A Yankee in Mexican California, 1834-1836

by Richard Henry Dana Jr.

A sailor's observation of a younger, wilder California. In this excerpt from Richard Henry Dana's around-the-Horn masterpiece, Two Years Before the Mast, we experience the wonder Dana felt when beholding the California coast for the first time, in 1835:

''[T]here was a grandeur in everything around, which gave a solemnity to the scene, a silence and solitariness which affected every part! Not a human being but ourselves for miles, and no sound heard but the pulsations of the great Pacific!''

The passages taken from Two Years Before the Mast and compiled here reveal what California was like before the gold rush. The heavily forested San Francisco Bay Area is a fabulous place to collect firewood for the galley stoves. Monterey, with its whitewashed adobes, is more picturesque than Santa Barbara, where the adobes ''are mostly left of a mud color.'' Interestingly, San Pedro (Port of Los Angeles) is ''universally called the hell of California.''

This pocket-sized book aims to zero in on Dana's insightful descriptions of pre-American California. His eyewitness observations of a land vibrant with commerce yet largely undeveloped will appeal to anyone interested in the many incarnations of this state.