524 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HOUSEBAClC. 



but Salterns Fort was, for the time being, ruined. Let 

 him tell the story in his own words. He says : 



<^ My grist mill was never finished. Everything 

 was stolen, even the stones. There is a saying that 

 men will steal everything but a mile-stone and a mill- 

 stone. They stole my mill-stones. They stole the 

 bells from the Fort, and gate-weights ; the hides they 

 stole, and salmon barrels. I had two hundred barrels 

 which I made for salmon. Some of the cannon at the 

 fort were stolen. * * My property was all left ex- 

 posed, and at the mercy of the rabble, when gold was 

 discovered. My men all deserted me. I could not 

 shut the gates of my Fort, and keep out the rabble. 

 They would have broken them down. The country 

 swarmed with lawless men. Emigrants drove their 

 stock into my yard, and used my grain with impunity. 

 Expostulation did no good. I was alone. There was 

 no law.'' 



In face of all these disadvantages he struggled on 

 until farm helpers demanded ten dollars per day, then, 

 a hopeless old man, he gave up the struggle, and in 

 1849, with his Indians, he moved into Hock Farm, 

 little dreaming that his Fort was to be the nucleus for 

 Sacramento, the second city as to size in California. 



He retired, but his son took the reins out of the 

 father's feeble hands, and staked out a town around 

 the Old Fort, down to the embarcadero, and along the 

 river front, naming the settlement Sacramento. The 

 streets were laid out eighty feet wide, except the cen- 

 tre one, M street, which was one hundred feet in width. 

 The purchasing of more than four lots by one person 

 was discouraged. 



At first Sacramento was a " city of tents^ with its 



