“Alric’s Sketches is among the rarest and least known journals of nineteenth-century Baja California” (Mathes). An account of the author’s voyage to California, a tour of the frontier, and the capture of the Santo Tomás mission.
Henry Alric (1805-1883) arrived in Northern California 1850 as part of the wave of immigration spurred by the gold rush. After a wayward journey from France to San Francisco (inadvertently via the Marquesas Islands and Hawaii), he spent five years in Sonora, the mining town, where his ecclesiastic duties were largely restricted to burying the victims of the local judge. In 1856 he took a posting in the south at Santo Tomás. He travelled by sea to San Diego, and overland to the mission. Law and order issues seemed to follow him and there is a section of the book (pp.19-24) devoted to the chilling topic of “popular executions.”
Founded in 1791 (though Alric gives a date of 1794), Santo Tomás was the last remaining Dominican mission in operation. There is a long account of the mission and the events that occurred during Alric’s time, including his own experiences, from 1856 until the end of 1860. There are further notes on the geography, climate, natural resources and the Native inhabitants which he made on a tour of the frontier. His account of the mission’s capture follows this.
This edition was preceded by one printed in Mexico the year prior with the title Dix ans de résidence d’un missionnaire dans les deux Californies, et un episode de guerre civile dans le district du nord de la Basse Californie … That work numbers only 53pp. A second Paris edition was published in 1869. All are rare.
Not in Sabin; Mathes, W.M., [review] “Sketches of a Journey on the Two Oceans and to the Interior of America and of a Civil War in Northern Lower California by the Abbe Henry J.A. Alric …” in California Historical Quarterly, Vol.52, No.1 (Spring, 1973), p.88.
