The "secret" was
out in brief space, and like an eagle with outspread wings, it flew
away into all quarters of the globe. Poor Sutter, strange to say,
it ruined him. The gold seekers came from the ends of the earth and
"squatted" on his lands, and he spent all the fortune he had amassed
in trying to dispossess them. But his efforts were unavailing. The
laws, loosely administered then, seemed to be against him, and fate,
relentless fate, spared him not. Almost all that was left to him in
the end was the ring which he had made out of the lumps of the first
gold found, and on which was inscribed this legend: "The first gold
found in California, January, 1848." It tells a melancholy as well as
a joyous tale, in it are bound up histories and tragedies, in it the
happiness of multitudes, and even the fate of immortal souls! The
California legislature at length took pity on Sutter, and granted him
a pension of $250 per month, on which he lived until he was summoned,
at Washington, D.C., on June 17th, 1880, by the Angel of Death, to a
land whose gold mocks us not, and where everyone's "claim" is good,
if he be found worthy to pass through the Golden Gate.
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