Bruff's Gold Rush Journals, Drawings, and Papers

Heading:
Author: Bruff, J. Goldsborough
Title: Gold Rush: The Journals, Drawings and other Papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff, Captain, Washington City and California Mining Association, April 2, 1849 - July 20, 1851
Place Published: New York
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Date Published: 1944
Description:

2 volumes. Edited by Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines. Foreword by F.W. Hodge. Illustrated with plates from sketches and drawings by Bruff. 25.5x18.2 cm (10x7¼"), black cloth-backed gray boards, spines lettered in gilt, black publisher's 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).
Condition Report: Touches of wear to slipcase, top joint cracking; faint creasing to top of spine of volume I; top edges of textblocks foxed; near fine in very good slipcase.