it did, there were almost equally rich possibilities for exploitation in South America. The fact remained that a gold-seeking expedition could earn large profits in a year or two. A committee to be elected by all the shareholders would form and equip the expedition. The basic principles of the undertaking were laid down: (1) the party would consist of seamen, laborers, persons expert [274] in natural science, a physician, and a minister, all of whom would agree to abide by certain rules; they would take with them provisions for one year and necessary equipment, weapons, and the like. (2) A ship would be chartered for two or three years and would be loaded with articles that would command high prices in San Francisco. (3) The number to go was tentatively set at a hundred men, who would have to satisfy the shareholders that they were industrious, sober, moral, and honest. (4) A hundred shares were to be issued, each holder to be responsible for a hundredth part of the total cost of the expedition. (5) Half of the profits would go to the miners; half to the shareholders. A general meeting would be called after fifty or sixty shares had been subscribed; and it was hoped to dispatch the party in the fall of 1850. {25}

The proposal, though scoffed at in some quarters, was taken seriously by many. A general assembly was held in Trondhjem on April 22; a committee worked out specific rules for the expedition; it was announced that, with full shares selling at a hundred specie dollars and half shares at fifty, fourteen thousand dollars had been subscribed, in part by prospective participants; Tischendorff, who seems to have been the leading spirit, complained of cabals, but it was obvious that the project was booming. "It is not unlikely that the enterprise will be carried out, though it is very doubtful that it will have the anticipated success,'' wrote a hostile newspaper. {26} An assembly to make final arrangements was held in June, and though the newspapers echoed some difficulties, including disagreement over a proposal to reduce the number of participants to [275] eighty, the plans for the expedition were matured. {27} One newspaper bewailed the folly of so needy a region as Nordre Trondhjems Amt pouring money into so wild an enterprise, and it expressed fear that in other parts of Norway similar expeditions might be organized. {28} In Trondhjem during the fall steps were actually taken toward the organizing of a second shipload of gold-hunters, to go the following spring either to Australia or California. {29}

Meanwhile the shareholders had bought a ship, the "Sophie," and were advertising room for some twenty extra passengers at 120 specie dollars a person. {30} Late in September the argonauts began to assemble at Trondhjem. The departure of the main group from Levanger is thus depicted in the local newspaper:

Scenes such as we know from Cooper or W. Irving have in these days inaugurated the California expedition. Powerful men have appeared from all directions, knives in hand, with chests and rifles loaded on wagons. After many conversations with them we are convinced that the Norse spirit is again alive; the California men, handsome and determined, are on their way; there is no dejection or wavering; speak to them of danger and difficulty and they reply that they put their trust first in God and next in themselves and their own courage; thus in certain respects have we imagined the ancient Vikings.

Another newspaper sounded a less sympathetic note:

Many of these people are young innocents, only recently the objects of a mother's tender care. One can only feel the sincerest pity at the thought of the fate that awaits such gold diggers. {31}

A last assembly was held in Trondhjem on September 30 and October 1, with two hundred shareholders and participants present; and on October 19 the expedition, [276] comprising 106 passengers, sailed for San Francisco by way of Rio de Janeiro and Cape Horn. The departure from Trondhjem offers a strange contrast to the manner in which many gold-seekers set forth on the great adventure. The Norwegians were almost like crusaders; they could not start without the blessing of the church. The day before the sailing a considerable number partook of the Lord's Supper in a Trondhjem church and listened to a farewell sermon. The following day there was another sermon on board the ship. This was followed by a reply and by a song of farewell composed for the occasion by Christian Monsen. Salutes were fired and, watched by some two thousand people, the "Sophie" weighed anchor. {32}

The journey to Rio de Janeiro occupied three months. When the party reached the Brazilian port, on January 20, 1851, after a stormy voyage, its plans were suddenly and drastically upset by the captain, who declared the "Sophie" unseaworthy and refused to continue to California. The emigrants had supposed the stop at Rio de Janeiro would be a brief one, merely to take on fuel and provisions, and they believed the ship seaworthy though in need of minor repairs. There is evidence of ill feeling between the passengers and its officers and crew. Meanwhile the ship was condemned; the delay at Rio de Janeiro of five or six weeks used up the company's provisions; the crew demanded payment; and the upshot of the situation was that the ship and its cargo had to be sold. The emigrants were stranded in Brazil; the ambitious plan of the shareholders disastrously checked; the gold mines of California far away; resources low; yellow fever a menace [277] in the city. At this point a German company acting as the agent of the Prince de Joinville, who owned large tracts of Brazilian land, proposed a solution of the difficult problem facing the gold-seekers. Why not establish a Norwegian colony in Brazil, in the vicinity of Germans on good land available at Donna Francisca in the province of Santa Catharina? Seventy-four members of the party accepted the offer; if they could not be gold-miners they would become tropical farmers, at least temporarily. If the shareholders in Norway sent funds to rehabilitate the expedition, perhaps they could get on to California later. In the meantime some of the others took service on a ship bound for San Francisco and some returned to Norway. {33}

A five-days' sea journey brought the prospective colonists in March to the Brazilian town of Sao Francisco, beyond which, some seven miles in the interior, were the colony's lands. A shipload of more than a hundred Germans arrived at the same time as the Norwegians. Thirteen of the latter remained only a short time; the others took land and began farming. An emigrant letter of July 2, 1851, tells of products in startling contrast to those of Norway: coffee, cotton, rice, oranges, lemons, and bananas. Four of the company were then dead from tropical disease. The others were struggling, among other things, with language difficulties in their relations with [278] Frenchmen, Germans, and Brazilians. The letter writer, who feels in his strange fate the hidden purposes of God, is still interested in gold and speaks of a prospecting expedition that he and his companions plan to make. {34} Most of the colonists were restless; more than fifty of them left in 1851 and 1852; a letter from Rio de Janeiro of December 7, 1852, tells of eight Norwegians who were taking an American ship for California and incidentally criticizes sharply the promoters of the expedition for not sending additional funds. {35}

A Norwegian minister, Jonas W. Crøger, visited Donna Francisca late in 1854 and formed a pleasant impression of the Joinville colony as a whole. In Hamburg he had been informed that there were thirty-four Norwegians among the German colonists there, but personal investigation reduced this number to ten. Their personal appearance and dress seemed a painful contrast to Crøger's imaginary picture of the" knightly adventurers." Yet he found them on the whole doing well; for two weeks he was the guest of one of them, whom he describes as a prosperous man. {36} Crøger returned to Norway an enthusiast over South America, especially Brazil and Uruguay, and published a book describing his travels. He proposed in 1856 the establishment of a stock company capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars to organize emigration to Brazil, one hundred colonists to pioneer for two years on lands selected through negotiations with Brazil. The Germans, colonizing in southern Brazil, had stimulated their trade through developing new markets. This Norway also could do: buy tropical products from its own emigrants, supply [279] them with needed articles from the north. In 1857 Crøger advertised a projected colony in Uruguay with room for fifty families; and in 1858 Norwegian newspapers reported a proposal for Norwegians to join a Swiss colony at Rosario on the Plata. These plans, though given considerable publicity, seem to have aroused comparatively little interest among prospective emigrants, for whom the United States continued to be the most attractive goal. {37} A few of the colonists at Donna Francisca tarried in Brazil; in 1862 the Norwegian-Swedish consul at Rio de Janeiro reported that seven were left. Some had intermarried with Brazilians and had achieved good circumstances; the colonists as a group had been respectable and law-abiding; the province of Santa Catharina was making good progress; but the consul considered Brazil, in view of the illiberality of its government, an unsuitable field for European immigrants. {38}

It is possible to follow the fortunes of some of the Trondhjem gold-seekers who eventually reached California, one of the most interesting of whom was Theodor S. Støp of Levanger. After three weeks at Donna Francisca he left for Valparaiso, where he worked for three months in humdrum employment at good wages. He was a true argonaut, however. "I was well off there," he wrote to his parents, "and I also learned some English, but I had no peace, for the idea of California was always on my mind." [280] And to California he went, on board an American schooner, with two other Norwegians of the party, J. H. Bakke and L. Buch. A letter written by Støp on January 18, 1852, gives a good picture of conditions in San Francisco. He spurned work there at high wages and started for the Sacramento Valley. After eight months in the mines he wrote that he had saved eight hundred dollars; he set his goal at a thousand more; then his fortune would be large enough for him to return home and live independently. And in 1854 he did return by way of Panama, New York, Antwerp, Ghent, Helsingborg, Christiania, and Norway's recently opened railroad. He had made a success as a miner, and newspapers did not fail to mention that he had displayed some gold nuggets to his friends. A few years later three other members of the party of 1850 returned to Levanger, "decorated with massive rings, breastpins, watch chains, and similar expensive gold trinkets." The Levanger newspaper believed to the end that the idea back of the great expedition was sound: what some of the mining Vikings did, the others might have done --- if circumstances had been kinder. {39}

The failure of the Trondhjem expedition did not dampen Norwegian interest in California. Newspapers continued to discuss reports from the West, and often the theme of gold led to articles of more general American [281] interest. California played its part in the process of filling out the Norwegian popular concept of America. {40} In "The Gold Thirst or the California Fever in America," a pamphlet of 1852, an author predicted an Atlantic-Pacific railway, declared that San Francisco, St. Louis, and New York would become the three great cities of the world, and praised the United States as the land of opportunity for immigrants. {41} A year later a little book was published at Bergen under the title "Routes between Europe and New York, also to Rio de Janeiro; with an Account of the Sailing Route around Cape Horn to California and to China." {42}



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