Extracts from the Diary of Willaim C. Lobenstine, December 31, 1851-1858 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1920 Excerpt: ... II VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA December thirty-first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one. Left Wheeling on Steamer Messenger for Pittsburgh, April twentieth. Exodus to California. The tide of emigration for California swept me along in its progress for the same reason as thousands of others--to appropriate money enough by a few years' hard toil, to secure a future independency. When first the idea of a movement to the West took possession of me, I was wavering in the choice between California and Oregon and gave finally preference to Oregon on account of securing a homestead at the arrival there and to judge from the last news of the diggings better wages than in the latter. From an inability to make up a certain complement of immigrants I had to give up the project and go to California. I left subsequently Pittsburgh on the Steamer Paris, passing Wheeling without seeing my brother, and arrived after a week's journey down to the mouth of the Ohio River and from Cairo up the Mississippi to St. Louis. The Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny at Pitts burgh, the formation of which place is alluvial bottom carried down from the mountains in previous ages. It has along its shores some of the finest agricultural country as well as numberless cities and towns, among which we count the following as the largest and where the most business is carried on: Wheeling, Virginia, Marietta, Ohio, Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, etc. Besides these, being all places where manufacture of all kinds is carried on, I mention from its great obstruction to navigation, rather than its cosmogenic character, the Falls of Louisville, with the nature of which I am, however, too little acquainted to give particulars. A canal, which was built years ago, to ...