The author was the wife of the captain of the Nonantum, bound for California from Boston in 1850 by way of Cape Horn. Her narrative depicts adventures with fire, flood, storms, a shipwreck on the coast of Peru, a sea-rescue, and a mule-pack crossing of Panama on the return trip. The stay in California in the years immediately following the discovery of gold included a visit with Captain Sutter, a trip to the Sacramento Valley, life in a frontier hotel, in a mining camp, among Indians, gamblers, immigrants, Chinese, etc. Kurutz calls the work "one of the most insightful accounts by a woman in the Gold Rush. She records in detail not only her own situation but also that of other women." Bates concludes with a chapter on morality in California. Cowan p.38; Hill p.347; Kurutz; Smith 637.