Mountains and Molehills, Or Recollections of a Burnt Journal (Classics of the Old West series)
xii, 444pp, with illustrations by the author. A facsimile reprint of the original 1855 publication. Bound in full brown leather with blind embossed decorations and gilt lettering front and spine. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Yellow satin ribbon marker bound in. 8vo. Boards very slightly rounded on corners. Original leaflet from the publisher, giving details of Frank Marryat and his journal, loosely laid in, together with an original, unused 'classics of the old west' ex libris bookplate. Frank Marryat, an Englishman in California, was a hard luck case. But his hard luck is today's good fortune for his tale of disasters that dogged his steps from England to San Francisco, is immediately appealing and consistently instructive of life during the heyday of the Golden West. His where the years just after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill. Most of the gold-seeking immigrants took their name - the forty-niners- from their first big year. Frank Marryat arrived in 1850. A beautiful book