paperback, 6 x 9, 320 pages, with 26 b&w engravings
ISBN: 978-1-59714-100-0
$16.95
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paperback, 6 x 9, 320 pages, with 26 b&w engravings ISBN: 978-1-59714-100-0 $16.95 Join Friends of Heyday and save 20% on your purchase. Mountains and Molehills
Frank Marryat; Foreword by Robert Chandler; Annotations by Scott R. Grau
An Englishman in gold rush California Frank Marryat arrived in California from England in 1850 with a manservant and three hunting dogs, hoping to find inspiration for a travel memoir like the one he had previously written about Borneo. What emerged was one of the liveliest firsthand accounts of gold rush California to come out of the era. Equipped with an outsider's perspective and a mischievous sense of humor, Marryat describes the rough-and-tumble San Francisco that was transforming before his eyes. His depiction of the city's early days—its raucous saloons, gold-fevered immigrants, and perpetual reinvention of itself due to explosive population growth and the fires that periodically swept through—are classic. Marryat also gives some of the earliest written descriptions of the nascent settlements of Vallejo, Benicia, and the Russian River area, and he provides invaluable details on native Californian and Spanish Californian life. Redesigned and freshly annotated for the modern reader, Mountains and Molehills is a delight for anyone wanting to indulge in the spirit and adventures of the gold rush era. Reviews "A tale that is part Lady Isabella Bird, part Mark Twain, and part the traveling Charles Dickens." —Craig McCroskey, Sales Representative, Book Travelers West About the Author Frank Marryat, a well-to-do British adventurer, traveled to California via Panama with his manservant and three dogs in 1850 in pursuit of the exotic. Upon his return to England in 1853, he married and returned to California with his bride that same year. After contracting yellow fever while at sea, he had to cut his trip short to return to England, where he died two years later. |
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