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, space 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

San Francisco, Cal., June, 1871.