Mountains and Molehills

It’s the mid nineteenth-century and Frank Marryat, having journeyed from England to America via Panama, finally lands in California, where his pioneering adventures begin. Marryat’s diary entries, beginning in the April of 1850, chronicle all his weird and wonderful experiences in America from horse races, hunting, bear fighting and bull fighting, and show us – in his inimitable narrative voice of ‘bemused Englishman’ – the vibrant world of San Francisco society during the California Gold Rush.