402 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
Sacramento, extending from first to sixth, and from H to L 
streets. The houses and stores here are mostly built of brick, 
one or two stories high. The streets are gravelled or planked ; 
the side-walks are planked or paved with brick, and covered 
With awnings to give protection against the sun. In those 
parts of the town used for dwellings, the houses are chiefly of 
wood, neatly painted, and surrounded by gardens, and the 
streets are lined with shade-trees, such as cottonwood, willow, 
sycamore, elm, and locust. There are water-works and gas- 
works. The water is pumped up from the Sacramento River, 
which is so turbid, even at its lowest stage, that six inches of 
mud are deposited monthly in the reservoir. The gas is made 
from imported coal. A railroad twenty miles long connects 
Sacramento with Folsom, which is connected with Lincoln by 
another road of about the same length. A steamboat leaves 
Sacramento daily at two p. mu. for San Francisco; thrice a 
week, starting in the morning, for Marysville; and at least 
thrice a week for Red Bluff, Stages run daily to Marysville, 
Auburn, Placerville, Coloma, Jackson, Stockton, and Fairfield. 
The first settlement by white men on the site of Sacramento 
was made in 1839, by John A. Sutter, a Swiss by birth, who, 
after having served as a captain in the body-guard of Charles 
X. of France, came to the United States, where he was Ameri- 
canized. He afterwards came to California and was admitted 
to Mexican citizenship. He obtained a grant of eleven square 
leagues of land on the eastern bank of the Sacramento River, 
and under that grant the title to the site of Sacramento City is 
now held, In 1841 he built some adobe buildings, which he 
dignified with the title of New Helvetia, while to the Ameri- 
cans it was generally known as “Sutter’s Fort.” It was, for 
a long time, the only place where white men had a permanent 
foothold in the Sacramento basin; and it was a place of im- 
portance, as the first point where the American trappers, 
travellers, and immigrants, entering the territory from the 
eastward, could obtain provisions, ammunition, and horses, 
and rest secure against Indians, Sutter treated all comers 
