Bancroft's Tourist's Guide Yosemite Part 1

Bancroft's Tourist's Guide Yosemite.

by A.L. Bancroft.

PREFACE.

This is a Pocket Guide to Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees, with the best routes thither and thence. It also includes San Francisco with the cities, towns, caves, mines and beaches within a hundred miles south and east of this city.

We have tried to make it accurate and reliable in all statements of routes, distances, time required, conveyances, fares, hotels, rates, etc., making a snug, neat and tasteful book, to be sold at a low rate on all overland trains and ocean steamers bound hither, meeting all tourists, excursionists and travelers some hundreds of miles before they reach San Francisco, posting them on all the most attractive spots in the State, and answering in advance all necessary questions, thus enabling them, before setting foot in the city, to plan their excursions, decide upon routes, choose conveyances, select hotels, and calculate expenses. And then, when they have actually been over the whole ground, and thoroughly tested it, find everything "_just as the book said_."

True, we already have three or four costly volumes, written for a similar purpose, but we claim that for the ordinary use of the average tourist this is superior to any or all of them in at least three important particulars:

1st. It omits all tedious, long-drawn, and unnecessarily minute descriptions, which may occasionally suit some very critical or scientific tourist, but whose chief value is to _guide_ the traveler's money into the publisher's pocket.

2d. It contains brief descriptions of all the most notable curiosities and wonders of the State. Its statements are drawn from the latest official scientific sources, or taken from the personal observation and actual measurements of the writer, made expressly for this work.

3d. It is compact and economical of time, s.p.a.ce and money, none of which the tourist usually cares to waste or lose or throw away.

The public have called for it, and we have done our best to respond, with the material, and in the time, at our command.

That it contains _no_ mistakes we do not claim, but that it includes fewer than any similar book we confidently affirm. We have availed ourselves of every practicable source of reliable information up to date, June, 1871.

In a new and fast-growing State, like ours, where railroad companies sometimes lay nearly a league of track a day, it is simply impossible that any publication should remain perfectly accurate in every particular, even for twenty-four hours after its issue.

We pledge ourselves to disappoint no reasonable expectation, and shall thankfully receive and gratefully appreciate any correction or later information which any traveler, railroad, stage or saddle-train agent, or hotel manager, will kindly communicate.

In response to many calls, constantly repeated, and now pressingly urged, we offer this little Common-sense Hand-book Guide, which truthfully tells tourists just

WHERE TO GO; HOW FAR IT IS; HOW TO GET THERE;

WHEN TO START; WHOM TO STOP WITH;

HOW LONG IT TAKES; AND, HOW MUCH IT COSTS.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., June, 1871.

YOSEMITE.

You are going to Yosemite. Of course you are. What else did you come to California for? The idea of a man in his right mind, having the slightest love of beauty, grandeur and sublimity, coming to California and _not_ going to Yosemite! Why, it's preposterous; it's incredible; it's impossible. We may as well dismiss the thought at once. Of _course_ you go. So that's settled.

Now, _when_ will you go? If you have means and are sure of time to see all the wonders and beauties which the State offers, then might you wisely and safely leave the best until the last; that is, reserve Yosemite for your final trip before you return. But, lest time or cash should fail, or sudden summons hasten your departure, it is wisest and safest to make sure of it at once while you may. It would never do to go back East, confront inquiring friends, and have to humbly confess that you _had_ been to California, but had _not_ seen Yosemite.

Then, _how_ shall you go. If you are fresh and strong, with the nerve and muscle of a young and enthusiastic college pedestrian, you can do it on foot, as Bayard Taylor did Europe. It's the most independent and enjoyable way of all if you have time and disposition, and no ladies in your party. If you _should_ wish to try that, get a copy of the Overland Monthly for July, 1870, turn to the article "Yosemite on Foot," and you have your guide.

If you haven't time or ambition to distinguish yourself by emulating Weston, you may possibly contemplate an excursion on hoofs. Several parties have done Yosemite on all fours, and report a tough American nag, or a wiry little Mexican mustang as an indispensable auxiliary.

Parties who wish to avoid the sense of dependence, as well as the pecuniary expense of hiring a stable horse, frequently buy a tough native horse for seventy-five or a hundred dollars, use him for the entire trip, with no expense beyond that of daily feeding, keep him until they have finished their tour, and then sell him for nearly as much, in some cases even more, than they paid.

Mounted in this way you accomplish a sort of vicarious pedestrianism, gladly subst.i.tuting equine hoofs for human heels, while the animal himself rejoices in a responsible backer in the bifurcated person of your bestriding self; or, still again, it may be--it probably _does_ be, as our little four-year-old says--that you are too fashionably _lazy_,--I beg pardon, I meant to say, it is possible that you have inherited a const.i.tutional aversion to protracted exertion, which, by long indulgence, has quite unfitted you for the thoroughly manly or womanly pursuit of grandeur, beauty, and pleasure in the saddle--chasing health on horseback.

One other way remains, before you fall back upon the fashionable and feeble way of "being carried" in the regular, orthodox and popular style, which suffers you to attempt no personal exercise beyond "the heavy looking on." You may combine saddle and wagon: that is, take a strong wagon, carrying tent, provisions and cooking apparatus, with one or two of the more unskillful riders on the seat, while the others in the saddle revolve as equestrian satellites around.

But if you decide, as most do, and as you probably will, to take no responsibility and c.u.mber yourself with no care, you select one of the various public routes, seek out its agent, make your contract, give up all planning and providing on your own part, pay over your coin, take your tickets for the round trip, commit yourself to one of the various lines of public conveyances, dismiss all anxiety and give yourself up to receive and absorb all the pleasure that may lie along the route, or await you at its end.

And if your object is simply enjoyment, untroubled by exertion, and unmixed with anxiety, that is, undoubtedly, the best way.

You are in San Francisco, at the Grand, at the Occidental, at the Lick House or the Cosmopolitan. In their luxurious beds you have slept off the fatigue of thirty-three hundred miles across the continent, and at their bountiful tables you have fed yourself into courage and spirit for new and further enterprise. You have come forth so fresh and brave that you feel ready for eight thousand miles more, straight across the tranquil Pacific; or climbing, unaided, the loftiest vertebral peak of that spinal range which furnishes the backbone of the continent. Your new vigor has let off its frothy effervescence in sundry spasmodic dashes about the city and around its suburbs. You have driven to the Cliff House, interviewed the seals, climbed Telegraph hill, rusticated at Woodward's, spent an afternoon at Bancroft's, crossed to Oakland, inspected Alcatraz and Fort Point, and, in short, completed the little day-trips and half-day tours which so restfully entertain the newly-arrived traveler, gradually acclimate him to our occidental air and familiarize him with our cosmopolitan people. You feel strong and fresh: ready for the grand excursion. All your drawing-room and dining-table suits are snugly packed in trunks, folded away in drawers or carefully hung in wardrobe or clothespress. The roughest, strongest and warmest suit in your possession you have donned. Specially provide good stout, yet easy, boots or shoes, with the softest and most comfortable of socks or stockings. Remember that every day brings two climates, a cool or even cold one for morning and evening, with a hot and dusty noon sandwiched between. Umbrellas and rubber blankets you won't need, though a good traveling shawl will serve you frequently and well. Stovepipe hats are an abomination--a hard hat of any shape, first cousin to it, and the extra wide brimmed ladies' picnic hat, closely akin to both. Browns, drabs and grays are your best colors; linens and woolens your best materials; fine flannels next the skin, and especially provide plenty of something soft and thick to come between you and the horse, during the necessary miles in the saddle.

This last is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. Calculate to spend at least two weeks in the valley, and allow two or even three days each way for your trip in and out. Of course you can go faster and quicker if you wish or must, but of all excursions imaginable, Yosemite most needs deliberation and leisure. These are precisely the two things of which the average American tourist has the least. Whence it has happened that very few indeed, especially of our own countrymen, have ever really _visited_ Yosemite. Hundreds have dashed in, plunged around and rushed out. Horace Greeley staid about as long as it would take him to rush off one of his patent chain-lightning, hieroglyphic Tribune editorials.

He rode in at midnight, reached his lodging at one o'clock in the morning, too tired to eat, and too sore to tell of it; went to bed, sick, sore and disgusted. Up late next morning, so lame he could hardly sit in his saddle, hobbled hurriedly around three or four hours, and was on his way out again at a little after noon.

Many of the grandest sights he didn't even catch the remotest glimpse of; those he did see he just glanced at, too weary to appreciate their slightest beauty, and too hurried to allow himself time to begin to grow to the true scale of their grandeur; and having given to the whole valley about one quarter of the time necessary to thoroughly study, intelligently enjoy and heartily appreciate the least of its wonders, he has the presumption to fancy he has "been to Yosemite."

The fact is, he never really _saw_ a single object about the valley, except, possibly, the giant cliff, Tu-toch-ah-nu-lah, which, as he says, looked as if it might have leaned over and buried him beneath its vastness, and which, as I say, _would_, doubtless, have done so speedily, had it known that the shabby rider who shambled along under its base that moonlight night, sore at one end, sleepy at the other, and sick all the way between, was going to rush off and talk so inadequately, unworthily and even untruthfully about objects which no human eye ever did see or could see in the condition of his sleep-oppressed optics on that slumbrous August morning. He has the cheek to declare that the fall of Yosemite is a humbug. It would be interesting to know what the fall thought of Greeley. One thing is sure, all earlier and later visitors unite in the opinion that the only humbug in the valley that year went out of it in his saddle about three o'clock on that drowsy August afternoon, and has never since marred the measureless realities which he sleepily slandered. The simple fact is, Mr. Greeley saw the little which he did see three or four months too late in the season. If he ever comes again, at the right time, and stays to really _see_ the wonders of the valley, he will be heartily ashamed of what he then wrote, and freely pardon his present critic. Meantime, exit H. G. We bear thee no malice. The soul that can see and feel as little as thine did in Yosemite provokes no anger, but only sorrow and compa.s.sion. For the sake of thy sore and raw and sadly-pummeled body, we freely forgive the terribly shaken soul that inhabited it on that memorable midnight when horse and saddle maliciously united in a.s.sault and battery on the most sensitive portion of thine editorial corporosity. Vale, Greeley, vale. The next time thou comest hither, wear what hat thou likest and match it with what suit may please thee best, but if thou lovest life, and wouldst see good days, tell, oh Horace, tell the truth.

Pardon our digression to Greeley. We have spent so much time on him, not because he occasionally scribbles illegible ma.n.u.script for a new and struggling paper in a small eastern village, but because he came faster, arrived sorer, stayed fewer hours, saw less of the valley, and slandered it more than any one else has ever attempted.

Olive Logan spoke disparagingly of the Yosemite Fall, but the Fall is still there. She adds some slanderous remarks about the conduct of the drivers along the route, to which the only fitting answer would be these questions: "When a man or a woman, all alone in a room, looks into a mirror, and doesn't see a gentleman or lady reflected therein--_whose fault is it?_ Is the difficulty in the gla.s.s or in _front_ of it?"

But let us start. From San Francisco to Yosemite there are three routes. All of them carry one, first, to or near Stockton, which city we reach by rail or river, and all of them bring us, at last, into the valley by one of the only two trails which enter it. Between the outer ends of these trails and Stockton, or vicinity, lie the various intermediate places or way stations which have given name to the routes which pa.s.s through them, and concerning which the tourist chiefly needs reliable information.

Looking upon any good map, not drawn in the exclusive interest of some one of these rival routes, you can easily see for yourself, spite of all agents' representations, which is the most direct way, geographically or topographically.

We now mention these in regular order, reckoning from north to south; that is, _down the map_, as we used to say at school. For convenience, we may distinguish the three routes as the upper or north route, the middle route, and the lower or south route.

Big Oak Flat Route.

The upper or north route is commonly called the Big Oak Flat, or the Hutchings route. If we go by this, we can either go directly into the valley, or make a detour by way of the Calaveras Big Trees. The following table showing distances, times and conveyances, by the straight and quick way.

TO YOSEMITE VALLEY--DIRECT.

========================================================== From To Miles. Hours. By ---------------+--------------+-------+--------+---------- San Francisco Stockton 90 10 Steamer.

Stockton Milton 28 1 Car.

Milton Chinese Camp 24 4 Stage.

Chinese Camp Garrote 14 2 "

Garrote Tamarack 32 6 "

Tamarack Yosemite 11 4 Saddle.

+-------+--------+ 199 27 ---------------+--------------+-------+--------+----------

By the above way you leave San Francisco at four o'clock P.M., from the wharf, at the foot of Broadway, by one of the California Pacific Railroad Company's steamers for Stockton. You have a fine afternoon and sunset view of San Francisco, the shipping, Oakland, Yerba Buena and Alcatraz Islands, the Golden Gate, Angel Island, Mount Tamalpais, San Quentin, San Pablo Bay, Vallejo, Mare Island, Suisun Bay, Benicia, Martinez, and Mount Diablo. Those who have crossed the continent by rail find this sail a pleasant change. They avoid the dust, get a good night's rest on the steamer, reach Stockton at from two to three o'clock in the morning, breakfast at six, and at seven take the cars of the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad from the station near the landing. We reach Milton, twenty-eight miles, at 8.20, find the stage waiting, and immediately embark, and are off at once. The road lies through a mountainous country, well timbered. The air is clear and invigorating, and the scenery sublime. The road is good, the stages first-cla.s.s, and the drivers obliging.

About one we reach Chinese Camp, and after twenty-four miles staging are ready for a half-hour's rest and a good dinner; or, we may wait for both until we reach Garrote, fourteen miles farther. Here either of two good hotels will feed and lodge us. Next morning we'd better dress for the horse-back ride in the afternoon. Lay aside all superfluous luggage and pack your extra nice clothing, if you have been foolish enough to bring any, in your valise. A small hand-satchel you can pack behind you on the horse, or take it before you. Let it be as small and snugly-packed as possible. One word further, and a most important one, especially to ladies. Calculate to _ride astride_, and dress for it. You can wear a long skirt to Tamarack, but beyond it is a nuisance. A woman who has only one leg, or has two on one side, may have some excuse for the unnatural, ungraceful, dangerous and barbarous side-saddle. The last word was prompted by remembering the raw back of the beautiful horse which carried Miss Dix into the valley, under the old, conventional, side-saddle. The lady is, unquestionably, a noted philanthropist, but that poor horse probably never suspected it. Anna d.i.c.kinson rode in man-fashion, arrived fresh and strong, and so did her horse. Ask her animal if he wants to carry that lady again and he'll never say nay (neigh). On a trip like this the side-saddle is barbarous to the horse and dangerous to the rider.

The only good thing about it is that it jolts and racks and strains and tires the rider so outrageously, that it is fast converting many women to the sensible and safe way.