The gold rush diary of Ramón Gil Navarro

"Gold! gold! gold! This seductive mantra, shouted throughout the Americas in 1848-49, convinced thousands of people that California's gold could be had simply by picking it up off the ground. Ramon Gil Navarro, an Argentinean political exile living in Chile, heard these rumors of a new El Dorado, but he was not so naive as to believe that the gold merely had to be gathered. He understood that mining required extensive capital investment and labor, and along with three other investors he arranged to have 120 workers and a shipload of supplies sent to California. Navarro accompanied the workers to Stockton and began prospecting.". "Navarro encountered people from all over the world brought together in a society marked by racial and ethnic intolerance, swift and cruel justice, and great hardships. It was a world of contrasts, where the roughest of the rough lived in close proximity to extremely refined cultural circles."--BOOK JACKET.