J. Ross Browne

Contains primary source material. The author accompanied Poston in his tour as Indian agent. No other work gives so vivid or such an accurate account of the country, and of the terrors which then attended border life in Arizona, where one-twentieth of the population had been swept away by the attacks of the Apaches in three years. The book contains a sketch of the Arizona career of Sylvester Mowry, a long account of S. F. Butterworth's adventures in Arizona; an account of the Oatman captivity, etc.

Contains text of three articles which appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, volumes 30 and 31 in May, June and July, 1865.

A limited edition of 1400 copies

John Ross Browne (1817-1875) of Kentucky, the official reporter for the California State Constitutional Convention of September-October 1849, came to California in 1849 as an employee of the government revenue service. He traveled widely in the next two decades before settling down in Oakland. Report of the debates of the Convention of California (1850) comprises the official records of the convention. Browne had been a shorthand reporter for the U.S. Senate before coming west, and he provides transcripts of the proclamation calling the convention, proceedings of the convention, text of the state constitution adopted by the delegates, and official correspondence regarding the convention and the institution of state government under that constitution.

John Ross Browne (1817-1875) of Kentucky, the official reporter for the California State Constitutional Convention of 1849, came to California in 1849 as an employee of the government revenue service. He traveled widely in the next two decades, including a stay in China as U.S. minister, before settling down in Oakland in 1870. Crusoe's island (1864) contains four short works: (1) Crusoe's island, an account of his visits to Juan Fernandez, the island off the Chilean coast where Alexander Selkirk's experiences are supposed to have been the basis of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; (2) A dangerous journey, an account of Browne's 1849 journey by horseback from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo; (3) Observations in office, which summarizes his experiences as a functionary of the Treasury Department sent to the Pacific Coast in 1858 to examine customs houses, with chapters on a controversy in Port Townsend, Washington, concerning the sale of liquor to Native Americans and on the exploitation of Native Americans in California; and (4) A peep at Washoe, inspired by the latest "rush," that for gold in the Washoe region of the Sierra Nevada, including Browne's reflections on mining fevers and his recollections of his own travels through Nevada and California mining districts.