To Lhasa in disguise : a secret expedition through mysterious Tibet | Collections | The Huntington

To Lhasa in disguise : a secret expedition through mysterious Tibet | Collections | The Huntington

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The complete mystery of Matthew Alcott : heritage of secrets
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Some of the thirty-plus polygamous marriages Joseph Smith engaged in before his death in 1844 shocked Matt's sensibilities, but nothing affected him like discovering Smith's last revelation. The church fathers told him the revelation was bogus. Matt knew different. People had a right to know. Matt learned the hard way: it was the sacred duty of the patriarchy to protect the membership from all things non-faith promoting. After a harrowing attempt on his life Matt was forced to disappear in order to write his book. When completed his publisher informed him that a Salt Lake City law firm, representing an undisclosed party, offered two million to buy his manuscript outright.
637627
Autobiography of Peter Wilson Conover [microform] : before 1892
Manuscripts
Microfilm of a typescript of Peter Wilson Conover's autobiography. Conover writes of his ancestry, his childhood in Kentucky, his father's decision to move north "on account of slavery," his life in Illinois, his experiences in the Illinois Militia under General Whitesides, with whom he marched to Wisconsin and along the Mississippi to capture an unidentified man and send him to Washington, and of his conversion to Mormonism. Conover also writes of working on the Nauvoo Temple, of joining the Nauvoo Legion, of meeting Joseph Smith at Rock River in 1843 and escorting him back to Nauvoo, of mob violence in Illinois, of moving to Iowa and Missouri, of the death of his wife in childbirth in 1847 and his decision to travel west, of becoming a captain in the Jefferson Hunt Company, and of his experiences in the Black Hawk and Walker Wars.
MSS MFilm 00220
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The lower river
Rare Books
Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again. Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him--the White Man with no fear of snakes--and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?
646364
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Obedience : a Dave Brandstetter novel
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"As an insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter built a reputation unraveling suspicious deaths. Now, well into middle age, he has decided to retire for the sake of Cecil, the young TV reporter who loves and cherishes him, and has too often risked his own life for Dave's work. But retirement does not come easily. Dave never did it for the money. He always had that. Nor did he tirelessly work cases in hopes of chasing renown. It was always the pursuit of the truth that drove Dave. He enjoyed the truth's habit of coming into direct conflict with bigotry, allowing him to surprise the small-minded along the way. It doesn't take much arm twisting, then, to get Dave back in the saddle when an old friend in the public defender's office asks him to help Andy Flanagan, a shiftless young man accused of murdering a Vietnamese businessman to defend the Old Fleet--a shantytown of houseboats that has been earmarked for development. Beneath the surface of this oil-slicked slum lurks an international conspiracy so appalling that Dave will regret postponing his retirement"--Back cover.
642333
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Philip Deidesheimer letter to Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro
Manuscripts
Letter from Philip Deidesheimer in Virginia City, Nevada, to Adolph Sutro. Deidesheimer writes of his desire to see Sutro and asks him to come back to Virginia City as soon as he can. He also writes of the mines in Nevada, including that "there is mutiny near" at the Ophir Mine. He also writes that he hopes to be made one of the Sutro Tunnel Commissioners, of his invention of the timbering system, that he "never dreamed" of patenting the system "until of late," and asks Sutro to inquire into patenting the design for him, noting that "if I could yet get a patent it would bring me an income of at least one million...dollars a year."
mssHM 29230
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Montgomery Meigs Papers
Manuscripts
The majority of the collection consists of letters sent by Montgomery Meigs to his parents, Montgomery Cunningham Meigs and Louisa Rodgers Meigs, and his sister, Louisa Rodgers Meigs Forbes (known as Loulie), while he was working as a surveyor and engineer on the Northern Pacific Railroad in Minnesota and the Dakota and Montana Territories from 1870-1873. The correspondence begins in May 1870, when Meigs was traveling by rail to Minnesota by way of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and continues with his impressions of St. Paul and his visit to Saint Anthony Falls, including a description of an 1869 bridge collapse there. In June 1870 he accompanied a surveying party to the Old Crow Wing area, where he wrote of Ojibwa Indians, the particulars of running a railroad line, his hunting of prairie chickens, and conflicts between homesteaders and the railroad. In September Meigs went on an expedition through the Detroit Woods, running a line from the Oak Lake area toward Georgetown, Minnesota. During this time Meigs wrote of camp life and the progress of the railroad line, before he was sent back to St. Paul and later the new railroad headquarters in Brainerd. In April 1871 Meigs accompanied new chief engineer Thomas Lafayette Rosser to the Dakota Territory. Although they made some progress past Fort Rice, Meigs wrote that by June the threat of Sioux attacks had forced them to turn back. In the fall of 1871 Meigs went on the Whistler Expedition to the Yellowstone River, and in April 1872 he was made a resident engineer for the railroad line heading east. His letters frequently mention his difficulties with his new position, including his continual conflicts with the contractors and the slowness of his party's work (Meigs blamed a shortage of men and supplies for their lack of progress). By the end of May he was considering leaving the railroad, and in September 1872 wrote extensively of the Northern Pacific's ongoing economic and management issues. In a December 1872 letter sent from Fargo, Meigs wrote to his parents that "the N.P.R.R. appears to be hard up...[and] they have so disbanded the fine engineer corps we had and were so proud of that I scarcely care whether I stay or go." But in June 1873 Meigs still held his position, and was preparing to serve as chief of party for another Yellowstone Expedition, this one accompanied by the 7th Cavalry ("Custer's Cavalry...present a fine appearance on the march," Meigs wrote admiringly). In September they had established themselves at Camp Thorne in the Montana Territory, and Meigs' final letter of the trip, dated September 9, 1873, was written shortly after he had explored the Musselshell Valley. Meigs' next letter was written in August 1874, when he was in Rock Island, Illinois, waiting to go on an expedition up the Mississippi River. He had apparently left the railroad and was employed in making leisurely surveys to estimate the cost of deepening the channel. His final letter was written on May 17, 1875, and in it he wrote to his father that "I think I may someday work into the place of U.S. Civ. Engr." Individuals Meigs met, worked with, or wrote of throughout his correspondence include Walter Atwood Burleigh, George Washington Cass, Ignatius Donnelly, Thomas Lafayette Rosser, and General Ira Spaulding. Also included in the collection are original sketches made by Meigs during his expeditions; typescripts of his letters, some with extended accounts, made by Meigs in 1929; and miscellaneous Meigs family ephemera.