Original edition, chapter one heading, What I Saw in California: Being the Journal of a Tour; by the Emigrant Route and South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, across the Continent of North America, the Great Desert Basin, and through California, in the Years 1846, 1847.Larger.
It's a pity Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon wasted his time in Florida looking for the fountain of youth. If he'd only come to California's invigorating shores, he might have had more success.
Kentucky journalist Edwin Bryant traveled to California in 1846, where he not only observed events here, he also gathered one or two doubtful tales of the Golden State's magical power, like this story about a 250 year old man who dies abroad but is buried in his native California.
His body was interred with great pomp and ceremony in his own cemetery, and prayers were rehearsed in all the churches for the rest of his soul. He was happy, it was supposed, in heaven, where, for a long series of years, he had prayed to be; and his heir was happy that he was there. But what a disappointment! Being brought back and interred in Californian soil, with the health-breathing Californian zephyrs rustling over his grave, the energies of life were immediately restored to his inanimate corpse! Herculean strength was imparted to his frame, and bursting the prison-walls of death, he appeared before his chapfallen heir reinvested with all the vigor and beauty of early manhood.
Edwin Bryant published What I Saw in California in 1848. He returned to Kentucky in 1853 and only came west again in the year of his death.
"A camp in the heart of a forest of tall pines. Covered wagons rest, their wheels nearly hidden by tall grass in the clearing. Men and women cook over a large open fire near a stream in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, having left Susanville, California that morning, on Saturday, August 13, 1859, and made camp here," drawing by Daniel A. Jenks, 1859. Larger.
Inspired by California's natural beauty, Kentucky journalist Edwin Bryant liked to create romantic fancys. His love of romance, however, didn't blind him to the facts of grim reality.
In 1846 Bryant and some campanions were camped below the western slope of the Sierra divide, a place of such magic that for a brief time an imagined world overwhelmed the real one.
August 26. . . . The timber surrounding the circular space which we occupied is very tall. The bright blaze of our fire defined indistinctly the columnar shapes of the pines, and their overarching branches. Fancy soon pictured our residence for the night a spacious gothic temple, whose walls had mouldered away, leaving the pillars and the skeleton roof, through which the bright stars were twinkling, standing, in defiance of the assaults of time and the fury of the elements. The temperature of the evening is delightful, and the sky serene and cloudless.
One of our party this morning picked up a human skull near the trail. Some unfortunate emigrant, probably, had been interred near the spot, and, being exhumed by Indians or wolves, this was a portion of his skeleton.
Edwin Bryant's What I Saw in California recounted his travels between 1846 and 1847. Bryant meant his work not just to be entertaining but to be "useful to the traveller and emigrant to the Pacific."
"Bird's eye view of Santa Barbara, California, 1877. Looking north to the Santa Barbara Mountains. Drawn & published by E.S. Glover" Larger.
California has been home to many different peoples, but that doesn't mean that mixing cultures has come easily.
In the 1800s, the war between the United States and Mexico dramatically changed California's cultural landscape. Lieutenant Edwin Bryant, a native Kentuckian who kept a detailed journal during his travels with the army, describes the process during a stay in Santa Barbara:
We were visited during the forenoon by Mr. Sparks, an American, Dr. Den, an Irishman, and Mr. Burton, another American, residents of Santa Barbara. They had been suffered by the Californians to remain in the place. Their information communicated to us was, that the town was deserted of nearly all its population. A few houses only were occupied. . . .
After hunting about some time we discovered a miserable dwelling, occupied by a shoemaker and his family. . . . At our request they provided for us a supper of tortillas, frijoles, and stewed carne, seasoned with chile Colorado, for which, paying them dos pesos for four, we bade them good-evening, all parties being well satisfied. . . . The women, from the accounts they had received of the intentions of the Americans, were evidently unprepared for civil treatment from them. They expected to be dealt with in a very barbarous manner, in all respects; but they were disappointed, and invited us to visit them again.
Bryant's What I Saw in California became an important resource for emigrants and forty-niners looking for reliable information about California.
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