David Spilman Fine Books

Adventures of a Gold Hunter; Single sheet [12 caricatures of a potential gold miner traveling to California and adventures in gold mining, Harper's Weekly, July 24, 1858, Volume II, No. 82, page 480]

Harper's Weekly

New York: Harper and Brothers, 1858. Very Good. First Edition. [16x10.25in] 479-480 pp. articles and advertisements on recto, 12 panels of caricatures and advertisements on verso; Single sheet with black ink; Light age-toning with a few light spots, a few small chips and closed tears along edges. Item #14392

This illustration relates to an article in the issue of "The Frazer's River Gold-Fields", on page 466. The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia a few miles upstream from the Fraser River. Although the area had been mined for a few years, news of the strike spread to San Francisco when the governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint. People in San Francisco and the California gold fields greeted the news with excitement. Within a month 30,000 men had descended upon Victoria. 4,000 of these Gold Rush pioneers settlers were Chinese.[2][3] Until that time, the village had had a population of only about 500. This was a record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the gold rushes of California and Colorado. (Wiki)

Harper's Weekly, A Journal of Civilization was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, alongside illustrations. It carried extensive coverage of the American Civil War, including many illustrations of events from the war. During its most influential period, it was the forum of the political cartoonist Thomas Nast. (Wiki). The Weekly was among a group of new magazines that benefited from lower postal rates and provisions that publishers instead of subscribers paid the postage. It was soon popular thanks to its use of illustrations, the relatively high quality of its printing, and its editorial content. By the end of 1861, the magazine had a circulation of 120,000 and stood, in terms of readership, among the leading magazines of the Civil War period. (Ohio State University).

Price: $60.00