weeks. Within a year it had a population of over 25,000 people. Previously a quiet, pleasant town, San Francisco was changed almost overnight into a rough and crowded city, full of all kinds of adventurers and other strange characters. The same factors that operated to change San Francisce also changed the life of John A. Sutter in an equatly extreme form.

John A. Sutter was a citizen of Switzerland. He had come, penniless, in the spirit of adventure to the United States. He lived and worked for a time in Pennsylvania and finally settled in California in 1839, when still a young man of thirty-six. He obtained the rights from the Mexican government to a large track of land in the present area of Sacramento, some seventy miles north of San Francisco on the Sacramento River. Here Sutter established his own private colony. This colony he named New Helvetia. Sutter was an intelligent, well-educated man. He built a fort, inside which he established a large trading post.

He planted great numbers of fruit trees along the banks of the Sacramento River, as well as hundreds of acres of wheat. He became a very rich man by providing most of the ships that .came to the harbour of San Francisco with supplies both for their own use a.nd for export. Sutter had thousands of cattle and horses on his many acres. Five hundred men, mostly Mexica.ns and Indians., worked regulaily for him. He wrote wrote to his wife and three sons, whom he had left in Switzerland, asking them to come and live with him and enjoy his great success.

Then in 1848, gold was discovered on Sutter's land:-He was building a saw mill, some distance from his fort. Here, in a stream leading from the mill, one of Sutter's workmen found some pieces of gold. At first, Sutter tried to keep the news quiet. He had dreams of becoming even richer than he already was, perhaps the richest man in the whole world. But, within a few weeks, the news about the gold leaked out. Men descended upon Sutter's land from all directions.

Soon they were coming from all over the United States and even from more distant places. These people moved into the area like a great herd of animals. They killed all of Sutter's cattle, stole his farm produce and tools, and tore down his buildings to obtain wood to build homes for themselves. The city of Sacramento sprang up where Sutter's fort stood. On the site of his saw mill grew up the present city of Coloma.

Far from becoming the richest man in the world, as he had dreamed, Sutter was reduced to poverty. He finally moved away from the area to a distant part of his land. Here his family arrived to live with him. He began to farm and, with his sons, planted more fruit trees and new fields of wheat. Again he was fairly successful. In 1855 Sutter brought a suit in the Californian courts against the l, 700 settlers, who now occupied the lands he had previously owned. He demanded $ 25 million from the state for the roads, canals, and .bridges that he himsel'f had built but which the state had .taken over. He also asked for a percentage of all the gold mined an his property.

This suit was decided by the Californian courts in Sutter' s favour. Briefly, Sutter was agai.n a rich and important man. His dream of a private empire, with himself as king and ruler, returned. But then the storm broke again. When the judge's decision was made public, 1.0, 000 people, w,ho were now established in the area and thought they might lose their homes, descended upon the court. They burned the courthouse and tried to hang the judge. They destroyed more of Sutter's property. Later, Sutter's home was set on fire and burned to the g.round. Sutter' s oldest son killed himself; his second son was murdered.

Sutter was never able to recover from these last and final blows. He went back east and, in the courts of Washington, again brought a suit to recover what he claimed had been stolen from him, He spent the last fifteen years of his life in

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