Americas Wonderlands 1893 James W. Buel This is a picture book with hundreds of pictures of America's Wonderlands as captured by a cross country trip organized by the publisher in 1890. Interestingly this uses text from Our Native Land whish was published ten years earlier. (See the August, /25 Heirloom).

There’s a lot to see all around the world but “But if we except the associations which make these places of the Old World memorable, the student of nature will find a thousand greater charms in the picturesque, grand, marvelous and sublime scenery that diversifies our own country No picture has ever equaled the real, and no book has ever vividly described the wonders that God has scattered over the American landscape."

"Travel is no longer necessary for the masses in order to behold the marvels of American scenery for the camera has gathered them all and lays every inspiring scene upon even the poor man's table, to minister to the delight of his family circle. But photography likewise blesses the traveler, for study of the picture establishes acquaintanceship with that which is represented, while accompanying description quickens his understanding and gives a more intelligent conception of the pictorial subject." In 1890 "the publishers engaged a corps of artists, consisting of three of the best out-door photographers in the country. A passenger car was next chartered, which was remodeled so as to provide comfortable sleeping quarters for the men in one end, a kitchen in the other, while the center was fitted up as an operating-room for taking, developing and finishing pictures. Three cameras, of as many sizes, were also provided, with three thousand prepared plates, and a great quantity of paraphernalia which might be found useful for the expedition. Then the party traveled the country by train, stagecoach and donkey."

We've included here some of the pictures of California which are also of Donner Summit, or nearby. You can see the author has a way with words.

About Donner Summit the author says, "The road begins to descend rapidly after leaving Summit, but the most wonderful scenery in all California is passed in the next 150 miles. Donner's Peak comes into view as the first suggestion of a dreadfully tumultuous condition of nature, wrought by the great glaciers that in the early centuries came grinding their way over the mountains. There is Emigrant Gap, through which the first gold-seekers found their way into the Golden Valley, and American Canon, along the dizzy edge of which the train runs at a free and almost reckless pace. The way is broken with quarreling cascades, fast-dashing creeks and beautiful blue cañons, in which an autumn haze perpetually lingers. Giant's Gap, in the American Canon, is a vast rent in an opposing mountain, that looks like it might have been torn out by the hand of the Thunder God to make a way for the trolls. Chasm after chasm comes into view with grandeur and awfulness as a background until presently the train runs out on a ledge that appears to passengers inside the coaches to have no more substantial support than a bank of clouds. We are away up high on the breast of a mountain that shoots upward 2,000 feet perpendicularly, and looking out of the car windows there is nothing but clouds bowling along on the same level, and below forests of pine, stunted by distance, until the trees are no bigger than whisk-brooms, and American River is a white thread not too large to run through the eye of a darning-needle. This is Cape Horn, where the ledge is so precipitous that in making the road-bed it was necessary to lower the first workmen by means of ropes, which were held fast at the summit while the suspended men plied their picks and crow-bars until a footing was made."

You can buy this book or: https://archive.org/details/gri_33125003532781/page/192/mode/2up