In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction:Federico Craveri and the Gulf of California Journals
  • Thomas Bowen (bio), Beatrice D'Arpa (bio), and Beppe Cavatorta (bio)

On the night of July 10, 1856, Federico Craveri had trouble sleeping. He had just returned to Mazatlán that morning from a five-and-a-half-month voyage in the Gulf of California. Part of his insomnia was no doubt due to the excitement of returning to civilization, but as he wrote in his journal, "What really kept me awake was my imagination—today, at 41 years of age, it is still wandering restlessly."

Craveri had been engaging his wanderlust and scientific curiosity for much of his life. At age 25 he left Italy for Mexico City, where he lived for the next 15 years, becoming known in the city's intellectual circles as a chemist and naturalist. His reputation as a scientist led to a commission to explore the guano islands of the Gulf of California to determine if there were sufficient resources to develop a fertilizer industry. At age 40, when he set out for the Gulf, it was just the beginning of a four-year odyssey that would end at the family home in Bra, Italy.

Federico Ernesto Craveri was born in Turin on July 29, 1815, one of the four sons of Angelo Craveri and Anna Clotilde Tesio Craveri. A year later his brother Ettore was born, and the two remained close friends [End Page 273] and scientific collaborators for life. Their father was a lawyer and a man of prominence in the Piedmont region of what is now northwestern Italy, and for a time he served as undersecretary to King Carlo Felice. He was interested in natural history, and around the time his sons were born he began a collection of birds and insects from the region around Bra. In 1836 he bought a large house in Bra which became the family home, and he turned one room into a display area for his growing collection, which he opened to the public.

The 1840s were eventful years for the Craveri family. In 1840 Ettore was ordained a priest, and Federico left Italy, first spending several months in Marseille, France, and then continuing on to Mexico. He enrolled at the university in Mexico City and in September 1843 was awarded a degree in chemistry and pharmacy. In Bra, Angelo's collection had become so large that he added another story onto the house, which became the Craveri family museum. But 1843 also brought the death of Anna Craveri—Angelo's wife and Federico and Ettore's mother.

In September 1846, Ettore traveled to Mexico City to join Federico, and together the brothers spent the next two and a half years exploring the surrounding countryside and studying its natural history. A year later their father died, and in March 1849 Ettore returned to Italy to manage the family property and the museum.

Meanwhile, Federico had begun to carve out a career as a scientist. In 1849 he set up a research laboratory to investigate methods of extracting silver from ore from the mines of Guanajuato, northwest of Mexico City. Between 1852 and 1854 he worked as a preparator in chemistry at the School of Medicine, and from 1854 to 1855 he taught chemistry at the School of Agriculture. In 1854 he co-authored his first scientific paper, a 40-page monograph in Spanish on the artesian wells of Mexico City, with notes on the geology and botany of the Valley of Mexico. And in 1855 he was asked to lead the expedition to the Gulf of California, to be followed by a similar expedition to assess the guano resources on the Pacific side of Baja California.

When he accepted the commission, Craveri may already have been thinking about returning to Italy, possibly fueled by the civil unrest that had been brewing in Mexico. When he left Mexico City later that year to begin the Gulf voyage, it was the last time he would see that city. For the next two years his base of operations would be the port city of Mazatlán in the state of Sinaloa.

Craveri was clearly in no hurry to get...

pdf