-through which that river runs. In 1846 we added the Oregon
Country to our possessions; it now forms the two states of Oregon
and Washington.

Tell about Captain Gray's voyage to the Pacific coast. What did he
buy there? What did he first carry round the globe? Tell about his
second voyage. What did he do in 1792? What happened after Captain
Gray returned to Boston? What happened in 1846? What two states were
made out of the Oregon Country?

CAPTAIN SUTTER[1]
(1803-1880).

236. Captain Sutter and his fort; how the captain lived.--At the time
when Professor Morse sent his first message by telegraph from
Washington to Baltimore (1844), Captain J. A. Sutter, an emigrant
from Switzerland, was living near the Sacramento River in California.
California then belonged to Mexico. The governor of that part of the
country had given Captain Sutter an immense piece of land; and the
captain had built a fort at a point where a stream which he named
the American River joins the Sacramento River.[2] People then called
the place Sutter's Fort, but to-day it is Sacramento City, the
capital of the great and rich state of California.

In his fort Captain Sutter lived like a king. He owned land enough
to make a thousand fair-sized farms; he had twelve thousand head of
cattle, more than ten thousand sheep, and over two thousand horses
and mules. Hundreds of laborers worked for him in his wheat-fields,
and fifty well-armed soldiers guarded his fort. Quite a number of
Americans had built houses near the fort. They thought that the time
was coming when all that country would become part of the United
States.

[Illustration: Map of Sutter's Fort area.]

[Footnote 1: Sutter (Soo'ter).]

[Footnote 2: See map in this paragraph.]

237. Captain Sutter builds a saw-mill at Coloma;[3] a man finds some
sparkling dust.--About forty miles up the American River was a place
which the Mexicans called Coloma, or the beautiful valley. There was
a good fall of water there and plenty of big trees to saw into boards,
so Captain Sutter sent a man named Marshall to build a saw-mill at
that place. The captain needed such a mill very much, for he wanted
lumber to build with and to fence his fields.

Marshall set to work, and before the end of January, 1848, he had
built a dam across the river and got the saw-mill half done. One day
as he was walking along the bank of a ditch, which had been dug back
of the mill to carry off the water, he saw s