Life On the Plains and Among the Diggings; Being Scenes and Adventures of an Overland Journey to California: With Particular Incidents of the Route, Mistakes and Sufferings of the Emigrants, the Indian Tribes, the Present and the Future of the Great West

Auburn, NY: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1854. Third Printing. 384pp. Duodecimo [19.5 cm] Brown cloth with the title gilt stamped on the backstrip. Decorative blind stamping to boards. Good. Boards faded and rubbed at the corners. Sporadic foxing throughout. Ink stamp to verso of blank rear free endsheet. Blank rear flyleaf has been removed. Alonzo Delano, a native of Auburn, New York, resided in Ottawa, Illinois, at the time of the Marshall gold discovery. he left on April 5, 1849, with a company of fifty men, crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph, and entered California via the Lassen Trail. He then made it to the Feather River on September 9 with $4 in his pocket. While providing what has become one of the great classics of the Overland Trail, Delano also wrote in detail about his adventures in the mines and the general conditions of newly arrived emigrants, miners, and Indians. During these first years in California, he spent much time in Sacramento, the mines of the Yuba River (making $600 in two weeks), Marysville, the Gold Lake country, Nelson's Creek, and finally San Francisco. Cowan p.65. Graff 1042. Howes D230. Kurutz 177c. Mattes 423. Sabin 19348. Wagner/Camp 238. Wheat, Gold Rush 57.