Book excerpt: Kimball Webster (1828-1916), a New Hampshire farmer, began his overland journey to California in April 1849, and remained in California and Oregon until 1854. The gold seekers of '49 (1917) uses Webster's diary as the basis for the account of his trip to California via a wagon train from Independence, Missouri, and his first weeks in the Sacramento Valley. A much later narrative picks up the story of his later career in California as a goldseeker on the Feather River and Nelson's Creek mines, 1849-1850; descriptions of Sacramento, Yuba City, and Marysville; and surveying in Oregon, 1851-1854.