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up just off San Diego, between the Pacific and the bay, and those of its members who managed to escape infested the country, giving themselves up to banditry. Two gangs were formed and the partisans put the country to fire and blood. Sutter was wise enough not to interfere, and skilful enough to come to terms with both factions. However, hunters, trappers and fur-traders, all of American nationality, had infiltrated into the very heart of the region, and they formed a small but very active nucleus who wanted California to join the Union. Here again, Sutter was able to manoeuvre without compromising himself, for, while the Americans benefited from his secret support (every six months he sent a courier over the mountains to carry his reports to St Louis; one of his messengers even presented himself in Washington, to submit a plan of conquest: Sutter demanded personal command of the troops and exacted one-half of the territories conquered as his reward), in the eyes of the Mexicans, his heroic conduct on the frontier, where he energetically repelled the constant incursions of savage tribes, made him appear as such a faithful ally of the government that they gave him the title Guardian of the Northern Frontier, with the rank of captain. And, to recompense him for his services, Alvarado made him a grant of eleven square leagues of land, an area as vast as the little canton of Basle, his homeland.
    The Indians were Sutter's biggest headache.
    The savage tribes of the Upper Sacramento looked askance upon his settlement. These ploughed lands, these farms with their flocks and herds, these buildings that sprang up everywhere, were encroaching on their hunting grounds. They had taken up arms and, by night, set fire to barns and haystacks while, in broad daylight, they murdered the lonely shepherds and raided the cattle. There were frequent armed clashes, shots were exchanged and never a day passed but a dead man was carried back to the farmhouse: the scalped corpse of a woodcutter, a hideously-mutilated planter or a militiaman struck down from behind. Never had Sutter had such good reason to congratulate himself on his brainwave of importing a Kanaka work-force as during these first two years of incessant skirmishes. Without them, he could never have achieved his goal.
    There were six villages full of these islanders.
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    In spite of the struggles, the battles, the political complications, the ever-present threat of revolution, in spite of murders and fire-raising, John Augustus Sutter was proceeding methodically with his plan.
    New Helvetia was taking shape.
    The dwelling-houses, the ranch-house, the principal buildings, the granaries and warehouses were now surrounded by a wall five feet thick and twelve feet high. At each corner stood a rectangular bastion, armed with three cannon. Six other guns defended the main entrance. There was a permanent garrison of one hundred men. Further, all the year round, the immense domain was guarded by watchmen and patrols. The militiamen, recruited in the bars of Honolulu, had married Californian wives who accompanied them where-ever they were posted, carrying the baggage, grinding corn and making bullets and cartridges. In times of danger, all these people fell back upon the small fort and helped to reinforce the garrison there. Two small boats, armed with cannon, were anchored in front of the fort, ready to sail up either the American River or the Sacramento.
    The men who ran the sawmills (where the giant trees of the locality were sawn up) and the innumerable workshops were mostly ships' carpenters, helmsmen or boatswains who, while in port on the coast, had been persuaded to desert their sailing-ships for a wage of five dollars a day.
    It was not unusual to see white men coming to the ranch-house to apply for work, attracted by the renown and the prosperity of the settlement. They were poor colonists who had not been successful on their own, mostly Russians, Irishmen and Germans. Sutter