C. W. Smith
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 84
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Excerpt from Journal of a Trip to California: Across the Continent From Weston, Mo;, To Weber Creek, Cal;, In the Summer of 1850 Several years ago I had the good fortune to find, in the lumber and rubbish of a storeroom, this little journal. A small leather-backed notebook, it had lain unnoticed and forgotten for more than half a century in the author's old homestead. The original manuscript is written in a 4 by 6 - inch notebook, bound in boards. It contains 180 pages of text, with pressed western flowers and plants pasted on the five fly-leaves at the end. Mr. William Smith, our author's father, came from Gloucestershire, England, in 1831 and settled on a farm (now owned by his grandson, George Smith) just west of the village of Victor, N. Y. For several years Mr. Smith's sons, James and Charles W., both helped him on the farm, but eventually the latter decided to become a printer and so obtained a position in the neighboring village of Canandaigua. At the time of the discovery of gold in California, Mr. C. W. Smith had been for several years on the staff of the Ontario Messenger, which perhaps accounts for the interesting and newsy style in which his journal is written. 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.