Gold Dust by Donald Dale Jackson (review)

Reviews 79 Era of Exploration, while handling only a portion of the subject of the West and photography, is rich in its suggestiveness. The major figures Carleton E. Watkins, William A. Bell, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Eadweard Muybridge, and William Henry Jackson are addressed, each in an individual chapter accompanied by illustrative and excellent photographs. Weston Naef’s introduction is a gold mine of ideas, suggesting for the careful reader many avenues in need of greater research. His remarks in a chapter entitled “Landscape and the Published Photograph” (a portion of the seventy-six page introduction) illuminate a whole field in need of exploration: the pub­ lication and effect of photographs on the public consciousness during the rise of magazine literature. For purposes of general familiarity with the subject and further research possibilities, Naef’s bibliography is excellent. This book seeks to fix on a distinct genre and period, yet it is broad in scope; it is comprehensive, scholarly, and expert. SHELLEY ARMITAGE University of New Mexico Gold Dust. By Donald Dale Jackson. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. 364 pages, $13.95.) Gold Dust chronicles the years 1848 through 1853, the period in Cali­ fornia when a man with a shovel and a pan could be hopeful of finding more than a “trace of yellow.” Mr. Jackson has made the story of the chance find­ ing of a flake of gold by James Marshall in a millrace in January, 1848 into a saga of living history. From cover to cover the reader is caught up in an irresistible adventure, to experience with the thousands of gold seekers not only their dreams, their hopes, and their triumphs, but also their trag­ edies, their failures, and their delusions. Mr. Jackson weaves a wealth of detail into the many skeins of his skillful narrative, bringing to life countless remarkable characters — a full gamut from the heroic to the sordid. Here truth is indeed stranger than fiction! Lest the reader question the authen­ ticity of the events chronicled, there are ten pages of Source Notes that leave no doubt as to the thoroughness and depth of the author’s research. The Notes list numerous books, periodicals, newspapers, and both published and unpublished diaries, letters, and manuscripts located in such libraries as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. Other productive sources included the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and the Stanford University Library, Palo Alto. The author has distilled the essence of these innumerable accounts into a moving tale. WILLIAM F. KIMES, Mariposa, California ...