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Detour to the California Gold Rush: Eugene Ring’s Travels in South
America, California, and Mexico, 1848-1850 (2008, U.S. Press & Graphics, 6x9 inches, soft cover,
192 pages, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-9817939-0).
Twenty-one-year-old Eugene Ring departed New York City on November 8, 1848 on a long sea voyage to the
west coast of South America to regain his health after a long illness.
While transiting the Strait of Magellan, he first heard the news of the
great California gold rush from a passing ship.
Thus begins Eugene’s
incredible unplanned adventure.
Follow Eugene’s memoir as he describes his
fascinating life at sea; his dangerous passage through the Strait of
Magellan; his forays in the South American towns of Valparaiso,
Callao, Lima and Guayaquil; his stopover in Central America's Panama City;
his unplanned journey to San Francisco; his life there initially as a
bookkeeper among the gold-crazy, exploding population; his horrifying and
heroic experiences in the great Sacramento flood; the lure of gold and his
adventures in the mines.
Continue the story with Eugene’s decision to
spend the winter of 1850 in Panama, before returning to the gold fields
the next spring; his ten-man foraging party’s abandonment on the west
coast of southern Mexico, while ashore looking for food and water for his
becalmed ship; and finally his exhausting, cholera-laced trek across the
jungles and mountains of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Veracruz on the
east coast of Mexico, where only five survivors from the original foraging
party, catch a salvation ship to New Orleans.
Eugene Ring provides an
enthralling account of his activities, descriptions of what he saw, the
places he went, the people he met, and how he felt about things – a truly
remarkable record of a remarkable experience.
 |
Eugene Ring’s original handwritten gold rush memoir starts with his departure from New York City. |
Do you have any related documents, photos, or personal histories that you
could share with us? If so, please contact:
Al Ring ringal@comcast.net
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