[Illustration:  Map showing the extent of the United States after we added the Oregon Country in 1846.]

[Illustration:  EMIGRANTS ON THEIR WAY TO OREGON FIFTY YEARS AGO.]

[Footnote 4:  The Yukon River in Alaska is larger than the Columbia.]

[Footnote 5:  The discovery and exploration of a river usually gives the right to a claim to the country watered by that river, on the part of the nation to which the discoverer or explorer belongs.]

235.  Summary.—­A little over a hundred years ago (1790) Captain Robert Gray of Rhode Island first carried the American flag round the world.  In 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River.  Because he did that the United States claimed the country—­called the Oregon Country—­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.