1894. Adventures of a Forty-Niner was written by Dr. Daniel Knower who sailed for California in 1849 armed with a letter of introduction from his cousin's husband, William L. Marcy, and twelve prefabricated frame houses he intended to sell in San Francisco. The book describes his business and real estate speculations in San Francisco; the city's gambling dens, their mountebanks and blackguards, and its politics on the eve of the Civil War. He provides a glimpse of life at a mining camp near Coloma and the dusty violence of a bullfight. He got into the shipping business and traveled as far inland as Stockton with a cargo of house frames.