EWAN: SAN FRANCISCO AS A MECCA FOR NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 5 



between April 6 and November 1, 1841, and the results were eventually published 

 after prolonged disaffection between Captain Wilkes on one side and the staff 

 and authors who prepared the texts of the various departments of science on the 

 other. That the publication of the results depended on Congressional approval 

 was no small discouragement. Titian Peale reported on the vertebrate collections 

 and Torrey and Gray on the plants, with Pickering publishing a remarkable 

 omnibus volume entitled a Chronological History of Plants: Man's Record of His 

 Own Existence Illustrated Through Their Names, Uses, and Companionship, 

 based in some considerable part on his travels with the Wilkes' Expedition. 



Captain John Charles Fremont, the "Pathmarker," entered California in 1844 

 on his first overland expedition. In his diaries he noted trees and items of natural 

 history — he had been instructed by Dr. John Torrey to take dried plants along 

 the route — but in the end he did not bring back many specimens, partly owing 

 to the misfortune of having hard rains ruin his collection. On his expedition of 



1846 Fremont paid closer attention to collecting and these specimens were the 

 subject of a memoir by John Torrey. 



Keenly aware of the attractions of California as a potential colony for the 

 Crown, H.M.S. Herald arrived in Monterey during these days of contested 

 Spanish rule. But the American chronicler Stillman sums up that story in a 

 sentence: "Monterey had already fallen into the hands of the Americans, and 

 she sailed away disgusted." Berthold Seemann, who was later to distinguish 

 himself in the botany of Fiji and other tropic lands, accompanied the Herald. 



Historian John Walton Caughey says, "Take away the initial bonanza of 

 gold and how much less rapid and how different would the state's rise have 

 been." James Wilson Marshall's discovery of gold on the American River in 



1847 set off "one of the most articulate migrations in history," drawing shiploads 

 of emigrants from virtually every country of the world. During the year 1849 

 several visitors with some interest in natural history arrived in California, some 

 of them members of emigrant parties lured by the activity in the goldfields. 



On April 5, 1849, William Gambel, a protege of Nuttall, who had made the 

 overland trip to California in 1841 via the Gila Route and had returned to Phila- 

 delphia with 176 species of birds, joined a party of adventurers bound for the 

 goldfields. The original party divided and Gambel joined those who followed 

 Hudspeth's trail but they were caught by snow in the mountains and only 

 Gambel and a few others reached Rose's Bar on the Feather River. Gambel, 

 sick and exhausted, died of typhoid fever on December 13, 1849. Joseph Grinnell 

 remarked to this writer that Gambel 's bird skins — the ones taken on the earlier 

 trip of 1841, the collection of 1849 being lost — were among the best skins he had 

 ever handled. The ornithologist Cassin described Gambel's skins many years 

 ago as "some of the most magnificent specimens I ever saw." Witmer Sitone says 

 that Gambel "in the short space of eight years demonstrated that he was possessed 

 of remarkable ability both as an explorer and field naturalist and as a student 

 of natural history." 



The New York taxidermist, John Graham Bell, who accompanied Audubon 

 up the Missouri in 1843, reached California in 1849 via the Central American 

 isthmian route. He visited Sutter's Mill and localities from Sonoma to San Diego; 

 considering the short duration of Bell's visit he made a notable collection, taking 

 the types of four birds described as new by Cassin. Bell himself described the 



