I subsequently
became well acquainted with him, and learned both to respect and to
pity him. I respected him for his intrepid courage, his gentle
manners, his large heart, and his unbounded benevolence. I pitied him
for his simplicity, which, while suspecting nothing wrong in others,
led him to trust all who had a kind word on their lips, and made him
the victim of every sharper in the country. He was a native of
Switzerland and was an officer in the Swiss Guards, in the service of
the King of France, in 1823, and for some years afterwards. In 1834,
he emigrated to America, and had varied and strange adventures among
the Indians at the West; in the Sandwich Islands, at Fort Vancouver,
in Alaska, and along the Pacific Coast. In July, 1839, the vessel
which he was aboard of, was stranded in the harbor of San Francisco.
He then penetrated into the interior of California and founded the
first white settlement in the valley of the Sacramento, on the river
of that name, at the mouth of the American River, which settlement he
named Helvetia. He built a fort there and gathered around it a large
number of native Indians and some white settlers. In 1841, the
Mexican government granted to him a tract of land eleven square
leagues in extent; and, subsequently, a still larger concession was
made to him by the Governor of the Department.
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