Gold Rush Boy

Gold Rush Boy begins with Seth and Billy, a new friend, signing onto an East Coast clipper ship as deckhands. The ship owners decide that instead of continuing the tea trade with India they will seek new business opportunities by sending the ship around Cape Horn to California, the new U. S. territory. In San Francisco Bay, they find hundreds of ships abandoned by men who have gone to the Sierra foothills to hunt for gold. The captain pays those who choose to leave his ship the wages they've earned. Seth and Billy start walking down the peninsula to where they can turn east toward the foothills a hundred miles away. They encounter a lifetime of experiences along the way, which serve as a good prelude to what happens to them once they reach the mother lode.