The rest of Sutter's history is soon told. In 1848, when Mexico ceded
California to the United States, he was the owner of a vast domain, over
which thousands of head of cattle wandered. A few years later, he was
practically a ruined man--ruined by gold. On the eighteenth day of
January, 1848, one of his men named Marshall, brought to Sutter a lump
of yellow metal which he had uncovered while digging a mill-race. There
could be no doubt of it--it was gold! News of the great discovery soon
got about; there was a great rush for this new Eldorado; Sutter's land
was overrun with gold-seekers, who cared nothing for his rights, and
when he attempted to defend his titles in the courts, they were declared
invalid, and his land was taken from him. To crown his disasters, his
homestead was destroyed by fire; finding himself ruined, without land
and without money, he gave up the struggle in despair and returned east,
passing his last years in poverty in a little town in Pennsylvania.
Fremont, meantime, had done a great work for California. The son of a
Frenchman, showing an early aptitude for mathematics, he had secured an
appointment to the United States engineering corps, and, after various
minor expeditions in which he had acquitted himself well, was put in
charge of an expedition for the exploration of the Rocky Mountains.
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