Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - June - 2006 Issue
Western States, Travels, and More from Dawson's Book Shop
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Here is an unusual book. The title is Through the Golden Gate: A story of remarkable adventures in California and along the West coast of America, by Charles Ridgway. Ridgway was a Gold Rush era pioneer who tells of his return to the Golden State in 1870 and travels along the Pacific coast. This 1923 book doesn't appear that unusual until you look at the printing location: Yokohama, Japan. As best we can tell, there are few items of Americana from this era published in Yokohama, and probably in all of Japan. The publisher was Fukuin Printing, and we are unable to determine just why this item was published in Yokohama. However, Ridgway had at least one other book, about a trip he took to Australia, published by Fukuin. $500.
For those interested in the peculiar American genre known as Indian Captivities, here is Samuel Drake's Indian Captivities: Being a Collection of the Most Remarkable Narratives of Persons taken Captive by the North American Indians... This should save you from having to read a mess of books, since it contains accounts of 31 captivities. As might be expected from the time (1839), the Indians are generally savages who treated their guests most cruelly. $500.
John Barrow wrote a sequel to the most famous of all mutinies, entitled The Eventful History of the Mutiny and Piratical Seizure of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause and Consequences. Published in 1831, some forty years after the famous mutiny, Barrow tells us what became of the mutineers, about those who were returned for trial, and the discovery John Adams, the last surviving mutineer, on Pitcairn Island. $500.
Dawson's Book Shop may be found online at www.dawsonbooks.com, phone number 323-469-2186.
