Six Months In California Primary Source Edition PDF Download

Excerpt from Six Months in California Before the completion of the railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, the countries lying west of the Rocky Mountains were terra incognita, or at best only known to those few whom the love of adventure and gain had drawn to those distant lands. California especially, being the most celebrated, bad been the most misrepresented. By the majority the land was regarded as teeming with gold and abounding in iniquity; a paradise for paupers, and a refuge for the scum of the earth. To a certain extent this was true. Labour was very well paid, the profits of business were very large, gold abounded in the mines, and poverty springing from want of work was unknown. Flush times naturally induced lavishness in the style of living, and prodigality led to intemperance; but, to-day, San Francisco is as orderly a city as any in the Union, - certainly more so than New York. The number of travellers attracted to California during the last year lias been very great, and I anticipate a large increase for the year to come. My visit to that country has been so interesting, and attended with so much pleasure, that I have been induced to publish a slight sketch of my experiences, not only as a guide to the traveller. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.