_Now_, the trains of the _Southern Pacific_ and the _Lake Tahoe Railway and Transportation Company_ deposit one on the very edge of the Lake easier and with less personal exertion than is required to go to and from any large metropolitan hotel in one city to a similar hotel in another city.
It is almost inevitable that in such a book as this there should be some repetition.

Just as one sees the same peaks and lakes, shore-line and trees from different portions of the Lake--though, of course, at slightly or widely differing angles--so in writing, the attention of the reader naturally is called again and again to the same scenes.

But this book is written not so much with an eye to its literary quality, as to afford the visitor to Lake Tahoe--whether contemplative, actual, or retrospective--a truthful and comprehensive account and description of the Lake and its surroundings.
It will be observed that in many places I have capitalized the common noun Lake.

Whenever this appears it signifies Lake Tahoe--the chief of all the lakes of the Sierras.
While it is very delightful to sit on the veranda or in the swinging seats of the Tavern lawn, or at the choice nooks of all the resorts from Tahoe City completely around the Lake, it is not possible to write a book on Lake Tahoe there.

One must get out and feel the bigness of it all; climb its mountains, follow its trout streams; ride or walk or push one's way through its leafy coverts; dwell in the shade of its forests; row over its myriad of lakes; study its geology, before he can know or write about Tahoe.
This is what I have done.
And this is what I desire to urge most earnestly upon my reader.