About the same time, supplies were needed at the saw-mill, and a teamster whom Sutter thought he could trust was sent with them. He, of course, heard from the workmen at the mill about the finding of gold, and being very incredulous, was given a few small nuggets to convince him. Returning to the fort, and still doubtful of the value of the yellow stuff he had gotten from the men at the saw-mill, the idea occurred to him that a good way to test the matter was to try to trade it for whiskey, so he offered his few pieces of yellow metal at the store that had been recently opened at New Helvetta by Smith & Brannan. Smith, to whom he offered the gold, though distrustful of its being gold, made the trade. The whiskey loosened the teamster’s tongue, and the secret was out. This was about a week before the six weeks of agreed secrecy had expired. Unaware that they stood at the threshold of a great era, at the birthplace, one might say, of a mighty empire, Sutter and Marshall were reluctant to change the future of peaceful plodding pursuits that they had marked out for themselves, for they knew not what, nor did they dream that they would be the first to suffer disaster from this discovery. The news that had been let loose by the trusted assistant and the drunken teamster spread like fire when touched to a pile of straw, to San Francisco, Monterey, Los Angeles and San Diego, almost to every settlement in California and up into Oregon, going almost like a flash. The men at the saw-mill and at the fort at once traded the particles of yellow metal they had found for picks, shovels, pans, blankets, boots, bacon, beef and flour, on the basis of eight dollars an ounce; this the traders were willing to risk as the value. People poured in by the hundred from everywhere. The wheat in Sutter’s fields was never harvested; his mills were never completed; no man now wanted to do his work. His sheep, cattle and hogs were stolen and devoured by hungry men who squatted on his lands, dug over and wasted them, till little by little his vast properties melted away. He spent his money in litigation that was fruitless, trying to reclaim the title to his lands, and was saved from dire poverty by a pension from the State. He died in Washington, D. C., in 1880. Marshall fared no better. The squatters took possession of the land, dividing it into mining claims; he wandered about the district, a broken, homeless man, till finally in 1865 he obtained a grant to a piece of land due him for services in the Mexican War, on which he lived, growing grapes, till death called him. A simple monument now marks the spot where Marshall first found the gold, and Sutter’s Fort has been reproduced in one of Sacramento’s parks to keep their memories green.