GOLD RUSH: 1849-51

Reported -- by Joseph Henry Jackson -- in our issue of 9/15/43. Postponed publication to April 20th, so here is a digest of the report, for those who missed it. ""...the most significant firsthand record yet discovered for the period, a mine of source material -- limited only because of its price to collectors of Californiana..... Bruff was a draftsman in the U.S. Bureau of Topographical Engineers; his imagination was fired by stories of discoveries and adventure. Though crowding forty nine, he undertook to cross the Continent to a point above the upper Sacramento, where he yielded leadership of his group and a settled in to guard the Company's property on Barclay Mountain through the grim winter of '49-'50. This part of his record contains some of the best narrative of the book...is as fine a contemporary reflection of the 'Great Migration' as has been published. He understood the sweep of the movement...his knowledge informs his journal throughout. For the grim, lively, tragic, amusing human stories, for the flavor of the man himself, go to his own vigorous record...