William Taylor (1821-1902) was a Methodist minister specializing in "street preaching" in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., when the Methodist church sent him to California as a missionary evangelist in 1849. He remained in the West for seven years, going on to become one of the church's most tireless worldwide evangelists. He later conducted crusades in Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa. In 1884 he was named Missionary Bishop for Africa and he focused his energies on missionary activities on that continent. Taylor spent his last years in California, the site of his first mission. California life illustrated (1858) expands on his reminiscences in Seven years' street preaching in San Francisco (1857). He describes his voyage to California and gives details of family life, social life, politics and church history in San José, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento. He comments at length on California agriculture and mineral resources and offers a chapter on mining camp life. After founding the Powell Street church, Taylor explains, he undertook a mission to sailors in San Francisco which left him so burdened by debt that he returned east to publish books and conduct revivals in the hope of putting his finances in order.