Presented in 1849 as the diary of a doctor who sailed into San Francisco Bay and travelled to the newly discovered gold districts, this book describes the town, the diggings, the Indian labourers and the fever of the first rush. It was in fact concocted in London by the publisher Henry Vizetelly from newspaper reports, without its author ever seeing California.
A celebrated literary hoax, best read as fiction and as a record of how the gold rush looked from Britain. Download the free EPUB.