Eldorado;: Or, Adventures in the path of empire, comprising a voyage to California, via Panama; life in San Francisco and Monterey; pictures of the gold region; and experiences of Mexican travel,

Rating:
Summary: Eldorado--A Wonderful Visit to Wild California
Review: Bayard Taylor, with the eye of the photographer for detail and composition and the writing talent of the professional journalist Horace Greely so willingly paid, provides the reader with a fantastic look at California of the mid-1800's. His vivid descriptions of the people, the events, and perhaps most importantly, the pre-development beauty of California's wild mountains, seacoasts, and valleys, made this reviewer (a native Californian) long for a time machine to allow visits to the wondrous collection of experiences described by Taylor. From his many travels across the land, to his viewing of the first California constitutional convention, his words allow the reader to feel the wind in one's hair as the California-bred horses fly at top speed across the valleys and through the washes, or to become a fly on the wall as the convention delegates reach compromises which shaped and prepared the State for its Golden future. The pictures he paints of the natural environment of early California are so dramatic that they must could certainly be used to support any attempts to preserve the tragically few remaining expanses of California wilderness. This is a book for Californians (and those who love the state) who wish to return, if only for a few brief moments, to the sounds and the sights of it's birth: raw, chaotic, beautiful, yet with a rich Spanish/Mexican heritage and social codes that provided a useable framework to maintain law and order. Taylor describes it all, allowing us to understand not only what was happening, but also why. It's a great book.