What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants; to Which is Annexed an Appendix Containing Official Documents and Letters Authenticating the Accounts of the Quantities of Gold Found, with Its Actual Value Ascertained by Chemical Assay; also Late Communications Containing Accounts of the Highest Interest and Importance from the Gold Districts; with a Map — John Shaqi
What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants; to Which is Annexed an Appendix Containing Official Documents and Letters Authenticating the Accounts of the Quantities of Gold Found, with Its Actual Value Ascertained by Chemical Assay; also Late Communications Containing Accounts of the Highest Interest and Importance from the Gold Districts; with a MapBryant, Edwin
History
What I Saw in California: A Description of Its Soil, Climate, Productions, and Gold Mines, with the Best Routes and Latest Information for Intending Emigrants; to Which is Annexed an Appendix Containing Official Documents and Letters Authenticating the Accounts of the Quantities of Gold Found, with Its Actual Value Ascertained by Chemical Assay; also Late Communications Containing Accounts of the Highest Interest and Importance from the Gold Districts; with a Map
Bryant, Edwin
California -- Description and travel; California -- Gold discoveries; Overland journeys to the Pacific; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
I attended a supper-party given this evening by Mr. Frank Ward. The
party was composed of citizens of the town, and officers of the navy
and the merchant and whale ships in the harbour. In such a company as
was here assembled, it was very difficult for me to realize that I was
many thousand miles from, home, in a strange and foreign country. All
the faces about me were American, and there was nothing in scene or
sentiment to remind the guests of their remoteness from their native
shores. Indeed, it seems to be a settled opinion, that California is
henceforth to compose a part of the United States, and every American
who is now here considers himself as treading upon his own soil, as
much as if he were in one of the old thirteen revolutionary states.
Song, sentiment, story, and wit heightened the enjoyments of the
excellent entertainment of our host, and the jovial party did not
separate until a late hour of the night. The guests, as may be
supposed, were composed chiefly of gentlemen who had, from their
pursuits, travelled over most of the world--had seen developments of
human character under every variety of circumstance, and observed
society, civilized, barbarous, and savage, in all its phases. Their
conversation, therefore, when around the convivial board, possessed an
unhackneyed freshness and raciness highly entertaining and instructive.
On the 27th of September, the U.S. frigate Congress, Captain
Livingston, bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Stockton, and the
U.S. frigate Savannah, Captain Mervine, anchored in the harbour, having
sailed from Monterey a day or two previously. The arrival of these
large men-of-war produced an increase of the bustle in the small town.
Blue coats and bright buttons (the naval uniform) became the prevailing
costume at the billiard-rooms and other public places, and the plain
dress of a private citizen might be regarded as a badge of distinction.
On the 1st of October a courier arrived from the south with
intelligence that the Californians at Los Angeles had organized a force
and rebelled against the authority of the Americans--that they had also
captured an American merchant-vessel lying at San Pedro, the port of
the city of Angels, about thirty miles distant, and robbed it of a
quantity of merchandise and specie. Whether this latter report was or
was not true, I do not know--the former was correct. The frigate
Savannah sailed for Los Angeles immediately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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