author
R. Byron (Richard Byron) Johnson
An English adventurer turned memoirist, he wrote a vivid account of life in British Columbia during the early 1860s. His best-known book mixes firsthand frontier detail with a storytelling style that later bibliographers noted may sometimes lean toward the imaginative.
1 Audiobook
Dans l'extrême Far West: Aventures d'un émigrant dans la Colombie anglaise
by R. Byron (Richard Byron) Johnson
About the author
Little is firmly documented online about R. Byron Johnson beyond his book, but reliable library and regional sources identify him as Richard Byron Johnson, an English adventurer who reached British Columbia around 1862 by way of San Francisco. He later wrote Very Far West Indeed: A Few Rough Experiences on the North-West Pacific Coast, published in London in 1872.
The book is chiefly about his experiences in British Columbia, including time around the goldfields in the early 1860s. Regional reference sources describe Johnson as a transient figure in early B.C. life, and the memoir has remained of interest as a colorful snapshot of the gold-rush era.
Some later bibliographic notes caution that parts of Very Far West Indeed may be partly imaginative, which makes it especially readable even as it should be approached with a little care as a historical source. A later archival record also points to a Richard Byron Johnson living in British Columbia into old age, including a 1958 portrait captioned as taken on his 90th birthday, but I could not fully confirm the identity from stronger biographical sources alone.