JOSEPH POWNALL was a native of Hackettstown, New Jersey, and a graduate of the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York. Apparently a rover at heart, he practiced his profession first in Georgia, six months later in Florida, then, after a short interlude with the American forces at Matamoros and Monterrey, in New Orleans, and finally in De Soto Parish, Louisiana. In 1849 he joined the mass migration to California. There, after trying his fortunes in various places, he became a person of some distinction in the town of Columbia and one of the stockholders of the Tuolumne Water Company. Like hundreds of his fellow Argonauts, Pownall kept a journal of his trip across the continent; and though he did not write as naturalist, physician, or man of letters, his account is interesting because of its descriptions of the route, the company's adventures and experiences, and the writer's own reactions to his environment. Pownall's journal and many of his letters came to the Huntington Library through the generous codperation of Edwin Grabhorn of San Francisco. Pownall's diary begins: 28th 1849 was an eventful day in Keachie Louisiana as many men stricken with the gold fever from Shreveport and nearby vicinities arrived here forming a company to get to California or bust. The diary ends at Mariposa Diggings, September 7, 1849, with a note of reservation: We bid adieu for a season to pack mules, pack saddles etc. but in exchange therefore I fear we take upon our selves a still more onerous burden, that of crowbar, spade and pick. In the twenty-three weeks, more or less, that intervened between March 28 and September 7, Pownall and his companions crossed the entire state of Texas, turned south at El Paso into Chihuahua, presumably to avoid the Apache Indians, crossed into Sonora by way of the Guadalupe Pass, followed the long, dry trail through the future Gadsden Purchase territory to the Gila River, and rode down the Gila to the Colorado. After Pownall forded the Colorado at Yuma, he crossed the desert to Warner's