Sutter's Gold

This is the lavish but dull story of the man on whose land gold was discovered in California, and of how it destroyed him. Arnold is John Sutter, a political refugee from Switzerland who travels to New York, through Canada, and to Hawaii before ending up in California, where he obtains land grants that give him all the land for a seven-days' ride in all directions. When gold is discovered in the water-race for a sawmill he owns, his empire disintegrates. Workers desert him, people stake their own claims out of his lands, his buildings are torn down for their wood, his crops and orchards are burned, and his son is murdered while trying to defend the family holdings....