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.
