How long does it take to read What I Saw In California?
Edwin Bryant
What I Saw In California by Edwin Bryant takes about 8 hours 21 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 21 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1848. 455 pages, about 125,125 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 54 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 21 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 28 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Edwin Bryant made the journey from Independence, Missouri to California in the years 1846-47, through the southern pass of the Rocky Mountains and across the desert. As a medical student, he became an unofficial doctor along the way, and witnessed some gruesome scenes, like the amputation of a little boy’s gangrenous leg, which he describes in painful scientific detail. He is equally explicit when portraying the daily life of the wagon trip, and his prose illuminates the trials of the traveler: "During the process of cooking supper, it commenced raining and blowing with great violence. Our fire was nearly extinguished by the deluge of water from the clouds, and our dough was almost turned to batter..." Bryant intended his work to function as both entertainment to the general reader and instruction for those planning to follow his path, and the book is a repository of useful information, like distances, weather, water source locations, and descriptions of plant life. As such, it is invaluable to enthusiasts of Western history. It is also a really good story, with entertaining sketches of camp life, Indians, and animals. Bryant’s descriptions of the landscapes are particularly compelling: "The vast prairie itself soon opened before us in all its grandeur and beauty...The view of the illimitable succession of green undulations and flowery slopes, of every gentle and graceful configuration, stretching away and away, until they fade from the sight in the dim distance, creates a wild and scarcely controllable ecstasy of admiration." The variety of Bryant’s adventures is striking – in one day he is present at a death, a wedding, a funeral, and a birth. He is often nearly overwhelmed by the functions of nature going on around him, and is particularly moved by the continuous presence of death: "One of our party who left the train to hunt through the valley, brought into camp this evening a human skull. He stated that the place where he found it was whitened with human…
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography, Description and travel, Gold discoveries, History, Nonfiction, Overland journeys to the Pacific
