Kirjahaku

“This is the book on one of the true great men of his era.”-J. H. Jackson, San Francisco ChronicleIn 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.

"We pray the God of mercy to deliver us from our present Calamity," wrote Patrick Breen on the first day of 1847 as he and others in the Donner party awaited rescue from the snowbound Sierras. His famous diary appears in Overland in 1846, edited and annotated by Dale L. Morgan. This handsome two-volume work includes not only primary sources of the Donner tragedy but also the letters and journals of other emigrants on the trail that year. Their voices combine to create a sweeping narrative of the westward movement. Volume I concentrates on the experiences of particular pioneers making the passage—their letters and diaries describe omnipresent dangers and momentary joys, landmarks, Indians encountered, disputes within the companies, births and deaths. Volume II, also based on contemporary records, offers a broader but no less vivid view of what it was like to go west in 1846 and pictures what was found in California and Oregon.

"We pray the God of mercy to deliver us from our present Calamity," wrote Patrick Breen on the first day of 1847 as he and others in the Donner party awaited rescue from the snowbound Sierras. His famous diary appears in Overland in 1846, edited and annotated by Dale L. Morgan. This handsome two-volume work includes not only primary sources of the Donner tragedy but also the letters and journals of other emigrants on the trail that year. Their voices combine to create a sweeping narrative of the westward movement. Volume I concentrates on the experiences of particular pioneers making the passage—their letters and diaries describe omnipresent dangers and momentary joys, landmarks, Indians encountered, disputes within the companies, births and deaths. Volume II, also based on contemporary records, offers a broader but no less vivid view of what it was like to go west in 1846 and pictures what was found in California and Oregon.