Lot
2033 
(Trail Letter) "San Diego, January 1, 1850", dateline on folded letter to Edwards Pierrpont, New York City entering mails as drop letter with red "New-York, 2 cts, Feb 7" integral-due cds, reading in part, "I wish you and Fayeweather a happy new year but hope you have not wasted your sympathy by uttering any such wishing for me for they would be of not benefit to me who are sitting on the beach of this miserable place like a poor exile of ruin looking towards home & waiting for a steamer which I expect to continue for one month to come. Ten months since I left New York & am still seven hundred miles this side of "El Dorado". The overland journey has proved a "smashery", It has not only smashed all our wagons and half our mules, but has annihilated nearly a whole year of my life…I wrote to you from Pecos, near Santa Fe, saying that I should probably work through to the Pacific & return by sea to New York and reach there next spring or summer. I then expected to return by the Horn, but so much time has since run out that I now intend to return, after going to San Francisco, by way of Panama & hope to be at home about the first of May…But what has left me so long on the route? Don't ask me. "O Regina jubes, remorse doldrem" You will probably see in the newspapers many details of the route down the Gila & across the desert. Read the worst and think of me. But aside from the positive griefs of this journey there is one fact which I will mention for your benefit when you shall set forth to enjoy your wealth in traveling, that is, that traveling through an uninhabited territory is nonsense of the most tedious kind…For weeks & month we would have been glad of an encounter with the Comanches or Apaches as a relief to the solitude of our journey…We reached here on the second day of December, we cannot go on by land at this season on account of the mud & we are therefore waiting for a steamer. One has already been here but would not take us, being full & another is not expected under a month then may have us as the other did; said report rarely come here & thus you will see we are in a bad fix…", Very Fine. Estimate $750 - 1,000.
AN EXCELLENT LETTER FROM A "GOLD SEEKER" WHO TRAVELED THE DANGEROUS SOUTHERN ROUTE VIA THE GILA RIVER.
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Realized: $1,700