Sketches of California

Frederick A. Gay, proprietor of "Gay's Canchalagua" at 36 Broadway in New York City, had developed a patent medicine based on canchalagua, a California herb. Sketches of California (1848), printed here from a version published in the Magazine of history of 1925, is an early piece of pre-Gold Rush promotional literature for California settlement in which Gay focuses on the region's potential for agriculture and livestock, with special emphasis on canchalagua.