a very long rifle with a very small bullet, and were dead shots. Wilder than the bears and panthers, however, were the fierce Indians. Many of the settlers and their families were killed and

scalped, and many of the Indians too were killed. So savage was the fighting in Kentucky that that state in its early days was called "the dark and bloody ground." But the Indians were gradually pushed farther west. The woods were cleared off, more and more settlers came from the east and from Europe, and so many people in the end came to live in the west that, as we have seen, a long list of states, one after another, was added to "the old. thirteen." After railroads were built and steamboats were put on the rivers and lakes, the crowd of immigrants became very great. Cities have grown so fast as almost to take the breath away. Chicago has over a million of people. When the revo

THE PURITAN COLONIST

Many of the early settlers in New England came to the new world for religious liberty. They disapproved many practices of the Church of England, which they wished to "purify." Hence they were called Puritans. The picture is from Ward's statue in Central Park, New York.

lutionary war was ended the place where the great city now stands was a swamp, inhabited mostly by wild ducks. In 1837, when the village which grew up by the lake became a city, there were 3,000 inhabitants. And so the republic has filled with people. There were only 3,000,000 in all the thirteen States at the time of the revolu

tion. Now our forty-five states have nearly, if not quite, 70,000,000.

12. James Schouler.-James Schouler has written a history of the United States in five volumes, which gives an excellent picture of the growth of the republic from the formation of the Constitution to the breaking out of the civil war. The selection gives a vivid picture of an event which produced great excitement at the time, and which led to a marvelously rapid immigration to California.

The Discovery of Gold in California

JAMES SCHOULER

SOME miles above Sutter's fort, on the American fork of the Sacramento, a saw-mill was in course of erection for turning some pine forests near by into lumber. Marshall, with a gang of workmen, comprising native Indians and a few white Mormons, was engaged upon the work. While widening and deepening the channel, where water was let on to run the mill, yellow particles were brought down by night, mingled with the loose mud and gravel, which Marshall discovered as he sauntered along the tailrace in the morning. Suspecting the truth, which was confirmed by another night's sluicing, he gathered. some of the glittering grains in his pouch, and rode down the stream to Captain Sutter, dismounting at the fort on the afternoon of the 28th.* Sutter weighed the ore, applied such tests of science as he could command, ransacked his little library upon the subject, and pronounced the substance gold. From that moment the news of the discovery spread, and men's minds were turned in his little kingdom from saw-mills, flourmills, herds, flocks, and all that humbler property which hitherto had absorbed his thoughts and theirs, and, to quote Sutter's own expressive phrase,—for he could not ride luck firmly at a break-neck speed, -the curse of the discovery was on him.

Neither Sutter nor Marshall could profit by nature's confidence. They agreed to keep the secret to themselves; and a Mexican grant being of course out of the question by that time, Sutter procured a lease of this region from the Indian natives, and then undertook the more difficult affair of procuring title from the United States. Colonel Mason, the American commandant at Monterey, could give no document; and so far

* January 28, 1848.