First and only edition in Dutch of the richly illustrated travelogue of William Redmond Ryan, with many details on the beginning of the California Gold Rush and life in the mines. "Although smaller, the plates are superior to those in the English edition" (Kurutz) and these plates are often reproduced in books on California and the Gold Rush.
Ryan, a New York newspaper man, enlisted in Stevenson's Regiment and describes the journey by ship from New York to Monterey, with a stop in Rio de Janeiro. Following the Skirmish of Todos Santos, the regiment was disbanded. With gold having recently been discovered, Ryan tried his hand at mining and "left unrecorded but little that he saw" (Cowan). The second half of the first volume depicts California during the early days of the Gold Rush and the first two chapters of the second volume describe Ryan's unsuccessful attempt at mining in the Stanislas River valley, where he profited more from dealing in guns. Afterwards Ryan moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a house and ship painter, which is described in most of the second volume.
With a few smudges throughout and the lower outside corner of pp. 250/251 in vol. 2 torn off and replaced with tape, otherwise in good condition. Bradford, Bibliographer's manual of american history, 4767; Cowan, Bibliography of the history of California, p. 547; Kurutz, The California Gold Rush, 548e.