Here he took Colonel Sutter into a private room and showed him what he had found, saying that he believed it to be gold. Sutter read up the account of gold in an encyclopedia, tested the substance with aqua fortis, weighed it, and decided that Marshall was right, and that the material he had found was undoubtedly gold. It was a momentous discovery, repeated nearly a half-century later, when the same metal was found in enormous quantities in the Klondike region. Colonel Sutter and his companions tried to keep the matter a secret, but it was impossible. Marshall, being first on the ground, enriched himself, but by bad management lost all he had gained and died a poor man. Colonel Sutter tried to keep intruders off his property, but they came like the swarms of locusts that plagued Egypt. They literally overran him, and when he died, in 1880, he was without any means whatever; but California has since erected a handsome statue to his memory. For the following ten or twenty years, it may be said, the eyes of the civilized world were upon California, and men rushed thither from every quarter of the globe. There was an endless procession of emigrant trains across the plains; the ships that fought the storms on their way around Cape Horn were crowded almost to gunwales, while thousands halved the voyage by trudging, across the Isthmus of Panama to the waiting ships on the other side. California became a mining camp and millions upon millions of gold were taken from her soil. THE MORMONS. By this time the Mormons engaged much public attention. Joseph Smith, of Sharon, Vermont, and Palmyra, New York, was the founder of the sect. He claimed to have found in a cave a number of engraved plates, containing the Mormon Bible, which was his guide in the formation of a new form of religious belief. Although polygamy was not commended, it was afterward added to their peculiar faith, which is that sins are remitted through baptism, and that the will of God was revealed to his prophet, Smith, as it was to be revealed to his successors. The most grotesque farce in the name of religion is sure to find believers, and they soon gathered about Smith. The first Mormon conference was held at Fayette, N.Y., in 1830. As their number increased, they saw that the West offered the best opportunity for growth and expansion, and, when there were nearly 2,000 of them, they removed to Jackson, Missouri, where they made a settlement. Their practices angered the people, and, as soon as they could find a good pretext, the militia were called out and they were ordered to "move on."