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Sketches of Brazil & Chili by Jeremiah Madison Doe on his voyage from Massachusetts around Cape Horn to California

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Like many other New Englanders, Jeremiah Madison Doe (1811-1884), a shoemaker living in Metheun, Massachusetts, succumbed to Gold Rush fever. In September 1849 he set sail on the Euphrasia for the California gold fields. Doe recorded his adventures in a diary he titled "Events and incidence that Occur on my passage or Voige to California," and made watercolor drawings of some of the locations he visited. On March 14, 1850, in the port of Valpariaso, Chile, he and seven companions toured the area: "Now in the port of Valparaiso 122 days from Boston---. This is a very good Harbour and it is said there is a flag of every Naishion here, there is one hundred vessels or more in this port now---. Being unable to travel but very little I hierd a Horse and paid one dollar for the use of him. When we started from the stable there was Seven of us, there is a law here against riding faster than a trot as it is in our Sittys--- we past along out into the Countrey and had a very good time."

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