The Adventures of a Young Swiss in California. The Gold Rush Account of...

Sacramento: Sacramento Book Collectors Club, 1992 First edition in English. One of 400 copies designed by Susan Acker and Mary McDermott at the Feathered Serpent Press. This copy includes a Presentation, signed by the translator and editor, Mary Paquette, and is also signed by both Susan Acker and Mary McDermott, dated 11/12/92. Translated and Edited by Mary Grace Paquette. Foreword by A.P. Nasatir. x, 109pp. Frontis portrait, drawings, facsimiles; index. Cloth spine, blue boards, gilt lettering. A very fine copy. Scarce. "Théophile de Rutté, aged twenty-three, was employed by a Swiss firm in Brazil when he received news of the California gold discovery. He formed a partnership with a friend to supply goods to the miners. They arrived in San Francisco on October 27, 1849. De Rutté's narrative, written many years later, recalls his business activities in San Francisco and Sacramento, a tour of the northern mines in the spring of 1850, and visits with Sutter at the Hock Farm. He wrote exceptional accounts of the Sacramento flood of February 1850, San Francisco fires, and the workings of the 1851 Vigilance Committee. A friend of Sutter, de Rutté was appointed the first Swiss consul to Oregon and California. He also founded the Swiss Benevolent Society in San Francisco" (Kurutz). Lively memoirs of this Swiss businessman, including the Sacramento flood of 1850, the early San Francisco fires, his participation in the Vigilance Committee of 1851, and more. [Kurutz: 547-b]..