Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by

NAFIS & CORNISH.

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the South ern District of New York.

J. J. Reed, Printer, 16 Spruce-st.

PREFACE.

In sending out the following sheets, the Author has done what a year ago was as far removed from the path of his intentions, as the theatre of the incidents related is from the fireside at which they were written. But who can estimate the force of circumstances in shaping his destiny?

I wrote my Travels in the Great Western Prairies, &c., with little belief that they would excite any attention beyond the circle in which personal friendship would in some sense link the reader with the events narrated. I did not comprehend the extensive interest felt in journey. ings over the wild and barren realms of uncultivated Nature. I did not suppose that the dim outline which words could give of the snow. clad peak, the desert vale, and the trials and dangers which crowd about the pilgrim on the Western Deserts and Mountains, could be made sufficiently distinct to convey even a satisfactory shadow of their sublime, fearful nature. But the very unexpected favor with which that work has been received, has led me to conclude that such matters, related as far as they may be at all, with fidelity, are valued as useful knowledge. Indeed, we may learn much from the pulseless solitudes -from the desert untrodden by the foot of living thing-from the frozen world of mountains, whose chasms and cliffs never echoed to aught, but the thunder-tempests girding their frozen peaks-from old Nature, piled, rocky, bladeless, toneless-if we will allow its lessons of awe to reach the mind, and impress it with the fresh and holy images which they were made to inspire.

The work now presented is another attempt of the same kind. It differs from the previous one, however, in many particulars. The Grea South Sea, the Hawaian Islands, and the Californias are its

theme. Upper and Lower California, their conquest by the Spaniards, Indians, white inhabitants, their present state, surface, vegetation, streams, plains, mountains, volcanoes, animals-all these as they have been, and now are, will be found fully described. To what I have seen has been added authentic information from every known source. And now, dear reader, to your task. Mine is done. Should you laugh and weep, suffer and rejoice, with the actors in the wayfarings before you, and send your fancy in after-times over those rose-clad realms where they will lead you, and feel the dews of a pleasant remembrance falling on your life, I shall receive a full reward for my toil.

Adieu,

THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE editor of this new Pictorial Edition of Farnam's "Adventures," has added a History of the Conquest of California, from official documents and other authentic materials. He has also added a summary account of the most recent and celebrated "Travels in Oregon," including a description of that new and important addition to our national domain. He has also added fifty-three pages of embellishments appropriate to the several subjects treated in the volume.

The reader will perceive that, thus augmented, the work contains much that is important and interesting to all who feel desirous to watch the onward march of the GREAT REPUBLIC.