CHAPTER XXII.
SKELETON TOURS FOR AMERICA AND EUROPE.
It is well to have your route laid out beforehand when you start on a pleasure tour, at least in a general way, so that you can approximate the necessary time and money for the journey. To facilitate the traveler's plans a few skeleton routes will be given, together with an estimate of the time necessary for a rapid journey to cover them. It should not be understood that the routes given embrace a tenth or a twentieth of those that exist; any railway or steamship agent can give you dozens or perhaps hundreds of routes of travel, and after you think the subject is exhausted you can easily find a rival agent who can give you a selection from many more. The lines of travel that are here laid out are intended to embrace the chief cities of Europe and America, together with the principal pleasure-resorts. The traveler will pay his money and take his choice, or rather he will take his choice and then pay his money.
The American tours take New York as a starting and also as a returning point, for the obvious reason that it is the largest city of America. For the European tours London or Liverpool will be taken as the terminal points, since nine-tenths of the Americans who visit Europe land at Liverpool and proceed thence to London with more or less directness.
Any one of the American routes can be covered in from one to two months, with a sufficient amount of time for seeing enough to satisfy an ordinary tourist. This does not allow for a stay of a week or more at each of two or three points, but only for a visit of sufficient length for doing the necessary sight-seeing, and a very little more. As there are no antiquities in American cities, and comparatively few stock sights, a tour of a given number of miles or places will take less time than a similar tour in Europe. A few hundred years hence we may be able to point to ancient buildings and ruins around which cluster many historical associations, but at present, to use a Hibernianism, all our antiquities are modern.
Without further preliminary the following routes are presented:—
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Lynchburg, Charlotte, Atlanta, Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans. The Mississippi River, passing Baton Rouge, Port Hudson, Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis, and Cairo to St Louis; rail via Springfield to Chicago and back to New York by Detroit and Niagara Falls.
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Lynchburg, Danville, Charlotte, Atlanta, Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans. The Mississippi River, passing Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis, and Cairo; thence on the Ohio River, passing Evansville and Louisville to Cincinnati, and back to New York, by Pittsburg and Altoona.
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, day steamer on the James River to Richmond, Gordonsville, Goshen (for Natural Bridge), White Sulphur Springs, Kanawha Falls, Huntington, steamer on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, St. Louis, Springfield, Chicago, through the Lakes to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto, the Thousand Islands and Rapids of the St. Lawrence to Montreal, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Saratoga, Rutland, Boston, Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, and New York.
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Springfield, Chicago, rail or steamer through the Lakes to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Toronto, the Thousand Islands and Rapids of the St. Lawrence to Montreal, rail or boat to Quebec, Gorham, stage to Glen House, Summit of Mount Washington, Crawford House, Fabyan House, Bethlehem, Profile House, rail to Concord, Nashua, and Boston, and Sound steamboat to New York.
None of the routes thus given will carry the traveler farther west than St. Louis. The tourist who wishes to extend his journey to the Rocky Mountains, to Utah, or to the Pacific Coast will be pretty certain to make either St. Louis or Chicago his point of departure, and therefore we will make up our routes from those cities. From St. Louis we can go as follows:—