Lands of Promise and Despair Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846

""On the right-hand side of the Indies there was an island called California, which was very close to the region of the Earthly Paradise."" So reads a 1510 Spanish novel about a mythic land populated only by women; by the time Cervantes published Don Quixote some 100 years later, California ""had evolved from an imagined to a real place,"" write editors Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz. In Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846, the editors gather together an impressive collection of primary documents the writings of early California settlers, primarily, many of whom were Spanish or Mexican to provide a rich early history of the region and the lives and the culture of the people who resided there. Illus. ( Jan.)