PBA Galleries

2 vols. Edited by Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines. Foreword by F.W. Hodge. Illustrated with plates from sketches and drawings by Bruff. 10x7¼, quarter cloth and boards, spines lettered in gilt, slipcase. First Edition.

"Detailed journals and drawings of a trained draughtsman and engineer, who resigned his army commission and traveled from Washington, D.C., to the diggings..." - Wheat, who applauds the "scholarly editing" by Read and Gaines. Howes calls it the "most elaborate of overland narratives." Bruff organized and commanded a party of sixty-six men called the Washington City and California Mining Association, leaving the nation's capital on April 2, 1849, and arriving at the Feather River on November 1 of that year. The overland journey is covered in the first volume, his experiences in the mines in the second. Howes R91; Kurutz 93a; Mattes 377; Mintz 64; Rocq 15724; Wheat Gold Rush 25.