Through the Yellowstone Park on Horseback

New York: O. Judd Co., David W. Judd, Pres’t., 1886. 8vo.  195 x 125 mm., [7 ¼ x 5 inches].  250pp., [6pp ads].  Illustrated with a folding map of the terrotory, a wood engraved frontispiece and 20 plates and text illustrations.  The folding map has a few splits at the folds, expertly repaired with Japanese tissue.  Bound in publisher’s terra cotta cloth with title gilt on upper board and spine.  Pocket for map on rear pastedown.  Ownership inscription on front pastedown.  Near fine copy.
First edition.  One of the standard travel books to Yellowstone written for the benefit of others interested in making (truncated) the trip to Montana and Wyoming territory.  Traveling with his wife and his 17 year old daughter, Wingate a readable and highly detailed account, illustrated with wood engravings and a large folding map of the territory.  In the first chapter the author writes in part:
“If I had been going to Africa instead of to the Yellowstone, I would scarcely have had more trouble in obtaining reliable information in regard to the journey; and while I have undertaken, for the benefit of friends, to write such an account of it as my time will permit, I do so with the hope that it may perchance relieve others contemplating such an excursion from some of the difficulties that I experienced, in trying to learn what was to be done and what avoided.” 
The text takes Wingate and his family from Bozeman, Montana to Fort Ellis and chronicles their experience including a description of camp life, the Mammoth Hot Springs, Gardner Falls, Green Rive and Obsidian Cliffs, the Great Geyser, an elk hunt, and Henry’s Lake.  Along the way he makes observations on the bison and other game, flora, the effects of altitude, distances from place to place and a time table for the through Yellowstone Park.
Wingate’s book is well illustrated with wood engravings depicting the important topographical monuments in Yellowstone.  Some of the images are signed by William Cary, A. Barraud, and Matthews Northrup Company.  The large folding map was prepared in 1882 by Carl J. Hals and A. Rydström, Engineers. . (Inventory #: 1343)