Two Years Before the Mast

Richard Henry Dana (for whom Dana Point was named) wrote Two Years Before the Mast as a diary during a sea voyage. I’ve not read it yet, though I will definitely be checking it out soon, if for no other reason than the portrait it contains of early 19th Century California.

In the book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is”. He sails from Boston, around Cape Horn, arriving in California when it was a remote Mexican land, and San Diego, San Pedro, Los Angeles, and San Francisco weren’t much more than a few sheds. He gives descriptions of landing at each of the ports up and down the California coast as they existed then. In the book, he makes a tellingly accurate prediction of San Francisco’s future. He also gives a nice description of a society wedding amongst the “Californios.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Years_Before_the_Mast

The text is available at Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4277