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The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

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Title: The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

Author: Samuel Adams Drake


        
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[Illustration: TRAVELLERS IN A STORM, MOUNT WASHINGTON.]




Tourist's Edition

THE HEART
OF THE
WHITE MOUNTAINS

THEIR LEGEND AND SCENERY

BY

SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE

AUTHOR OF "NOOKS AND CORNERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST"
"CAPTAIN NELSON" ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

W. HAMILTON GIBSON

"_Eyes loose: thoughts close_"

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE
1882




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

_All rights reserved._


To JOHN G. WHITTIER:

_An illustrious and venerated bard, who shares with you the love and
honor of his countrymen, tells us that the poets are the best travelling
companions. Like Orlando in the forest of Arden, they "hang odes on
hawthorns and elegies on thistles."

In the spirit of that delightful companionship, so graciously announced,
it is to you, who have kindled on our aged summits

    "The light that never was on sea or land,
     The consecration and the poet's dream."

that this volume is affectionately dedicated by_

THE AUTHOR.




PREFACE.


The very flattering reception which the sumptuous holiday edition
of "The Heart of the White Mountains" received on its _début_ has
decided the Messrs. Harper to re-issue it in a more convenient and less
expensive form, with the addition of a Tourist's Appendix, and an Index
farther adapting it for the use of actual travellers. While all the
original features remain intact, these additions serve to render the
references in the text intelligible to the uninstructed reader, and at
the same time help to make a practical working manual. One or two new
maps contribute to the same end.

I take the opportunity thus afforded me to say that, when "The Heart of
the White Mountains" was originally prepared, I hoped it might go into
the hands of those who, making the journey for the first time, feel the
need of something different from the conventional guide-book of the day,
and for whom it would also be, during the hours of travel or of leisure
among the mountains, to some extent an entertaining as well as a useful
companion. So far as author and publisher are concerned, that purpose is
now realized.

Finally, I wrote the book because I could not help it.

SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE.

MELROSE, _January, 1882_.




GENERAL CONTENTS.


FIRST JOURNEY.

                               PAGE

I. _MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS_.....1

II. _INCOMPARABLE WINNIPISEOGEE_: Voyage from Wolfborough to Centre
Harbor.--The Indians.--Centre Harbor.--Legendary.--Ascent of Red
Hill.--Sunset on the Lake.....8

III. _CHOCORUA_: Stage Journey to Tamworth.--Scramble for
Places.--Valley of the Bear Camp.--Legend of Chocorua.--Sandwich
Mountains.--Chocorua Lake.--Ascent of Mount Chocorua.....18

IV. _LOVEWELL_: Fryeburg.--Lovewell's Fight.--Desperate Encounter with
the Pigwackets.--Death of Paugus.....33

V. _NORTH CONWAY_: The Antechamber of the Mountains.--White
Horse Ledge.--Fording the Saco.--Indian Custom.--Echo Lake.--The
Cathedral.--Diana's Baths.--Artists' Falls.--The Moats.--Winter Ascent
of Mount Kearsarge.....39

VI. _FROM KEARSARGE TO CARRIGAIN_: Conway Intervales.--Bartlett
Bowlder.--Singular Homicide.--Bartlett.--A Lost Village.--Ascent of
Mount Carrigain.--A Shaggy Wilderness.....55

VII. _VALLEY OF THE SACO_: Autumnal Foliage.--The Story of
Nancy.--Doctor Bemis.--Abel Crawford, the Veteran Guide.--Ethan A.
Crawford.--The Mount Crawford Glen.--Giant's Stairs.--Frankenstein
Cliff.--Superb View of Mount Washington.--Mount Willey.....66

VIII. _THROUGH THE NOTCH_: Great Notch of the White Mountains.--The
Willey House, and Slide of 1826.--"Colonizing" Voters.--Mount
Willard.--Mount Webster, and its Cascades.--Gate of the Notch.--Summit
of the Pass.....76

IX. _CRAWFORD'S_: The Elephant's Head.--Crawford House, and
Glen.--Discovery of The Notch.--Ascent of Mount Willard.--Magnificent
_coup d'oeil_.....87

X. _THE ASCENT FROM CRAWFORD'S_: The Bridle-path.--Wreck of
the Forest.--A Forest of Ice.--Dwarf Trees.--Summit of Mount
Clinton.--Caught in a Snow-storm.--The Colonel's Hat.--Oakes's
Gulf.--The Plateau.--Climbing the Dome.--The Summit at Last.....95


SECOND JOURNEY.

I. _LEGENDS OF THE CRYSTAL HILLS_: Indian Tradition and Legend.--Ascent
of Mount Washington by Darby Field.--Indian Name of the White Mountains
.....113

II. _JACKSON AND THE ELLIS VALLEY_: Thorn Hill.--Jackson.--Jackson
Falls.--Goodrich Falls.--The Ellis.--A Captive Maiden's Song.--Pretty
Indian Legend.--Pinkham Notch, from the Ellis.--A Mountain
Homestead.--Artist Life.....122

III. _THE CARTER NOTCH_: Valley of the Wildcat.--The Guide.--The
Way In.--Summit of The Notch.--Awful Desolation.--The Giant's
Barricade.--Carter Dome.--The Way Out.....132

IV. _THE PINKHAM NOTCH_: The Glen House.--Thompson's Falls.--Emerald
Pool.--Crystal Cascade.--Glen Ellis and its Legend.....144

V. _A SCRAMBLE IN TUCKERMAN'S_: Tuckerman's Ravine.--The Path.--Hermit
Lake.--"No Thoroughfare."--Interior of the Ravine.--The Snow
Arch.....155

VI. _IN AND ABOUT GORHAM_: The Peabody Valley.--Copp's Farm.--The
Imp.--Nathaniel Copp's Adventure.--Gorham and the Androscoggin.--Mount
Hayes.--Mount Madison.--Wholesale Destruction of the Forests.--Logging
in the Mountains.--Berlin Falls.--Shelburne and Bethel.....165

VII. _ASCENT BY THE CARRIAGE-ROAD_: Bruin and the Travellers.--The
Ledge.--The Great Gulf.--Fatal Accident.--Lost Travellers.--Arrival at
the Signal-station.--A Night on the Summit.....178

VIII. _MOUNT WASHINGTON_: View from the Summit.--The Great Gale.--Life
on the Summit.--Shadow of Mount Washington.--Bigelow's Lawn.--The Hunter
Monument.--Lake of the Clouds.--The Mountain Butterfly.....189


THIRD JOURNEY.

I. _THE PEMIGEWASSET IN JUNE_: Plymouth.--Death of Hawthorne.--John
Stark, the Hunter.--Livermore Fall.--Trout and Salmon
Breeding.--Franconia Mountains from West Campton.--Settlement of
Campton.--Valley of Mad River.--Tripyramid Mountain.--Waterville and its
Surroundings.....209

II. _THE FRANCONIA PASS_: The Flume House.--The Pool.--The
Flume.--Ascent of Mount Pemigewasset.--The Basin.--Mount
Cannon.--Profile Lake.--Old Man of the Mountain.--Summit of the
Pass.....224

III. _THE KING OF FRANCONIA_: Profile House and Glen.--Eagle
Cliff.--Echo Lake.--Ascent of Mount Lafayette.--The Lakes.--Singular
Atmospheric Effects.....237

IV. _FRANCONIA, AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD_: The Roadside Spring.--Franconia
Iron Works and Vicinity.--Sugar Hill.....248

V. _THE CONNECTICUT OX-BOW_: Newbury and Haverhill.....256

VI. _THE SACK OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES_: Robert Rogers, the
Ranger.--Destruction of the Abenaqui Village.--Retreat and Pursuit of
the Rangers.--Legend of the Silver Image.....259

VII. _MOOSEHILLOCK_: Ascent of the Mountain from Warren.--View from the
Summit.....267

VIII. _BETHLEHEM_: Bethlehem Street.--Sudden Rise of a Mountain
Resort.--The Environs.--Maplewood and the Great Range.--The Place of
Sunsets.--The "Hermit."--The Soldier turned Peddler.....276

IX. _JEFFERSON, AND THE VALLEY OF ISRAEL'S RIVER_: Jefferson
Hill.--Starr King and Cherry Mountains.--The Great Chain Again.--Thomas
Starr King.--Ethan Crawford's.--Ravine of the Cascades.--Randolph Hill
and King's Ravine.--The Cherry Mountain Road.--Fabyan's.--Captain
Rosebrook .....291

X. _THE GREAT NORTHERN PEAKS_: The Mountain Railway.--An Evening
Ascension.--Moonlight on the Summit.--Sunrise.--A March to Mount
Adams.--The Great Gulf of the Five Mountains.--The Castellated
Ridge.--Peak of Mount Adams.--Conclusion.....304





Illustrations.


These Illustrations, excepting those marked *, were designed by W.
HAMILTON GIBSON.

SUBJECT.      ENGRAVER.      PAGE.
TRAVELLERS IN A STORM, MOUNT WASHINGTON   _R. Hoskin_    Frontispiece

WINNIPISEOGEE, FROM RED HILL              _J. Tinkey_              15

*"ALONE WITH ALL THOSE MEN!"              _V. Bernstrom_           20
      _Designed by W. A. Rogers._

PASSACONNAWAY, FROM THE BEAR-CAMP RIVER   _Smithwick and French_   24

CHOCORUA                                  _R. Hoskin_              26

LOVEWELL'S POND                           _J. P. Davis_            34

MOUNT WASHINGTON, FROM THE SACO           _F. S. King_             40

THE LEDGES, NORTH CONWAY                  _E. Held_                41

ECHO LAKE, NORTH CONWAY                   _G. J. Buechner_         45

KEARSARGE IN WINTER                       _R. Hoskin_              48

*SLIDING DOWN KEARSARGE                   _H. Deis_                53
      _Designed by W. A. Rogers._

CONWAY MEADOWS                            _W. H. Morse_            56

BARTLETT BOWLDER                          _E. Held_                58

*NANCY IN THE SNOW                        _J. P. Davis_            68
      _Designed by Sol Eytinge._

*ABEL CRAWFORD (PORTRAIT)                 _Thos. Johnson_          70

STORM ON MOUNT WILLEY                     _J. Linton_              75

MOUNT WILLARD, FROM WILLEY BROOK          _G. Smith_               78

THE CASCADES, MOUNT WEBSTER               _F. S. King_             85

ELEPHANT'S HEAD, WINTER                   _H. Wolf_                88

LOOKING DOWN THE NOTCH                    _C. Mayer_               91

GIANT'S STAIRS, FROM THORN MOUNTAIN       _J. Hellawell_           124

MOAT MOUNTAIN, FROM JACKSON FALLS         _F. Pettit_              126

THE CARTER NOTCH                          _Smithwick and French_   134

THE EMERALD POOL                          _W. H. Morse_            147

THE CRYSTAL CASCADE                       _H. Wolf_                149

THE PATH, TUCKERMAN'S RAVINE              _R. Hoskin_              157

HERMIT LAKE                               _W. J. Dana_             160

SNOW ARCH, TUCKERMAN'S RAVINE             _N. Orr_                 163

THE IMP                                   _J. Tinkey_              166

THE ANDROSCOGGIN AT SHELBURNE             _G. Smith_               176

MOUNT ADAMS AND THE GREAT GULF            _W. H. Morse_            182

WINTER STORM ON THE SUMMIT                _R. Schelling_           187

*THE TORNADO FORCING AN ENTRANCE          _J. Tinkey_              194
      _Designed by Thure de Thulstrup_

LAKE OF THE CLOUDS                        _J. P. Davis_            200

ON THE PROFILE ROAD                       _Smithwick and French_   213

WELCH MOUNTAIN, FROM MAD RIVER            _J. Hellawell_           217

BLACK AND TRIPYRAMID MOUNTAINS            _J. S. Harley_           220

FRANCONIA NOTCH, FROM THORNTON            _F. S. King_             222

A GLIMPSE OF THE POOL                     _C. Mayer_               225

THE FLUME, FRANCONIA NOTCH                _J. P. Davis_            227

THE BASIN                                 _G. J. Buechner_         230

*THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN              _A. Measom_              234
      _Designed by Granville Perkins._

*EAGLE CLIFF AND THE ECHO HOUSE           _P. Annin_               238
      _Designed by Granville Perkins._

ECHO LAKE, FRANCONIA                      _G. J. Buechner_         240

MOUNT CANNON, FROM THE BRIDLE-PATH,
LAFAYETTE                                 _R. Schelling_           242

CLOUD EFFECTS ON MOUNT LAFAYETTE          _R. Hoskin_              245

*FRANCONIA IRON WORKS AND NOTCH           _C. Mayer_               248
      _Designed by Granville Perkins._

*THE ROADSIDE SPRING                                               250
      _Designed by W. A . Rogers._

*ROBERT ROGERS (PORTRAIT)                 _C. Mayer_               260

*THE BUCK-BOARD WAGON                                                  274
      _Designed by W. A. Rogers._

MOUNT LAFAYETTE, FROM BETHLEHEM           _J. Tinkey_              280

THE NORTHERN PEAKS, FROM JEFFERSON        _Smithwick and French_   292

MOUNT WASHINGTON, FROM FABYAN'S           _E. Held_                301

*MOUNTAIN RAILWAY-STATION IN STAGING
TIMES                                     _T. Johnson_             305
      _Designed by Granville Perkins._

ASCENT BY THE RAILWAY                     _J. Hellawell_           309

THE CASTELLATED RIDGE, MOUNT JEFFERSON    _J. Tinkey_              315

MAP OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS (_East Side_)                            xv

  "    "    " (_Central and Northern Section_)                     111

  "    "    " (_West Side_)                                        207


FIRST JOURNEY.


                                PAGE

I. _MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS_      1

II. _INCOMPARABLE WINNIPISEOGEE_   8

III. _CHOCORUA_                   18

IV. _LOVEWELL_                    33

V. _NORTH CONWAY_                 39

VI. _KEARSARGE TO CARRIGAIN_      55

VII. _VALLEY OF THE SACO_         66

VIII. _THROUGH THE NOTCH_         76

IX. _CRAWFORD'S_                  87

X. _ASCENT FROM CRAWFORD'S_       95

[Illustration: [Map]]




THE

HEART OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.




FIRST JOURNEY.

I.

_MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS._

    "Si jeunesse savait! si viellesse pouvait!"


One morning in September I was sauntering up and down the
railway-station waiting for the slow hands of the clock to reach the
hour fixed for the departure of the train. The fact that these hands
never move backward did not in the least seem to restrain the impatience
of the travellers thronging into the station, some with happy, some with
anxious faces, some without trace of either emotion, yet all betraying
the same eagerness and haste of manner. All at once I heard my name
pronounced, and felt a heavy hand upon my shoulder.

"What!" I exclaimed, in genuine surprise, "is it you, colonel?"

"Myself," affirmed the speaker, offering his cigar-case.

"And where did you drop from"--accepting an Havana; "the Blue Grass?"

"I reckon."

"But what are you doing in New England, when you should be in Kentucky?"

"Doing, I? oh, well," said my friend, with a shade of constraint; then
with a quizzical smile, "You are a Yankee; guess."

"Take care."

"Guess."

"Running away from your creditors?"

The colonel's chin cut the air contemptuously.

"Running after a woman, perhaps?"

My companion quickly took the cigar from his lips, looked at me with
mouth half opened, then stammered, "What in blue brimstone put that into
your head?"

"Evidently you are going on a journey, but are dressed for an evening
party," I replied, comprising with a glance the colonel's black suit,
lavender gloves, and white cravat.

"Why," said the colonel, glancing rather complacently at himself--"why
we Kentuckians always travel so at home. But it's now your turn; where
are you going yourself?"

"To the mountains."

"Good; so am I: White Mountains, Green Mountains, Rocky Mountains, or
Mountains of the Moon, I care not."

"What is your route?"

"I'm not at all familiar with the topography of your mountains. What is
yours?"

"By the Eastern to Lake Winnipiseogee, thence to Centre Harbor, thence
by stage and rail to North Conway and the White Mountain Notch."

My friend purchased his ticket by the indicated route, and the train
was soon rumbling over the bridges which span the Charles and Mystic.
Farewell, Boston, city where, like thy railways, all extremes meet, but
where I would still rather live on a crust moistened with east wind than
cast my lot elsewhere.

When we had fairly emerged into the light and sunshine of the open
country, I recognized my old acquaintance George Brentwood. At a gesture
from me he came and sat opposite to us.

George Brentwood was a blond young man of thirty-four or thirty-five,
with brown hair, full reddish beard, shrewdish blue eyes, a robust
frame, and a general air of negligent repose. In a word, he was the
antipodes of my companion, whose hair, eyebrows, and mustache were
coal-black, eyes dark and sparkling, manner nervous, and his attitudes
careless and unconstrained, though not destitute of a certain natural
grace. Both were men to be remarked in a crowd.

"George," said I, "permit me to introduce my friend Colonel Swords."

After a few civil questions and answers, George declared his
destination to be ours, and was cordially welcomed to join us. By way
of breaking the ice, he observed,

"Apropos of your title, colonel, I presume you served in the Rebellion?"

The colonel hitched a little on his seat before replying. Knowing him
to be a very modest man, I came to his assistance. "Yes," said I, "the
colonel fought hard and bled freely. Let me see, where were you wounded?"

"Through the chest."

"No, I mean in what battle?"

"Spottsylvania."

"Left on the field for dead, and taken prisoner," I finished.

George is a fellow of very generous impulses. "My dear sir," said he,
effusively, grasping the colonel's hand, "after what you have suffered
for the old flag, you can need no other passport to the gratitude and
friendship of a New-Englander. Count me as one of your debtors. During
the war it was my fortune--my misfortune, I should say--to be in a
distant country; otherwise we should have been found fighting shoulder
to shoulder under Grant, or Sherman, or Sheridan, or Thomas.

The colonel's color rose. He drew himself proudly up, cleared his
throat, and said, laconically, "Hardly, stranger, seeing that I had the
honor to fight under the Confederate flag."

You have seen a tortoise suddenly draw back into his shell. Well, George
as suddenly retreated into his. For an instant he looked at the Southron
as one might at a confessed murderer; then stammered out a few random
and unmeaning words about mistaken sense of duty--gallant but useless
struggle, you know--drew a newspaper from his pocket, and hid his
confusion behind it.

Fearing my fiery Kentuckian might let fall some unlucky word that would
act like a live coal dropped on the tortoise's back, I hastened to
interpose. "But really, colonel," I urged, returning to the charge,
"with the Blue Ridge always at your back, I wager you did not come a
thousand miles merely to see our mountains. Come, what takes you from
Lexington?"

"A truant disposition."

"Nothing else?"

His dark face grew swarthy, then pale. He looked at me doubtfully a
moment, and then leaned close to my ear. "You guessed it," he whispered.

"A woman?"

"Yes; you know that I was taken prisoner and sent North. Through the
influence of a friend who had known my family before the war, I was
allowed to pass my first days of convalescence in a beautiful little
village in Berkshire. There I was cured of the bullet, but received a
more mortal wound."

"What a misfortune!"

"Yes; no; confound you, let me finish."

"Helen, the daughter of the gentleman who procured my transfer from the
hospital to his pleasant home" (the proud Southerner would not say his
benefactor), "was a beautiful creature. Let me describe her to you."

"Oh," I hastened to say, "I know her." Like all lovers, that subject
might have a beginning but no ending.

"You?"

"Of course. Listen. Yellow hair, rippling ravishingly from an alabaster
forehead, pink cheeks, pouting lips, dimpled chin, snowy throat--"

The colonel made a gesture of impatience. "Pshaw, that's a type, not a
portrait. Well, the upshot of it was that I was exchanged, and ordered
to report at Baltimore for transportation to our lines. Imagine my
dismay. No, you can't, for I was beginning to think she cared for me,
and I was every day getting deeper and deeper in love. But to tell her!
That posed me. When alone with her, my cowardly tongue clove to the roof
of my mouth. Once or twice I came very near bawling out, 'I love you!'
just as I would have given an order to a squadron to charge a battery."

"Well; but you did propose at last?"

"Oh yes."

"And was accepted."

The colonel lowered his head, and his face grew pinched.

"Refused gently, but positively refused."

"Come," I hazarded, thinking the story ended, "I do not like your Helen."

"Why?"

"Because either you are mistaken, or she seems just a little of a
coquette."

"Oh, you don't know her," said the colonel, warmly; "when we parted she
betrayed unusual agitation--for her; but I was cut to the quick by her
refusal, and determined not to let her see how deeply I felt it. After
the Deluge--you know what I mean--after the tragedy at Appomattox, I
went back to the old home. Couldn't stay there. I tried New Orleans,
Cuba. No use."

Something rose in the colonel's throat, but he gulped it down and went
on:

"The image of that girl pursues me. Did you ever try running away from
yourself? Well, after fighting it out with myself until I could endure
it no longer, I put pride in my pocket, came straight to Berkshire, only
to find Helen gone."

"That was unlucky; where?"

"To the mountains, of course. Everybody seems to be going there; but I
shall find her."

"Don't be too sanguine. It will be like looking for a needle in a
hay-stack. The mountains are a perfect Dædalian labyrinth," I could not
help saying, in my vexation. Instead of an ardent lover of nature, I had
picked up the "baby of a girl." But there was George Brentwood. I went
over and sat by George.

It was generally understood that George was deeply enamored of a young
and beautiful widow who had long ceased to count her love affairs,
who all the world, except George, knew loved only herself, and who
had therefore nothing left worth mentioning to bestow upon another.
By nature a coquette, passionately fond of admiration, her self-love
was flattered by the attentions of such a man as George, and he, poor
fellow, driven one day to the verge of despair, the next intoxicated
with the crumbs she threw him, was the victim of a species of slavery
which was fast undermining his buoyant and generous disposition. The
colonel was in hot pursuit of his adored Helen. Two words sufficed to
acquaint me that George was escaping from his beautiful tormentor. At
all events, I was sure of him.

"How charming the country is! What a delightful sense of freedom!"
George drew a deep breath, and stretched his limbs luxuriously. "Shall
we have an old-fashioned tramp together?" He continued, with assumed
vivacity, "The deuce take me if I go back to town for a twelve-month.
How we creep along! I feel exultation in putting the long miles between
me and the accursed city," said George, at last.

"You experience no regret, then, at leaving the city?"

George merely looked at me; but he could not have spoken more eloquently.

The train had just left Portsmouth, when the conductor entered the car
holding aloft a yellow envelope. Every eye was instantly riveted upon
it. Conversation ceased. For whom of the fifty or sixty occupants of
the car had this flash overtaken the express train? In that moment the
criminal realized the futility of flight, the merchant the uncertainty
of his investments, the man of leisure all the ordinary contingencies of
life. The conductor put an end to the suspense by demanding,

"Is Mr. George Brentwood in this car?"

In spite of an heroic effort at self-control, George's hand trembled as
he tore open the envelope; but as he read his face became radiant. Had
he been alone I believe he would have kissed the paper.

"Your news is not bad?" I ventured to ask, seeing him relapse into a
fit of musing, and noting the smile that came and went like a ripple on
still water.

"Thank you, quite the contrary; but it is important that I should
immediately return to Boston."

"How unfortunate!"

George turned on me a fixed and questioning look, but made no reply.

"And the mountains?" I persisted.

"Oh, sink the mountains!"

I last saw George striding impatiently up and down the platform of the
Rochester station, watch in hand. Without doubt he had received his
recall. However, there was still the lovelorn colonel.

Never have I seen a man more thoroughly enraptured with the growing
beauty of the scenery. I promised myself much enjoyment in his society,
for his comments were both original and picturesque; so that by the time
we arrived at Wolfborough I had already forgotten George and his widow.

There was the usual throng of idlers lounging about the pier with
their noses in the air, and their hands in their pockets; perhaps more
than the usual confusion, for the steamer merely touched to take and
leave passengers. We went on board. As the bell tolled the colonel
uttered an exclamation. He became all on a sudden transformed from a
passive spectator into an excited and prominent actor in the scene.
He gesticulated wildly, swung his hat, and shouted in a frantic way,
apparently to attract the attention of some one in the crowd; failing in
which he seized his luggage, took the stairs in two steps, and darting
like a rocket among the astonished spectators, who divided to the right
and left before his impetuous onset, was in the act of vigorously
shaking hands with a hale old gentleman of fifty odd when the boat swung
clear. He waved his unoccupied hand, and I saw his face wreathed in
smiles. I could not fail to interpret the gesture as an adieu.

"Halloo!" I shouted, "what of the mountains?"

"Burn the mountains!" was his reply. The steamer glided swiftly down the
little bay, and I was left to continue my journey alone.




II.

_INCOMPARABLE WINNIPISEOGEE._

                       First a lake
    Tinted with sunset, next the wavy lines
    Of far receding hills.--WHITTIER.


When the steamer glides out of the land-locked inlet at the bottom
of which Wolfborough is situated, one of those pictures, forever
ineffaceable, presents itself. In effect, all the conditions of a
picture are realized. Here is the shining expanse of the lake stretching
away in the distance, and finally lost among tufted inlets and
foliage-rounded promontories. To the right are the Ossipee mountains,
dark, vigorously outlined, and wooded to their summits. To the left,
more distant, rise the twin domes of the Belknap peaks. In front, and
closing the view, the imposing Sandwich summits dominate the scene.

All these mountains seem advancing into the lake. They possess a
special character of color, outline, or physiognomy which fixes them
in the memory, not confusedly, but in the place appropriate to this
beautiful picture, to its fine proportions, exquisite harmony, and
general effectiveness. Even M. Chateaubriand, who maintains that
mountains should only be seen from a distance--even he would have found
in Winnipiseogee the perfection of his ideal _mise en scène_; for here
they stand well back from the lake, so as to give the best effect of
perspective.

Lovely as the lake is, the eye will rove among the mountains that we
have come to see. They, and they alone, are the objects which have
enticed us--entice us even now with a charm and mystery that we cannot
pretend to explain. We do not wish it explained. We know that we are
as free, as light of heart, as the birds that skim the placid surface
of the lake, and coquet with their own shadows. The memory of those
mountains is like snatches of music that come unbidden and haunt you
perpetually.

Having taken in the grander features, the eye is occupied with its
details. We see the lake quivering in sunshine. From bold summit to
beautiful water the shores are clothed in most vivid green. The islands,
which we believe to be floating gardens, are almost tropical in the
luxuriance and richness of their vegetation. The deep shadows they fling
down image each islet so faithfully that it seems, like Narcissus,
gloating over its own beauty. Here and there a glimmer of water through
the trees denotes secluded little havens. Boats float idly on the calm
surface. Water-fowl rise and beat the glossy, dark water with startled
wings. White tents appear, and handkerchiefs flutter from jutting points
or headlands. Over all tower the mountains.

The steamer glided swiftly and noiselessly on, attended by the echo
of her paddles from the shores. Dimpled waves, parting from her prow,
rolled indolently in, and broke on the foam-fretted rocks. There was a
warmth of color about these rocks, a pure transparency to the water, a
brightness to the foliage, an invigorating strength in the mountains
that exerted a cheerful influence upon our spirits.

As we advanced up the lake new and rare vistas rapidly succeeded.
After leaving Long Island behind, the near ranges drew apart, holding
us admiring and absorbed spectators of a moving panorama of distant
summits. An opening appeared, through which Mount Washington burst upon
us blue as lapis-lazuli, a chaplet of clouds crowning his imperial
front. Slowly, majestically, he marches by, and now Chocorua scowls upon
us. A murmur of admiration ran from group to group as these monumental
figures were successively unveiled. Men kept silence, but women could
not repress the exclamation, "How beautiful!" The two grandest types
which these mountains enclose were thus displayed in the full splendor
of noonday.

I should add that those who now saw Mount Washington for the first
time, and whose curiosity was whetted by the knowledge that it was the
highest peak of the whole family of mountains, openly manifested their
disappointment. That Mount Washington! It was in vain to remind them
that the eye traversed forty miles in its flight from lake to summit.
Fault of perspective or not, the mountain was not nearly so high as
they imagined. Chocorua, on the contrary, with its ashen spire and
olive-green flanks, realized more fully their idea of a high mountain.
One was near, the other far. Imagination fails to make a mountain higher
than it looks. The mind takes its measure after the eye.

Our boat was now rapidly nearing Centre Harbor. On the right its
progress gradually unmasking the western slopes of the Ossipee range,
more fully opened the view of Chocorua and his dependent peaks. We
were looking in the direction of Tamworth. Ossipee, and Conway. Red
Hill, a detached mountain at the head of the lake, now moved into the
gap, excluding further views of distant summits. Moosehillock, lofty
but unimpressive, has for some time showed its flattened heights over
the Sandwich Mountains, but is now sinking behind them. To the west,
thronged with islands, is the long reach of water toward the outlet of
the lake at Weirs.[1]

This lake was the highway over which Indian war-parties advanced or
retreated during their predatory incursions from Canada. Many captives
must have crossed it whom its mountain walls seemed forever destined to
separate from friends and kindred. The Indians who inhabited villages at
Winnipiseogee (Weirs), Ossipee, and Pigwacket (Fryeburg), were hostile;
and from time to time during the old wars troops were marched from
the English settlements to subdue them. These scouting-parties found
the woods well stocked with bear, moose, and deer, and the lake with
salmon-trout, some of which, according to the narrative before me, were
three feet long, and weighed twelve pounds each.

Traces of Indian occupation remained up to the present century.
Fishing-weirs and woodland paths were frequently discovered by the
whites; but a greater curiosity than either is mentioned by Dr. Belknap,
in his "History of New Hampshire," who there tells of a pine-tree,
standing on the shore of Winnipiseogee River, on which was carved a
canoe with two men in it, supposed to have been a mark of direction to
those who were expected to follow. Another was a tree in Moultonborough,
standing near a carrying-place between two ponds. On this tree was a
representation of one of their expeditions. The number of killed and
the prisoners were shown by rude drawings of human beings, the former
being distinguished by the mark of a knife across the throat. Even the
distinction of sex was preserved in the drawing.

Centre Harbor is advantageously situated for a sojourn more or less
prolonged. Although settled as early as 1755, it is, in common with the
other lake towns, barren of history or tradition. Its greatest impulse
is, beyond question, the tide of tourists which annually ebbs and flows
among the most sequestered nooks, enriching this charming region like an
inundation of the Nile. An anecdote will, however, serve to illustrate
the character of the men who first subdued this wilderness. Our anecdote
represents its hero a man of resources. His career proves him a man of
courage. Although a veritable personage, let us call him General Hampton.

The fact that General Hampton lived in that only half-cleared atmosphere
following the age of credulity and superstition, naturally accounts
for the extraordinary legend concerning him which, for the rest, had
its origin among his own friends and neighbors, who merely shared the
general belief in the practice of diabolic arts, through compacts with
the arch-enemy of mankind himself, universally prevailing in that
day--yes, prevailing all over Christendom. By a mere legend, we are thus
able to lay hold of the thread which conducts us back through the dark
era of superstition and delusion, and which is now so amazing.

The general, says the legend, encountered a far more notable adversary
than Abenaki warriors or conjurers, among whom he had lived, and whom it
was the passion of his life to exterminate.

In an evil hour his yearning to amass wealth suddenly led him to declare
that he would sell his soul for the possession of unbounded riches.
Think of the devil, and he is at your elbow. The fatal declaration was
no sooner made--the general was sitting alone by his fireside--than
a shower of sparks came down the chimney, out of which stepped a man
dressed from top to toe in black velvet. The astonished Hampton noticed
that the stranger's ruffles were not even smutted.

"Your servant, general," quoth the stranger, suavely, "but let us make
haste, if you please, for I am expected at the governor's in a quarter
of an hour," he added, picking up a live coal with his thumb and
forefinger and consulting his watch with it.

The general's wits began to desert him. Portsmouth was five leagues,
long ones at that, from Hampton House, and his strange visitor talked,
with the utmost unconcern, of getting there in fifteen minutes. His
astonishment caused him to stammer out,

"Then you must be the--"

"Tush! what signifies a name?" interrupted the stranger, with a
deprecating wave of the hand. "Come, do we understand each other? is it
a bargain or not?"

At the talismanic word "bargain" the general pricked up his ears. He had
often been heard to say that neither man nor devil could get the better
of him in a trade. He took out his jack-knife and began to whittle. The
devil took out his, and began to pare his nails.

"But what proof have I that you can perform what you promise?" demanded
Hampton, pursing up his mouth, and contracting his bushy eyebrows.

The fiend ran his fingers carelessly through his peruke; a shower of
golden guineas fell to the floor, and rolled to the four corners of the
room. The general quickly stooped to pick up one; but no sooner had his
fingers closed upon it than he uttered a yell. It was red-hot.

The devil chuckled. "Try again," he said.

But Hampton shook his head, and retreated a step.

"Don't be afraid."

Hampton cautiously touched a coin. It was cool. He weighed it in his
hand, and rung it on the table. It was full weight and true ring. Then
he went down on his hands and knees, and began to gather up the guineas
with feverish haste.

"Are you satisfied?" demanded Satan.

"Completely, your majesty."

"Then to business. By-the-way, have you anything to drink in the house?"

"There is some Old Jamaica in the cupboard."

"Excellent. I am as thirsty as a Puritan on election-day," said the
devil, seating himself at the table and negligently flinging his mantle
back over his shoulder.

Hampton brought a decanter and a couple of glasses from the cupboard,
filled one and passed it to his infernal guest, who tasted it, and
smacked his lips with the air of a connoisseur. Hampton watched every
gesture. "Does your excellency not find it to his taste?" he ventured to
ask.

"H'm, I have drunk worse; but let me show you how to make a salamander,"
replied Satan, touching the lighted end of the taper to the liquor,
which instantly burst into a spectral blue flame. The fiend then
raised the tankard, glanced approvingly at the blaze--which to
Hampton's disordered intellect resembled an adder's forked and agile
tongue--nodded, and said, patronizingly, "To our better acquaintance."
He then quaffed the contents at a single gulp.

Hampton shuddered. This was not the way he had been used to seeing
healths drunk. He pretended, however, to drink, for fear of giving
offence, but somehow the liquor choked him. The demon set down the
tankard, and observed, in a matter-of-fact way that put his listener in
a cold sweat,

"Now that you are convinced I am able to make you the richest man in all
the province, listen. In consideration of your agreement, duly signed
and sealed, to deliver your soul"--here he drew a parchment from his
breast--"I engage, on my part, on the first day of every month, to fill
your boots with golden elephants like these before you. But mark me
well," said Satan, holding up a forefinger glittering with diamonds; "if
you try to play me any trick you will repent it. I know you, Jonathan
Hampton, and shall keep my eye upon you. So beware!"

Hampton flinched a little at this plain speech; but a thought seemed to
strike him, and he brightened up. Satan opened the scroll, smoothed out
the creases, dipped a pen in the inkhorn at his girdle, and pointing to
a blank space said, laconically, "Sign!"

Hampton hesitated.

"If you are afraid," sneered Satan, "why put me to all this trouble?"
And he began to put the gold in his pocket.

His victim seized the pen, but his hand shook so he could not write. He
gulped down a swallow of rum, stole a look at his infernal guest, who
nodded his head by way of encouragement, and a second time approached
his pen to the paper. The struggle was soon over. The unhappy Hampton
wrote his name at the bottom of the fatal list, which he was astonished
to see numbered some of the highest personages in the province. "I shall
at least be in good company," he muttered.

"Good!" said Satan, rising and putting the scroll carefully within his
breast. "Rely on me, general, and be sure you keep faith. Remember!"
So saying, the demon waved his hand, wrapped his mantle about him, and
vanished up the chimney.

Satan performed his part of the contract to the letter. On the first day
of every month the boots, which were hung on the crane in the fireplace
the night before, were found in the morning stuffed full of guineas. It
is true that Hampton had ransacked the village for the largest pair to
be found, and had finally secured a brace of trooper's boots, which came
up to the wearer's thigh; but the contract merely expressed boots, and
the devil does not stand upon trifles.

Hampton rolled in wealth. Everything prospered. His neighbors regarded
him first with envy, then with aversion, at last with fear. Not a few
affirmed he had entered into a league with the Evil One. Others shook
their heads, saying, "What does it signify? that man would outwit the
devil himself."

But one morning, when the fiend came as usual to fill the boots, what
was his astonishment to find that he could not fill them. He poured in
the guineas, but it was like pouring water into a rat-hole. The more he
put in, the more the quantity seemed to diminish. In vain he persisted:
the boots could not be filled.

The devil scratched his ear. "I must look into this," he reflected.
No sooner said than he attempted to descend, but found his progress
suddenly arrested. The chimney was choked up with guineas. Foaming with
rage, the demon tore the boots from the crane. The crafty general had
cut off the soles, leaving only the legs for the devil to fill. The
chamber was knee-deep with gold.

The devil gave a horrible grin, and disappeared. The same night Hampton
House was burnt to the ground, the general only escaping in his shirt.
He had been dreaming he was dead and in hell. His precious guineas were
secreted in the wainscot, the ceiling, and other hiding-places known
only to himself. He blasphemed, wept, and tore his hair. Suddenly he
grew calm. After all, the loss was not irreparable, he reflected. Gold
would melt, it is true; but he would find it all, of course he would,
at daybreak, run into a solid lump in the cellar--every guinea. That is
true of ordinary gold.

The general worked with the energy of despair clearing away the rubbish.
He refused all offers of assistance: he dared not accept them. But the
gold had vanished. Whether it was really consumed, or had passed again
into the massy entrails of the earth, will never be known. It is certain
that every vestige of it had disappeared.

When the general died and was buried, strange rumors began to circulate.
To quiet them, the grave was opened; but when the lid was removed from
the coffin, it was found to be empty.

Having reached Centre Harbor at two in the afternoon, there was still
time to ascend Red Hill before sunset. This eminence would be called
a mountain anywhere else. Its altitude is inconsiderable, but its
situation at the head of the lake, on its very borders, is highly
favorable to a commanding prospect of the surrounding lake region.
There are two summits, the northern and highest being only a little
more than two thousand feet.

[Illustration: WINNIPISEOGEE FROM RED HILL.]

For such an excursion little preparation is necessary. In fact a
carriage-road ascends within a mile of the superior summit; and from
this point the path is one of the easiest I have ever traversed. The
value of a pure atmosphere is so well understood by every mountain
tourist that he will neglect no opportunity which this thrice-fickle
element offers him. This was a day of days.

After a little promenade of two hours, or two hours and a half, I
reached the cairn on the summit, from which a tattered signal flag
fluttered in the breeze. Without extravagance, the view is one of the
most engaging that the eye ever looked upon. I had before me that
beautiful valley extending between the Sandwich chain on the left and
the Ossipee range on the right, the distance filled by a background of
mountains. It was across this valley that we saw Mount Washington, while
coming up the lake. But that noble peak was now hid.

The first chain trending to the west threw one gigantic arm around the
beautiful little Squam Lake, which like a magnificent gem sparkled at my
feet. The second stretched its huge rampart along the eastern shores of
Winnipiseogee.

The surface of this valley is tumbled about in most charming disorder.
Three villages crowned as many eminences in the foreground; three little
lakes, half hid in the middle distance, blue as turquoise, lighted the
fading hues of field and forest. Hamlets and farms, groves and forests
innumerable, were scattered broadcast over this inviting landscape. The
harvests were gathered, and the mellowed tints of green, orange, and
gold resembled rich old tapestry. Men and animals looked like insects
creeping along the roads.

From this point of view the Sandwich Mountains took far greater interest
and character, and I remarked that no two summits were precisely alike
in form or outline. Higher and more distant peaks peered curiously
over their brawny shoulders from their lairs in the valley of the
Pemigewasset; but more remarkable, more weird than all, was the gigantic
monolith which tops the rock-ribbed pile of Chocorua. The more I looked,
the more this monstrous freak of nature fascinated. As the sun glided
down the west, a ruddy glow tinged its pinnacle; while the shadows
lurking in the ravines stole up the mountain side and crouched for a
final spring upon the summit. Little by little, twilight flowed over the
valley, and a thin haze rose from its surface.

I had waited for this moment, and now turned to the lakes. Winnipiseogee
was visible throughout its whole length, the multitude of islands
peeping above it giving the idea of an inundation rather than an inland
sea. On the farthest shores mere specks of white denoted houses; and
traced in faint relief on the southern sky, so unsubstantial, indeed,
as to render it doubtful if it were sky or mountain, was the Grand
Monadnock, the fixed sentinel of all this august assemblage of mountains.

Glowing in sunset splendor, streaked with all the hues of the rainbow,
the lake was indeed magnificent.

In vain the eve roved hither and thither seeking some foil to this
peerless beauty. Everywhere the same unrivalled picture led it captive
over thirty miles of gleaming water, up the graceful curves of the
mountains, to rest at last among crimson clouds floating in rosy vapor
over their notched summits.

Imagination must assist the reader to reproduce this ravishing
spectacle. To attempt to describe it is like a profanation. Paradise
seemed to have opened wide its gates to my enraptured gaze; or had
I surprised the secrets of the unknown world? I stood silent and
spellbound, with a strange, exquisite feeling at the heart. I felt a
thrill of pain when a voice from the forest broke the solemn stillness
which alone befitted this almost supernatural vision. Now I understood
the pagan's adoration of the sun. My mind ran over the most striking or
touching incidents of Scripture, where the sublimity of the scene is
always in harmony with the grandeur of the event--the Temptation, the
Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration--and memory brought to my aid
these words, so simple, so tender, yet so expressive, "And he went up
into the mountain to pray, himself, alone."




III.

_CHOCORUA._

    "There I saw above me mountains,
    And I asked of them what century
    Met them in their youth."


After a stay at Centre Harbor long enough to gain a knowledge of its
charming environs, but which seemed all too brief, I took the stage at
two o'clock one sunny afternoon for Tamworth. I had resolved, if the
following morning should be clear, to ascend Chocorua, which from the
summit of Red Hill seemed to fling his defiance from afar.

Following my custom, I took an outside seat with the driver. There being
only three or four passengers, what is frequently a bone of contention
was settled without that display of impudent selfishness which is seen
when a dozen or more travellers are all struggling for precedence. But
at the steamboat landing the case was different. I remained a quiet
looker-on of the scene that ensued. It was sufficiently ridiculous.

At the moment the steamboat touched her pier the passengers prepared to
spring to the shore, and force had to be used to keep them back until
she could be secured. An instant after the crowd rushed pell-mell up
the wharf, surrounded the stage, and began, women as well as men, a
promiscuous scramble for the two or three unoccupied seats at the top.

Two men and one woman succeeded in obtaining the prizes. The woman
interested me by the intense triumph that sparkled in her black eyes
and glowed on her cheeks at having distanced several competitors of her
own sex, to say nothing of the men. She beamed! As I made room for her,
she said, with a toss of the head, "I guess I haven't been through Lake
George for nothing."

Crack! We were jolting along the road, around the base of Red Hill, the
horses stepping briskly out at the driver's chirrup, the coach pitching
and lurching like a gondola in a sea. What a sense of exhilaration,
of lightness! The air so pure and elastic, the odor of the pines so
fragrant, so invigorating, which we breathe with all the avidity of
a convalescent who for the first time crosses the threshold of his
chamber. Each moment I felt my body growing lighter. A delicious
sense of self-ownership breaks the chain binding us to the toiling,
struggling, worrying life we have left behind. We carry our world with
us. Life begins anew, or rather it has only just begun.

The view of the ranges which on either side elevate two immense walls of
green is kept for nearly the whole distance. As we climb the hill into
Sandwich, Mount Israel is the prominent object; then brawny Whiteface,
Passaconnaway's pyramid, Chocorua's mutilated spire advance, in their
turn, into line. Sometimes we were in a thick forest, sometimes on a
broad, sunny glade; now threading our way through groves of pitch-pine,
now winding along the banks of the Bear-Camp River.

The views of the mountains, as the afternoon wore away, grew more
and more interesting. The ravines darkened, the summits brightened.
Cloud-shadows chased each other up and down the steeps, or, flitting
slowly across the valley, spread thick mantles of black that seemed to
deaden the sound of our wheels as we passed over them. On one side all
was light, on the other all gloom. But the landscape is not all that may
be seen to advantage from the top of a stage-coach.

From time to time, as something provoked an exclamation of surprise or
pleasure, certain of the inside occupants manifested open discontent.
They were losing something where they had expected to see everything.

While the horses were being changed, one of the insides, I need not say
it was a woman, thrust her head out of the window, and addressed the
young person perched like a bird upon the highest seat. Her voice was
soft and persuasive:

"Miss!"

"Madam!"

"I'm so afraid you find it too cold up there. Sha'n't I change places
with you?"

The little one gave her voice a droll inflection as she briskly replied,
"Oh dear no, thank you; I'm very comfortable indeed."

"But," urged the other, "you don't look strong; indeed, dear, you don't.
Aren't you very, very tired, sitting so long without any support to your
back?"

"Thanks, no; my spine is the strongest part of me."

"But," still persisted the inside, changing her voice to a loud whisper,
"to be sitting alone with all those men!"

[Illustration: "ALONE WITH ALL THOSE MEN!"]

"They mind their business, and I mind mine," said the little one,
reddening; "besides," she quickly added, "you proposed changing places,
I believe!"

"Oh!" returned the other, with an accent impossible to convey in words,
"if you like it."

"I tell you what, ma'am," snapped the one in possession, "I've been all
over Europe alone, and was never once insulted except by persons of my
own sex."

This home-thrust ended the colloquy. The first speaker quickly drew in
her head, and I remarked a general twitching of muscles on the faces
around me. The driver shook his head in silent glee. The little woman's
eyes emitted sparks.

From West Ossipee I drove over to Tamworth Iron Works, where I passed
the night, and where I had, so to speak, Chocorua under my thumb.

This mountain being the most proper for a legend, it accordingly has
one. Here it is in all its purity:

After the terrible battle in which the Sokokis were nearly destroyed,
a remnant of the tribe, with their chief, Chocorua, fled into the
fastnesses of these mountains, where the foot of a white man had never
intruded. Here they trapped the beaver, speared the salmon, and hunted
the moose.

The survivors of Lovewell's band brought the first news of their
disaster to the settlements. More like spectres than living men, their
haggard looks, bloodshot eyes, and shaking limbs, their clothing hanging
about them in shreds, announced the hardships of that long and terrible
march but too plainly.

Among those who had set out with the expedition were three brothers--one
a mere stripling, the others famous hunters. The eldest of the three,
having fallen lame on the second day, was left behind. His brethren
would have conducted him back to the nearest village, but he promptly
refused their proffered aid, saying,

"'Tis enough to lose one man; three are too many. Go; do my part as well
as your own."

The two had gone but a few steps when the disabled ranger called the
second brother back.

"Tom," said the elder, "take care of our brother."

"Surely," replied the other, in some surprise. "Surely," he repeated.

"I charge you," continued the first speaker, "watch over the boy as I
would myself."

"Never fear, Lance; whatever befalls Hugh happens to me."

"Not so," said the other, with energy; "you must die for him, if need
be."

"They shall chop me as fine as sausage-meat before a hair of the lad's
head is harmed."

"God bless you, Tom!" The brothers then embraced and separated.

"What was our brother saying to you?" demanded the younger, when Tom
rejoined him.

"He begged me, seeing he could not go with us, to shoot two or three
redskins for him; and I promised." The two then quickened their pace in
order to overtake their comrades.

Among those who succeeded in regaining the settlements was a man who had
been wounded in twenty places. He was at once a ghastly and a pitiful
object. Faint with hunger, fatigue, and loss of blood, he reeled, fell,
slowly rose to his feet, and sunk lifeless at the entrance to the
village. This time he did not rise again.

A crowd ran up. When they had wiped the blood and dirt from the dead
man's face, a by-stander threw himself upon the body with the cry, "My
God, it is Tom!"

The following day the surviving brother joined a strong party despatched
by the colonial authorities to the scene of Lovewell's encounter, where
they arrived after a forced march. Here, among the trampled thickets,
they found the festering corpses of the slain. Among them was Hugh, the
younger brother. He was riddled with bullets and shockingly mangled.
Up to this moment, Lance had hoped against hope; now the dread reality
stared him in the face. The stout ranger grew white, his fingers
convulsively clutched the barrel of his gun, and something like a curse
escaped through his clinched teeth; then, kneeling beside the body, he
buried his face in his hands. Hugh's blood cried aloud for vengeance.

Thorough but unavailing search was made for the savages. They had
disappeared, after applying the torch to their village. Silently and
sadly the rangers performed the last service for their fallen comrades,
and then, turning their backs upon the mountains, commenced their march
homeward.

The next day the absence of Lance was remarked; but, as he was their
best hunter, the rangers made no doubt he would rejoin them at the next
halt.

Chocorua was not ignorant that the English were near. Like the vulture,
he scented danger from afar. From the summit of the mountain he had
watched the smoke of the hostile camp-fires stealing above the forest.
The remainder of the tribe had buried themselves still deeper in the
wilderness. They were too few for attack, too weak for defence.

One morning the chief ascended the pinnacle, and swept the horizon
with his piercing eye. Far in the south a faint smoke told where the
foe had pitched his last encampment. Chocorua's dark eye lighted with
exultation. The accursed pale-faces were gone.

He turned to descend the mountain, but had not taken ten steps when a
white hunter, armed to the teeth, started from behind the crags and
barred his passage. The chief recoiled, but not with fear, as the muzzle
of his adversary's weapon touched his naked breast. The white man's
eyes shone with deadly purpose, as he forced the chieftain, step by
step, back to the highest point of the mountain. Chocorua could not pass
except over the hunter's dead body.

Glaring into each other's eyes with mortal hate, the two men reached the
summit.

"Chocorua will go no farther," said the chief, haughtily.

The white man trembled with excitement. For a moment he could not speak.
Then, in a voice husky with suppressed emotion, he exclaimed,

"Die, then, like a dog, thou destroyer of my family, thou incarnate
devil! The white man has been in Chocorua's wigwam; has counted their
scalps--father, mother, sister, brother. He has tracked him to the
mountain-top. Now, demon or devil, Chocorua dies by my hand."

The chief saw no escape. He comprehended that his last moment was come.
As if all the savage heroism of his race had come to his aid, he drew
himself up to his full height, and stood erect and motionless as a
statue of bronze upon the enormous pedestal of the mountain. His dark
eye blazed, his nostrils dilated, the muscles of his bronzed forehead
stood out like whip-cord. The black eagle's feather in his scalplock
fluttered proudly in the cool morning breeze. He stood thus for a moment
looking death sternly in the face, then, raising his bared arm with a
gesture of superb disdain, he spoke with energy:

"Chocorua is unarmed; Chocorua will die. His heart is big and strong
with the blood of the accursed pale-face. He laughs at death. He spits
in the white man's face. Go; tell your warriors Chocorua died like a
chief!"

With this defiance on his lips the chief sprung from the brink into
the unfathomable abyss below. An appalling crash was followed by
a death-like silence. As soon as he recovered from his stupor the
hunter ran to the verge of the precipice and looked over. A horrible
fascination held him an instant. Then, shouldering his gun, he retraced
his steps down the mountain, and the next day rejoined his comrades.

[Illustration: PASSACONNAWAY FROM THE BEAR-CAMP RIVER.]

The general and front views of the Sandwich group, which may be had in
perfection from the hill behind the Chocorua House, or from the opposite
elevation, are very striking, embracing as they do the principal summits
from Chocorua to the heavy mass of Black Mountain. There are more
distinct traits, perhaps, embodied in this range than in any other among
the White Hills, except that incomparable band of peaks constituting the
northern half of the great chain itself. There seems, too, a special
fitness in designating these mountains by their Indian titles--Chocorua,
Paugus, Passaconnaway, Wonnalancet--a group of great sagamores, wild,
grand, picturesque.[2]

The highway now skirted the margin of Chocorua Lake, a lovely little
sheet of water voluptuously reposing at the foot of its overshadowing
mountain. I cannot call Chocorua beautiful, yet of all the White
Mountain peaks is it the most individual, the most aggressively
suggestive. But the lake, fast locked in the embrace of encircling
hills, bathed in all the affluence of the blessed sunlight, its bosom
decorated with white lilies, its shores glassed in water which looks
like a sheet of satin--ah, this was beautiful indeed! Its charming
seclusion, its rare combination of laughing water and impassive old
mountains; above all, the striking contrast between its chaste beauty
and the huge-ribbed thing rising above, awakens a variety of sensations.
It is passing strange. The mountain attracts, and at the same time
repels you. Two sentiments struggle here for mastery--open admiration,
energetic repulsion. For the first time, perhaps, in his life, the
beholder feels an antipathy for a creation of inanimate nature. Chocorua
suggests some fabled prodigy of the old mythology--a headless Centaur,
sprung from the foul womb of earth. The lake seems another Andromeda
exposed to a monster.

A beautiful Indian legend ran to the effect that the stillness of the
lake was sacred to the Great Spirit, and that if a human voice was heard
upon its waters the offender's canoe would instantly sink to the bottom.

Chocorua, as seen from Tamworth, shows a long, undulating ridge of white
rising over one of green, both extending toward the east, and opening
between a deep ravine, through which a path ascends to the summit. But
this way affords no view until the summit is close at hand. Beyond the
hump-backed ridge of Chocorua the tip of the southern peak of Moat
Mountain peers over, like a mountain standing on tiptoe.

The mountain, with its formidable outworks, is constantly in view until
the highway is left for a wood-road winding around its base into an
interval where there is a farm-house. Here the road ends and the ascent
begins.

Taking a guide here, who was strong, nimble, and sure-footed, but who
proved to be lamentably ignorant of the topography of the country, we
were in a few moments rapidly threading the path up the mountain. It
ought to be said here that, with rare exceptions, the men who serve you
in these ascensions should be regarded rather as porters than as guides.

In about an hour we reached the summit of the first mountain; for there
are four subordinate ridges to cross before you stand under the single
block of granite forming the pinnacle.

[Illustration: CHOCORUA.]

When reconnoitring this pinnacle through your glass, at a distance of
five miles, you will say to scale it would be difficult; when you have
climbed close underneath you will say it is impossible. After surveying
it from the bare ledges of Bald Mountain, where we stood letting the
cool breeze blow upon us, I asked my guide where we could ascend. He
pointed out a long crack, or crevice, toward the left, in which a few
bushes were growing. It is narrow, almost perpendicular, and seemingly
impracticable. I could not help exclaiming, "What, up there! nothing but
birds of the air can mount that sheer wall!" It is, however, there or
nowhere you must ascend.

The whole upper zone of the mountain seems smitten with palsy. Except
in the ravines between the inferior summits, nothing grew, nothing
relieved the wide-spread desolation. Beyond us rose the enormous conical
crag, scarred and riven by lightning, which gives to Chocorua its highly
distinctive character. It is no longer ashen, but black with lichens.
There was little of symmetry, nothing of grace; only the grandeur of
power. You might as well pelt it with snow-balls as batter it with the
mightiest artillery. For ages it has brushed the tempest aside, has seen
the thunder-bolt shivered against its imperial battlements; for ages to
come it will continue to defy the utmost power that can assail it. And
what enemies it has withstood, overthrown, or put to rout! Not far from
the base of the pinnacle evidence that the mountain was once densely
wooded is on all sides. The rotted stumps of large trees still cling
with a death-grip to the ledges, the shrivelled trunks lie bleaching
where they were hurled by the hurricane. Many years ago this region
was desolated by fire. In the night Old Chocorua, lighting his fiery
torch, stood in the midst of his own funeral pyre. The burning mountain
illuminated the sky and put out the stars. A brilliant circle of light,
twenty miles in extent, surrounded the flaming peak like a halo; while
underneath an immense tongue of forked flame licked the sides of the
summit with devouring haste. The lakes, those bright jewels lying in the
lap of the valleys, glowed like enormous carbuncles. Superstitious folk
regarded the conflagration as a portent of war or pestilence. In the
morning a few charred trunks, standing erect, were all that remained of
the original forest. The rocks themselves bear witness to the intense
heat which has either cracked them wide open, crumbled them in pieces,
or divested them, like oysters, of their outer shell, all along the path
of the conflagration.

The walk over the lower summits to the base of the peak occupied
another hour, and is a most profitable feature of the ascent. On each
side a superb panorama of mountains and lakes, of towns, villages, and
hamlets, is being slowly unrolled; while every forward step develops the
inaccessible character of the high summit more and more.

Having strayed from the path to gather blueberries, my companion set me
again on the march by pointing out where a bear had been feeding not
long before. Yet, while assuring me that Bruin was perfectly harmless
at this season, I did not fail to remark that my guide made the most
rapid strides of the day after this discovery. While feeling our way
around the base of the pinnacle, in order to gain the ravine by which
it is attacked, the path suddenly stopped. At the right, projecting
rocks, affording a hold for neither hand nor foot, rose like a wall;
before us, joined to the perpendicular rock, an unbroken ledge of
bare granite, smoothly polished by ice, swept down by a sharp incline
hundreds of feet, and then broke off abruptly into profounder depths. To
advance upon this ledge, as steep as a roof, and where one false step
would inevitably send the climber rolling to the bottom of the ravine,
demands steady nerves. It invests the whole jaunt with just enough of
the perilous to excite the apprehensions, or provoke the enthusiasm of
the individual who stands there for the first time, looking askance at
his guide, and revolving the chances of crossing it in safety. While
debating with myself whether to take off my boots, or go down on my
hands and knees and creep, the guide crossed this place with a steady
step; and, upon reaching the opposite side, grasped a fragment of rock
with one hand while extending his staff to me with the other. Rather
than accept his assistance, I passed over with an assurance I was far
from feeling; but when we came down the mountain I walked across with
far more ease in my stockings.[3]

When he saw me safely over, my conductor moved on, with the remark,

"A skittish place."

"Skittish," indeed! We proceeded to drag ourselves up the ravine by the
aid of bushes, or such protruding rocks as offered a hold. From the
valley below we must have looked like flies creeping up a wall. After a
breathless scramble, which put me in mind of the escalade of the Iron
Castle of Porto Bello, where the English, having no scaling-ladders,
mounted over each other's shoulders, we came to a sort of plateau, on
which was a ruined hut. The view here is varied and extensive; but after
regaining our breath we hastened to complete the ascent, in order to
enjoy, in all its perfection, the prospect awaiting us on the summit.

Like Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, it is among mountains that my knowledge
of them has been obtained. I have little hesitation, then, in
pronouncing the view from Chocorua one of the noblest that can reward
the adventurous climber; for, notwithstanding it is not a high peak, and
cannot, therefore, unfold the whole mountain system at a glance, it yet
affords an unsurpassed view-point, from which one sees the surrounding
mountains rising on all sides in all their majesty, and clothed in all
their terrors.

Let me try to explain why Chocorua is such a remarkable and eligible
post of observation.

One comprehends perfectly that the last high building on the skirts of a
city embraces the largest unobstructed view of the surrounding country.
This mountain is placed at the extremity of a range that abuts upon
the lower Saco valley, and therefore overlooks all the hill-country
on the east and south-east as far as the sea-coast. The arc of this
circle of vision extends from the Camden Hills to Agamenticus, or from
the Penobscot to the Piscataqua. The day being one of a thousand, I
distinctly saw the ocean with the naked eye; not merely as a white
blur on the horizon's edge, but actual blue water, over which smoke
was curling. This magnificent _coup-d'oeil_ embraces the scattered
villages of Conway, Fryeburg, Madison, Eaton, Ossipee, with their
numerous lakes and streams. I counted seventeen of the former flashing
in the sun.

In the second place, Chocorua stands at the entrance to the valley
opening between the Sandwich and Ossipee chains, and commands,
therefore, to the south-west, between these natural walls, the northern
limb of Winnipiseogee and of Squam, which are seen glittering on each
side of Red Hill. In the foreground, at the foot of the mountain,
Chocorua Lake is beyond question the most enticing object in a landscape
wonderfully lighted and enriched by its profusion of brilliant waters,
which resemble so many highly burnished reflectors multiplying the rays
of the sun. I was now looking back to my first station on Red Hill,
only the range of vision was much more extensive. It is unnecessary
to recapitulate the names of the villages and summits seen in this
direction. Over the lakes, Winnipiseogee and Squam, the humid peaks of
Mount Belknap and of Mount Kearsarge, in Warner, last caught the eye.
These two sections of the landscape first meet the eye of the climber
while advancing toward the peak, whose rugged head and brawny shoulders
intercept the view to the north, only to be enjoyed when the mountain is
fully conquered.

Upon the cap-stone crowning the pinnacle, supporting myself by grasping
the signal-staff planted on the highest point of this rock, from which
the wind threatened to sweep us like chaff, I enjoyed the third and
final act of this sublime tableau, in which the whole company of
mountains is crowded upon the stage. Hundreds of dark and bristling
shapes confronted us. Like a horde of barbarians, they seemed silently
awaiting the signal to march upon the lowlands. As the wind swept
through their ranks, an impatient murmur rose from the midst. Each
mountain shook its myriad spears, and gave its voice to swell the
sublime chorus. At first all was confusion; then I began to seek out
the chiefs, whose rock-helmed heads, lifted high above their grisly
battalions, invested each with a distinction and a sovereignty which
yielded nothing except to that imperial peak over which attendant clouds
hovered or floated swiftly away, as if bearing a message to those
distant encampments pitched on the farthest verge of the horizon.

At my left hand extended all the summits, forming at their western
extremity the valley of Mad River, and terminating in the immovable
mass of Black Mountain. The peaks of Tripyramid, Tecumseh, and
Osceola stretched along the northern course of this stream, and over
them gleamed afar the massive plateau-ridge of Moosehillock. From my
stand-point the great wall of the Sandwich chain, which from Tamworth
presents an unbroken front to the south, now divided into ridges running
north and south, separated by profound ravines. Paugus crouched at my
feet; Passaconnaway elevated his fine crest next; Whiteface, his lowered
and brilliant front; and then Black Mountain, the giant landmark of half
a score of towns and villages.

Directly at my feet, to the north-west, the great intervale of Swift
River gleamed from the depths of this valley, like sunshine from
a storm-cloud. Following the course of this little oasis, the eye
wandered over the inaccessible and untrodden peaks of the Pemigewasset
wilderness, resting last on the blue ridge of the Franconia Mountains.
About midway of this line one sees the bristling slopes of Mounts
Carrigain and Hancock, and the Carrigain Notch, through which a hardy
pedestrian may pass from the Pemigewasset to the Saco by following
the course of the streams flowing out of it. Besides its solitary,
picturesque grandeur, Carrigain has the distinction of being the
geographical centre of the White Mountain group. Taking its peak for an
axis, a radius thirty miles long will describe a circle, including in
its sweep nearly the whole mountain system. In this sense Carrigain is,
therefore, the hub of the White Mountains.

Having explored the horizon thus far, I now turned more to the north,
where, by a fortunate chance, Chocorua dominates a portion of the chain
intervening between itself and the Saco Valley. I was looking straight
up this valley through the great White Mountain Notch. There was the
dark spire of Mount Willey, and the scarred side of Webster. There was
the arched rock of Mount Willard, and over it the liquid profile of
Cherry Mountain. It was superb; it was idyllic. Such was the perfect
transparency of the air, that I clearly distinguished the red color of
the slides on Mount Webster without the aid of my glass.

From this centre, outlined with a bold, free hand against the azure, the
undulations of the great White Mountains ascended grandly to the dome
of Mount Washington, and then plunged into the defiles of the Pinkham
Notch. Following this line eastward, the eye traversed the mountains of
Jackson to the half-closed aperture of the Carter Notch, finally resting
on the pinnacle of Kearsarge. Without stirring a single step, we have
taken a journey of three hundred miles.

Down in the valley the day was one of the sultriest; up here it was so
cold that our teeth chattered. We were forced to descend into the hollow
lying between the northerly foot of the peak and the first of the bald
knobs constituting the great white ridge of the mountain. Here is a fine
spring, and here, on either side of this singular rock-gallery, is a
landscape of rare beauty enclosed by its walls. Here, too, the mutilated
pyramid of the peak rises before you like an antique ruin. One finds,
without effort, striking resemblances to winding galleries, bastions,
and battlements. He could pass days and weeks here without a single wish
to return to earth. Here we ate our luncheon, and perused the landscape
at leisure. Before us stretched the long course of the Saco, from its
source in the Notch to where, with one grand sweep to the east, it takes
leave of the mountains, flows awhile demurely through the lowlands, and
in two or three infuriated plunges reaches the sea.

I do not remember when I have more fully enjoyed the serene calm of a
Sabbath evening than while wandering among the fragrant and stately
pines that skirt the shores of Lake Chocorua. Indeed, except for the
occasional sound of hoofs along the cool and shady road, or of voices
coming from the bosom of the lake itself, one might say a perpetual
Sabbath reigned here. Yonder tall, athletic pines, those palms of the
north, through which the glimmer of water is seen, hum their monotonous
lullaby to the drowsy lake. The mountains seem so many statues to
Silence. There is no use for speech here. The mute and expressive
language of two lovers, accustomed to read each others' secret thoughts,
is the divine medium. Truant breezes ruffle the foliage in playful
wantonness, but the trees only shake their green heads and murmur "Hush!
hush!" A consecration is upon the mere, a hallowed light within the
wood. Here is the place to linger over the pages of "Hyperion," or dream
away the idle hours with the poets; and here, stretched along the turf,
one gets closer to Nature, studying her with ever-increasing wonder and
delight, or musing upon the thousand forms of mysterious life swarming
in the clod under his hand.

Charming, too, are the walks by the lake-side in the effulgence of
the harvest-moon; and enchanting the white splendor quivering on its
dark waters. A boat steals by; see! its oars dip up molten silver. The
voyagers troll a love-ditty. Dangerous ground this colonnade of woods
and yonder sparkling water for self-conscious lovers! Love and the ocean
have the same subtle sympathy with moonlight. The stronger its beams the
higher rises the flood.

Very little of the world--but that little the best part--gets in here.
It is out of the beaten path of mountain-travel, so that those only who
have in a manner served their apprenticeship are sojourners. One small
hotel and a few boarding-houses easily accommodate all comers. For
people who like to refine their pleasures, as well as their society,
or who have wearied of life at the great hotels, such a place offers
a most tempting retreat. Display makes no part of the social regime.
Mrs. P---- is not jealous of Mrs. Q----'s diamonds. Ladies stroll
about unattended, gather water-lilies, cardinal-flowers, and rare
ferns by brook or way-side. Gentlemen row, drive, climb the mountains,
or make little pedestrian tours of discovery. Quiet people are
irresistibly attracted to this kind of life, which, with a good degree
of probability, they assert to be the true and only rational way of
enjoying the mountains.




IV.

_LOVEWELL._

    Of worthy Captain Lovewell I purpose now to sing.
    How valiantly he served his country and his king.
    _Old Ballad._


LET us make a détour to historic Fryeburg, leaving the cars at Conway,
which in former times enjoyed a happy pre-eminence as the centre upon
which the old stage-routes converged, and where travellers, going or
returning from the mountains, always passed the night. But those old
travellers have mostly gone where the name of Chatigee, by which both
drivers and tourists liked to designate Conway, is going; only there is
for the name, fortunately, no resurrection. No one knows its origin;
none will mourn its decease.

It is here, at Conway, or Conway Corner, that first enrapturing view of
the White Mountains bursts upon the traveller like a splendid vision.
But we shall see it again on our return from Fryeburg. Moreover,
I enjoyed this constant espionage from a distance before a nearer
approach, this exchange of preliminary civilities before coming closer
to the heart of the mountains.

Fryeburg stands on a dry and sandy plain, elevated above the Saco River.
It lies behind the mountain range, which, terminating in Conway, compels
the river to make a right angle. Turning these mountains, the river
seems now to be in no hurry, but coils about the meadows in a manner
that instantly recalls the famous Connecticut Ox-Bow. Chocorua and
Kearsarge are the two prominent figures in the landscape.

The village street is most beautifully shaded by elms of great size,
which, giving to each other an outstretched hand over the way, spring an
arch of green high above, through which we look up and down. At one end
justice is dispensed at the Oxford House--an inn with a pedigree; at the
other learning is diffused in the academy where Webster once taught and
disciplined the rising generation. A scroll over the inn door bears the
date of 1763. The first school-house and the first framed house built
in Fryeburg are still standing, a little way out of the village. On our
way to the remarkable rock, emerging from the plain like a walrus from
the sea, we linger a moment in the village graveyard to read the long
inscription on the monument of General Joseph Frye, a veteran of the old
wars, and founder of the town which bears his name. Ascending now the
rock to which we just referred, called the Jockey Cap, we are lifted
high above the plain, having the river meadows, the graceful loops of
the river itself, the fine pyramid of Kearsarge on one side, and on the
other the dark sheet of Lovewell's Pond stretched at our feet.

[Illustration: LOVEWELL'S POND]

It was here, under the shadow of Mount Kearsarge, was fought one of the
bloodiest and most obstinately contested battles that can be found in
the annals of war; so terrible, indeed, that the story was repeated from
fireside to fireside, and from generation to generation, as worthy a
niche beside that of Leonidas and his band of heroes. Familiar as is the
tale--and who does not know it by heart?--it can still send the blood
throbbing to the temples, or coursing back to the heart. Unfortunately,
the details are sufficiently meagre, but, in truth, they need no
embellishment. Their very simplicity presents the tragedy in all its
grandeur. It is an epic.

In April, 1725, John Lovewell, a hardy and experienced ranger of
Dunstable, whose exploits had already noised his fame abroad, marched
with forty-six men for the Indian villages at Pigwacket, now Fryeburg,
Maine. At Ossipee he built a small fort, designed as a refuge in case of
disaster. This precaution undoubtedly saved the lives of some of his
men. He was now within two short marches of the enemy's village. The
scouts having found Indian tracks in the neighborhood, Lovewell resumed
his route, leaving one of his men who had fallen sick, his surgeon, and
eight men, to guard the fort. His command was now reduced to thirty-four
officers and men.

The rangers reached the shores of the beautiful lake which bears
Lovewell's name, and bivouacked for the night.

The night passed without an alarm; but the sentinels who watched the
encampment reported hearing strange noises in the woods. Lovewell
scented the presence of his enemy.

In fact, on the morning of the 8th of May, while his band were on their
knees seeking Divine favor in the approaching conflict, the report of a
gun brought every man to his feet. Upon reconnoitring, a solitary Indian
was discovered on a point of land about a mile from the camp.

The leader immediately called his men about him, and told them that
they must now quickly decide whether to fight or retreat. The men, with
one accord, replied that they had not come so far in search of the
enemy to beat a shameful retreat the moment he was found. Seeing his
band possessed with this spirit, Lovewell then prepared for battle.
The rangers threw off their knapsacks and blankets, looked to their
primings, and loosened their knives and axes. The order was then given,
and they moved cautiously out of their camp. Believing the enemy was in
his front, Lovewell neglected to place a guard over his baggage.

Instead of plunging into the woods, the Indian who had alarmed the camp
stood where he was first seen until the scouts fired upon him, when he
returned the fire, wounding Lovewell and one other. Ensign Wyman then
levelled his musket and shot him dead. The day began thus unfortunately
for the English. Lovewell was mortally wounded in the abdomen, but
continued to give his orders.

After clearing the woods in their front without finding any more
Indians, the rangers fell back toward the spot where they had deposited
their packs. This was a sandy plain, thinly covered with pines, at the
north-east end of the lake.

During their absence, the Indians, led by the old chief, Paugus, whose
name was a terror throughout the length and breadth of the English
frontiers, stumbled upon the deserted encampment. Paugus counted the
packs, and, finding his warriors outnumbered the rangers, the wily
chief placed them in ambush; he divined that the English would return
from their unsuccessful scout sooner or later, and he prepared to
repeat the tactics used with such fatal effect at Bloody Brook, and at
the defeat of Wadsworth. This consisted in arranging his savages in a
semicircle, the two wings of which, enveloping the rangers, would expose
them to a murderous cross-fire at short musket-range.

Without suspecting their danger, Lovewell's men fell into the fatal
snare which the crafty Paugus had thus spread for them. Hardly had they
entered it when the grove blazed with a deadly volley, and resounded
with the yells of the Indians. As if confident of their prey, they even
left their coverts, and flung themselves upon the English with a fury
nothing could withstand.

In this onset Lovewell, who, notwithstanding his wound, bravely
encouraged his men with voice and example, received a second wound, and
fell. Two of his lieutenants were killed at his side; but with desperate
valor the rangers charged up to the muzzles of the enemy's guns, killing
nine, and sweeping the others before them. This gallant charge cost them
eight killed, besides their captain; two more were badly wounded.

Twenty-three men had now to maintain the conflict with the whole Sokokis
tribe. Their situation was indeed desperate. Relief was impossible;
for they were fifty miles from the nearest English settlements. Their
packs and provisions were in the enemy's hands, and the woods swarmed
with foes. To conquer or die was the only alternative. These devoted
Englishmen despaired of conquering, but they prepared to die bravely.

Ensign Wyman, on whom the command devolved after the death of Lovewell,
was his worthy successor. Seeing the enemy stealing upon his flanks as
if to surround him, he ordered his men to fall back to the shore of the
lake, where their right was protected by a brook, and their left by a
rocky point extending into the lake. A few large pines stood on the
beach between.

This manoeuvre was executed under a hot fire, which still further
thinned the ranks of the English. The Indians closed in upon them,
filling the air with demoniac yells whenever a victim fell. Assailing
the whites with taunts, and shaking ropes in their faces, they cried
out to them to yield. But to the repeated demands to surrender, the
rangers replied only with bullets. They thought of the fort and its ten
defenders, and hoped, or rather prayed, for night. This hope, forlorn as
it seemed, encouraged them to fight on, and they delivered their fire
with fatal precision whenever an Indian showed himself. The English were
in a trap, but the Indians dared not approach within reach of the lion's
claws.

While this long combat was proceeding, one of the English went to the
lake to wash his gun, and, on emerging at the shore, descried an Indian
in the act of cleansing his own. This Indian was Paugus.

The ranger went to work like a man who comprehends that his life depends
upon a second. The chief followed him in every movement. Both charged
their guns at the same instant. The Englishman threw his ramrod on the
sand; the Indian dropped his.

"Me kill you," said Paugus, priming his weapon from his powder-horn.

"The chief lies," retorted the undaunted ranger, striking the breech of
his firelock upon the ground with such force that it primed itself. An
instant later Paugus fell, shot through the heart.

"I said I should kill you," muttered the victor, spurning the dead body
of his enemy, and plunging into the thickest of the fight.

Darkness closed the conflict, which had continued without cessation
since ten in the morning. Little by little the shouts of the enemy grew
feebler, and finally ceased. The English stood to their arms until
midnight, when, convinced that the savages had abandoned the sanguinary
field of battle, they began their retreat toward the fort. Only nine
were unhurt. Eleven were badly wounded, but were resolved to march with
their comrades, though they died by the way. Three more were alive, but
had received their death-wounds. One of these was Lieutenant Robbins, of
Chelmsford. Knowing that he must be left behind, he begged his comrades
to load his gun, in order that he might sell his life as dearly as
possible when the savages returned to wreak their vengeance upon the
wounded.

I have said that twenty-three men continued the fight after the bloody
repulse in which Lovewell was killed. There were only twenty-two. The
other, whose name the reader will excuse me from mentioning, fled from
the field and gained the fort, where he spread the report that Lovewell
was cut to pieces, himself being the sole survivor. This intelligence,
striking terror, decided the little garrison to abandon the fort, which
was immediately done, and in haste.

This was the crowning misfortune of the expedition. The rangers now
became a band of panic-stricken fugitives. After incredible hardships,
less than twenty starving, emaciated, and footsore men, half of them
badly wounded, straggled into the nearest English settlements.

The loss of the Indians could only be guessed; but the battle led to the
immediate abandonment of their village, from which so many war-parties
had formerly harassed the English. Paugus, the savage wolf, the
implacable foe of the whites, was dead. His tribe forsook the graves of
their fathers, nor rested until they had put many long leagues between
them and their pursuers. For them the advance of the English was the
Juggernaut under whose wheels their race was doomed to perish from the
face of the earth.




V.

_NORTH CONWAY._

    "Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells
     Just undulates upon the listening ear,
     Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote."


The entrance to North Conway is, without doubt, the most beautiful and
imposing introduction to the high mountains.

Although the traveller has for fifty miles skirted the outlying ranges,
catching quick-shifting glimpses of the great summits, yet, when at last
the train swings round the foot of the Moat range into the Saco Valley,
so complete is the transition, so charming the picture, that not even
the most apathetic can repress a movement of surprise and admiration.
This is the moment when every one feels the inadequacy of his own
conceptions.

Nature has formed here a vast antechamber, into which you are ushered
through a gate-way of mountains upon the numerous inner courts,
galleries, and cloisters of her most secluded retreats. Here the
mountains fall back before the impetuous flood of the Saco, which comes
pouring down from the summit of the great Notch, white, and panting with
the haste of its flight. Here the river gives rendezvous to several of
its larger affluents--the East Branch, the Ellis, the Swift--and, like
an army taking the field, their united streams, sweeping grandly around
the foot of the last mountain range, emerge into the open country. Here
the valley, contracted at its extremity between the gentle slope of
Kearsarge and the abrupt declivities of Moat, encloses an ellipse of
verdant and fertile land ravishing to behold, skirted on one side by
thick woods, behind which precipices a thousand feet high rise black and
threatening, overlooked on the other by a high terrace, along which the
village is built. It is the inferior summit of Kearsarge, which descends
by a long, regular slope to the intervale at its upper end, while a
secondary ridge of the Moats, advancing on the opposite side, drops
into it by a precipice. The superb silver-gray crest of Kearsarge is
seen rising in a regular pyramid behind the right shoulder of its lower
summit. Ordinarily the house perched on the top is seen as distinctly as
those in the village. It is the last in the village.

Looking up through this verdant mountain park, at a distance of twenty
miles, the imposing masses of the great summits seem scaling the skies.
Then, heavily massed on the right, comes the Carter range, divided by
the cup-shaped dip of the Carter Notch; then the truncated cone of
Double-Head; and then, with outworks firmly planted in the valley, the
glittering pinnacle of Kearsarge. The mountain in front of you, looking
up the village street, is Thorn Mountain, on the other side of which is
Jackson, and the way up the Ellis Valley to the Pinkham Notch, the Glen
House, Gorham, and the Androscoggin.

The traveller, who is ushered upon this splendid scene with the rapidity
of steam, perceives that he is at last among real mountains, and quickly
yields to the indefinable charm which from this moment surrounds and
holds him a willing captive.

[Illustration: MOUNT WASHINGTON FROM THE SACO.]

Looking across the meadow from the village street, the eye is stopped
by an isolated ridge of bare, overhanging precipices. It is thrust out
into the valley from Moat Mountain, of which it forms a part, presenting
two singular, regularly arched cliffs, seven hundred to nine hundred and
fifty feet in height toward the village. The green forest underneath
contrasts vividly with the lustrous black of these precipitous walls,
which glisten brightly in the sunshine, where they are wet by tiny
streams flowing down. On the nearest of these is a very curious
resemblance to the head and shoulders of a horse in the act of rearing,
occasioned by a white incrustation on the face of the cliff. This
accident gives to it the name of White Horse Ledge. All marriageable
ladies, maiden or widow, run out to look at it, in consequence of the
belief current in New England that if, after seeing a white horse,
you count a hundred, the first gentleman you meet will be your future
husband! Underneath this cliff a charming little lake lies hid.

Next beyond is the Cathedral Ledge, so called from the curious rock
cavity it contains; and still farther up the valley is Humphrey's Ledge,
one of the finest rock-studies of them all when we stand underneath
it. But the reader now has a general acquaintance with North Conway,
and with its topography. He begins his study of mountain beauty in a
spirit of loving enthusiasm, which leads him on and on to the ripeness
of an education achieved by simply throwing himself upon the bosom of
indulgent Nature, putting the world as far as possible behind him.

[Illustration: THE LEDGES, NORTH CONWAY.]

But now from these masses of hard rock let us turn once more to the
valley, where the rich intervales spread an exhaustless feast for the
eye. If autumn be the season, the vase-like elms, the stacks of yellow
corn, the golden pumpkins looking like enormous oranges, the floor-cloth
of green and gold damasked with purple gorse and coppice, give the idea
of an immense table groaning beneath its luxurious weight of fruit and
flowers.

Turn now to the mountain presiding with such matchless grace and dignity
over the village. Kearsarge, in the twilight, deserves, like Lorenzo di
Medicis, to be called "the magnificent." The yellow and orange foliage
looks, for all the world, like a golden shower fallen upon it. The
gray ledges at the apex, which the clear, yellow light renders almost
incandescent, are far more in harmony with the rest of the mountain than
in the vernal season.

Are we yet in sympathy with that free-masonry of art through which our
eminent landscape-painters recognized here the true picturesque point
of view of the great mountains, the effective contrasts and harmonious
ensemble of the near scenery--the grandest allied with the humblest
objects of nature? One cannot turn in any direction without recognizing
a picture he has seen in the studios, or in the saloons of the clubs.

The first persons I saw on the platform of the railway-station were my
quondam companions, the colonel and George. We met like friends who had
parted only half an hour before. During dinner it was agreed that we
should pass our afternoon among the cliffs. This arrangement appeared
very judicious; the distance is short, and the attractions many.

We accordingly set out for the ledges at three in the afternoon.
The weather did not look promising, to be sure, but we decided it
sufficiently so for this promenade of three or four hours.

While en route, let me mention a discovery. One morning, while sitting
on the piazza of the Kearsarge House enjoying the dreamy influence
of the warm atmosphere, which spun its soft, gossamer web about the
mountains, I observed a peculiar shadow thrown by a jutting mass of the
Cathedral Ledge upon a smooth surface, which exactly resembled a human
figure standing upright. I looked away, then back again, to see if I
was not the victim of an illusion. No, it was still there. Now it is
always there. The head and upper part of the body were inclined slightly
forward, the legs perfectly formed. At ten every forenoon, punctual
to the hour, this phantom, emerging from the rock, stands, fixed and
motionless as a statue, in its niche. At every turn of the sun, this
shade silently interrogates the feverish activity that has replaced the
silence of ages. One day or another I shall demand of my phantom what it
has witnessed.

The road we followed soon turned sharply away from the main street of
the village, to the left, and in a few rods more plunged into the Saco,
leaving us standing on the bank, looking askance at a wide expanse of
water, choked with bowlders, around which the swift current whirled and
foamed with rage. We decided it too shallow to swim, but doubted if it
was not too deep to ford. We had reached our Rubicon.

"We must wade," said the colonel, with decision.

"Precisely my idea," assented George, beginning to unlace his shoes.

I put my hand in the river. Ugh! it was as cold as ice.

Having assured ourselves no one saw us, we divested ourselves of shoes,
stockings, pantaloons, and drawers. We put our stockings in our pockets,
disposed our clothing in a roll over the shoulder, as soldiers do on the
march, tied our shoes together, and hung them around our necks. Then,
placing our hands upon each others' shoulders, as I have seen gymnasts
do in a circus, we entered the river, like candidates for baptism,
feeling our way, and catching our breath.

"_Sans-culottes_," suggested the colonel, who knew a little French.

"Kit-kats," added George, who knows something of art, as the water rose
steadily above our knees.

The treacherous bowlders tripped us up at every step, so that one or
the other was constantly floundering, like a stranded porpoise in a
frog-pond. But, thanks to our device, we reached the middle of the river
without anything worse than a few bruises. Here we were fairly stopped.
The water was waist-deep, and the current every moment threatened to
lift us from our feet. How foolish we looked!

Advance or retreat? That was the question. One pointed up stream,
another down; while, to aggravate the situation, rain began to patter
around us. In two minutes the river was steaming. George, who is a great
infant, suggested putting our hands in our pockets, to keep them warm,
and our clothes in the river, to keep them dry.

"By Jove!" ejaculated the colonel, "the river is smoking."

"Let us join the river," said George, producing his cigar-case.

Putting our heads together over the colonel's last match, thus forming
an antique tripod of our bodies, we succeeded in getting a light; and
for the first time, I venture to affirm, since its waters gushed from
the mountains, incense ascended from the bosom of the Saco.

"I'm freezing!" stuttered George.

I was pushing forward, to cut the dilemma short, when the colonel
interposed with,

"Stop; I want to tell you a story."

"A story? here--in the middle of the river?" we shouted.

"In the middle of the river; here--a story!" he echoed.

"I would like to sit down while I listen," observed George.

Evidently the coldness of the water had forced the blood into our
friend's head. He was ill, but obstinate. We therefore resigned
ourselves to hear him.

"This river and this situation remind me of the Potawatamies," he began.

"Potawatamies!" we echoed, with chattering teeth. "Go on; go on."

"When I was on the Plains," continued the colonel, "I passed some time
among those Indians. During my stay, the chief invited me to accompany
him on a buffalo-hunt. I accepted on the spot; for of all things a
buffalo-hunt was the one I was most desirous of seeing. We set out at
daybreak the next morning. After a few hours' march, we came to a stream
between deep banks, and flowing with a rapid current, like this one--"

"Go on; go on!" we shiveringly articulated.

"At a gesture from the chief, a young squaw dismounted from her pony,
advanced to the edge of the stream, and began, timidly, to wade it. When
she hesitated, as she did two or three times, the chief said something
which encouraged her to proceed. All at once she stopped, threw up her
arms, and screamed something in the Indian dialect; at which all the
braves burst into a loud laugh, the squaws joining in.

"'What does she say?' I asked of the chief.

"'Up to the middle,' he replied, pushing his pony into the stream."

The stream grew shallower, so that we soon emerged from the water upon
the opposite bank. Here we poured the water from our shoes, and resumed
our wet clothing. Everything was cooled, except our ardor.

As we approached nearer, the ledges were full of grim recesses, rude
rock-niches, and traversed by perpendicular cracks from brow to base.
"Take care!" I shouted; "there is a huge piece of the cliff just ready
to fall."

In some places the rock is sheer and smooth, in others it is broken
regularly down, for half its whole height, to where it is joined by rude
buttresses of massive granite. The lithe maples climb up the steepest
ravines, but cannot pass the waste of sheer rock stretching between
them and the firs, which look down over the brink of the precipice.
Rusted purple is the prevailing color, blotched here and there with
white, like the drip oozing from limestone. We soon emerged on the shore
of Echo Lake.

Hovering under the great precipices, which lie heavily shadowed on its
glossy surface, are gathered the waters flowing from the airy heights
above--the little rills, the rivulets, the cascades. The tremendous
shadow the cliff flings down seems lying deep in the bosom of the lake,
as if perpetually imprinted there. Slender birches, brilliant foliage,
were daintily etched upon the surface, like arabesques on polished
steel. The water is perfectly transparent, and without a ripple. Indeed,
the breezes playing around the summit, or humming in the tree-tops, seem
forbidden to enter this haunt of Dryads. The lake laps the yellow strand
with a light, fluttering movement. The place seems dedicated to silence
itself.

[Illustration: ECHO LAKE, NORTH CONWAY.]

To destroy this illusion, a man came out of a booth and touched off a
small cannon. The effect was like knocking at half a dozen doors at
once. And the silence which followed seemed all the deeper. Then the
aged rock was pelted with questions, and made to jeer, laugh, menace,
or curse by turns, or all at once. How grandly it bore all these petty
insolences! How presumptuous in us thus to cover its hoary front with
obloquy! We could never get the last word. We did not even come off in
triumph. How ironically the mountain repeated, "Who are you?" and "What
am I!" With what energy it at last vociferated, "Go to the devil!" To
the Devil's Den we accordingly go.

Following a woodland path skirting the base of the cliffs, we were
very soon before the entrance of the Devil's Den, formed by a huge
piece of the cliff falling upon other detached fragments in such a way
as to leave an aperture large enough to admit fifty persons at once. A
ponderous mass divides the cavern into two chambers, one of which is
light, airy, and spacious, the other dark, gloomy, and contracted--a
mere hole. This might well have been the lair of the bears and panthers
formerly roaming, unmolested, these woods.

The Cathedral is a recess higher up in the same cliff, hollowed out
by the cleaving off of the lower rock, leaving the upper portion of
the precipice overhanging. The top of the roof is as high as a tall
tree. Some maples that have grown here since the outer portion of the
rock fell, assist, with their straight-limbed, columnar trunks, the
resemblance to a chancel. A little way off this cavity has really the
appearance of a gigantic shell, like those fossils seen imbedded in
subterranean rocks. We did not miss here the delicious glimpses of
Kearsarge, and of the mountains across the valley which, now that the
sun came out, were all in brilliant light, while the cool afternoon
shadows already wrapped the woods about us in twilight gloom.

Still farther on we came upon a fine cascade falling down a long,
irregular staircase of broken rock. One of these steps extends, a solid
mass of granite, more than a hundred feet across the bed of the stream,
and is twenty feet high. Unless the brook is full, it is not a single
sheet we see, but twenty, fifty crystal streams gushing or spirting
from the grooves they have channelled in the hard granite, and falling
into basins they have hollowed out. It is these curious, circular stone
cavities, out of which the freshest and cleanest water constantly pours,
that give to the cascade the name of Diana's Baths. The water never
dashes itself noisily down, but slips, like oil, from the rocks, with a
pleasant, purling sound no single word of our language will correctly
describe. From here we returned to the village in the same way that we
came.[4]

The wild and bristling little mountain range on the east side of North
Conway embodies a good deal of picturesque character. It is there our
way lies to Artists' Falls, which are on a brook issuing from these
Green Hills. I found the walk, following its windings, more remunerative
than the falls themselves. The brook, flowing first over a smooth
granite ledge, collects in a little pool below, out of which the pure
water filters through bowlders and among glittering pebbles to a gorge
between two rocks, down which it plunges. The beauty of this cascade
consists in its waywardness. Now it is a thin sheet, flowing demurely
along; now it breaks out in uncontrollable antics; and at length, as if
tired of this sport, darts like an arrow down the rocky fissure, and is
a mountain brook again.

The ascent of Kearsarge and of the Moats fittingly crowns the series of
excursions which are the most attractive feature of out-of-door life
at North Conway. The northern peak of Moat is the one most frequently
climbed, but the southern affords almost equally admirable views of the
Saco, the Ellis, and the Swift River valleys, with the mountain chains
enclosing them. The prospect here is, however, much the same as that
obtained from Chocorua, which is seen rising beyond the Swift River
valley. To that description I must, therefore, refer the reader, who is
already acquainted with its principal features.

The high ridge is an arid and desolate heap of summits stripped bare
of vegetation by fire. When this fire occurred, twenty odd years
ago, it drove the bears and rattlesnakes from their forest homes in
great numbers, so that they fell an easy prey to their destroyers. A
depression near its centre divides the ridge in two, constituting, in
effect, two mountains. We crossed the range in its whole length, and,
after newly refreshing ourselves with the admirable views had from
its greater elevation, descended the northern peak to Diana's Baths.
Probably the most striking view of the Moats is from Conway. Here the
summits, thrown into a mass of lawless curves and blunted, prong-like
protuberances, rear a blackened and weird-looking cluster on high. But
for a wide region they divide with Chocorua the honors of the landscape,
constituting, at Jackson especially, a large and imposing background,
massively based and buttressed, and cutting through space with their
trenchant edge.

In the winter of 1876, finding myself at North Conway, I determined to
make the attempt to ascend Mount Kearsarge, notwithstanding two-thirds
of the mountain were shrouded in snow, and the bare shaft constituting
the spire sheathed in glittering ice. The mountain had definitively gone
into winter-quarters.

I was up early enough to surprise, all at once, the unwonted and
curiously-blended effect of moonlight, starlight, and the twilight of
dawn. The new moon, with the old in her arms, balanced her shining
crescent on the curved peak of Moat Mountain. All these high,
surrounding peaks, carved in marble and flooded with effulgence,
impressed the spirit with that mingled awe and devotion felt among
the antique monuments of some vast cemetery. The sight thrilled and
solemnized by its chaste magnificence. Glittering stars, snow-draped
summits, black mountains casting sable draperies upon the dead white
of the valley, constituted a scene of sepulchral pomp into which the
supernatural entered unchallenged. One by one the stars went out. The
moon grew pale. A clear emerald, overspreading the east, was reflected
from lofty peak and tapering spire.

[Illustration: KEARSARGE IN WINTER.]

Day broke bright, clear, and crisp. There, again, was the same matchless
array of high and noble summits, sitting on thrones of alabaster
whiteness. While the moon still lingered in the west, the broad red
disk of the sun rose over the wooded ridges in the east. So sun and
moon, monarch and queen, saluted each other. One gave the watchword,
and descended behind the moated mountain; the other ascended the vacant
throne. Thus night and day met and exchanged majestic salutation in the
courts of the morning.

The mercury stood at three degrees below zero in the village, when I
set out on foot for the mountain. A light fall of snow had renewed
the Christmas decorations. The trees had newly-leaved and blossomed.
Beautiful it was to see the dark old pines thick-flaked with new snow,
and the same feathery substance lodged on every twig and branchlet,
tangle of vines, or tuft of tawny yellow grass. Fir-trees looked like
gigantic azaleas; thickets like coral groves. Nothing too slender or too
fragile for the white flight to alight upon. Talk of decorative art!
Even the telegraph-wires hung in broad, graceful festoons of white,
and the poor washer-woman's clothes-line was changed into the same
immaterial thing of beauty.

The ascent proved more toilsome than I had anticipated, as my feet
broke through the frozen crust at every step. But if the climb had been
difficult when in the woods, it certainly presented few attractions when
I emerged from them half a mile below the summit. I found the surface of
the bare ledges, which now continue to the top of the mountain, sheeted
in ice, smooth and slippery as glass.

Many a time have I laughed heartily at the feverish indecision of a dog
when he runs along the margin of a pond into which he has been urged
to plunge. He turns this way and that, whines, barks, crouches for the
leap, laps the water, but hesitates. Imagine, now, the same animal
chasing some object upon slippery ice, his feet spread widely apart;
his frantic efforts to stop; the circles described in the air by his
tail. Well, I experienced the same perplexity, and made nearly the same
ridiculous evolutions.

After several futile attempts to advance over it, and as often finding
myself sliding backward with entire loss of control of my own movements,
I tried the rugged ravine, traversing the summit, with some success,
steadying my steps on the iced bowlders by grasping the bushes which
grew there among clefts of the rock. But this way, besides being
extremely fatiguing, was decidedly the more dangerous of the two; and
I was glad, after a brief trial, to abandon it for the ice, in which,
here and there, detached stones, solidly embedded, furnished points of
support, if they could be reached. By pursuing a zigzag course from
stone to stone, sometimes--like a pious Moslem approaching the tomb of
the Prophet--upon my hands and knees, and shedding tears from the force
of the wind, I succeeded in getting over the ledges after an hour's
obstinate battle to maintain an upright position, and after several
mishaps had taught me a degree of caution closely approaching timidity.
By far the most treacherous ground was where fresh snow, covering the
smooth ice, spread its pitfalls in the path, causing me several times
to measure my length; but at last these obstacles were one by one
surmounted; I groped my way, foot by foot, up the sharp rise of the
pinnacle, finding myself at the front door of the house which is so
conspicuous an object from the valley.

Never was air more pure, more crisp, or more transparent. Besides,
what air can rival that of winter? I felt myself rather floating than
walking. Certainly there is a lightness, a clearness, and a depth that
belongs to no other season. At no other season do we behold our native
skies so blue, so firm, or so brilliant as when the limpid ether,
winnowed by the fierce north wind to absolute purity, presents objects
with such marvellous clearness, precision, and fidelity, that we hardly
persuade ourselves they are forty, fifty, or a hundred miles distant. To
realize this rare condition was all the object of the ascent--an object
attained in a measure far beyond any anticipations I had formed.

As may easily be imagined, the immediate effect was bewildering in the
extreme. In the first place, the direct rays of the noonday sun covered
the mountain-top with dazzling brilliancy. The eye fairly ached with
looking at it. In the second, the intensity of the blue was such as to
give the idea that the grand expanse of sky was hard frozen. Nothing
more coldly brilliant than this immense azure dome can be conceived.
There was not the faintest trace of a cloud anywhere; nothing but this
splendid void. Under this high-vaulted dome, imagine now a vast expanse
of white etched with brown--a landscape in sepia. Such was the general
effect.

But the inexpressible delight of having all this admirable scene to
one's self! Taine asks, "Can anything be sweeter than the certainty
of being alone? In any widely known spot, you are in constant dread
of an incursion of tourists; the hallooing of guides, the loud-voiced
admiration, the bustle, whether of unfastening horses, or of unpacking
provisions, or of airing opinions, all disturb the budding sensation;
civilization recovers its hold upon you. But here, what security and
what silence! nothing that recalls man; the landscape is just what it
has been these six thousand years."

The view from this mountain is justly admired. Stripped of life and
color, I found it sad, pathetic even. Dead white and steel blue rudely
repulsed the sensitive eye. The north wind, cold and cutting, drove me
to take shelter under glaring rocks. The cracking of ice first on one
side, then on the other, diverted the attention from the landscape,
as if the mountain was continually snapping its fingers in disdain.
I had constantly the feeling that some _one_ or some _thing_ was at
my elbow. What childishness! But where now was the lavish summer, the
barbaric splendors of autumn--its arabesques of foliage, its velvet
shadows, its dappled skies, its glow, mantling like that of health and
beauty? All-pervading gloom and defoliation were rendered ten times more
melancholy by the splendid glare. Winter flung her white shroud over the
land to hide the repulsiveness of death.

I looked across the valley where Moat Mountain reared its magnificent
dark wave. Passing to the north side, the eye wandered over the wooded
summits to the silvery heap of Washington, to which frozen, rose-colored
mists were clinging. A great ice-cataract rolled down over the edge
of Tuckerman's Ravine, its wave of glittering emerald. It shone with
enchanting brilliancy, cheating the imagination with the idea that
it moved; that the thin, spectral vapor rose from the depths of the
ice-cold gorge below. There gaped, wide open, the enormous hole of
Carter Notch; there the pale-blue Saco wound in and out of the hills,
with hamlets and villages strung along its serpentine course; and, as
the river grows, villages increase to towns, towns to cities. There
was the sea sparkling like a plain of quicksilver, with ponds and
lakes innumerable between. There, in the south-west, as far as the eye
could reach, was Monadnock demanding recognition; and in the west,
Moosehillock, Lafayette, Carrigain peaks, lifted with calm superiority
above the chaos of mountains, like higher waves of a frozen sea.
Finally, there were the snow-capped summits of the great range seen
throughout their whole extent, sunning their satin sides in indolent
enjoyment.

This view has no peer in these mountains. Indeed, the mountain seems
expressly placed to command in one comprehensive sweep of the eye the
most impressive features of any mountain landscape. Being a peak of the
second order--that is to say, one not dominating all the chains--while
it does not unfold the topography of the region in its whole extent,
it is sufficiently elevated to permit the spectator to enjoy that
increasing grandeur with which the distant ranges rise, tier upon tier,
to their great central spires, without lessening materially their
loftiness, or the peculiar and varied expression of their contours. The
peak of Kearsarge peeps down over one shoulder into New Hampshire, over
the other into Maine. It looks straight up through the open door of the
Carter Notch, and boldly stares Washington in the face. It sees the
sun rise from the ocean, and set behind Mount Lafayette. It patronizes
Moat, measures itself proudly with Chocorua, and maintains a distant
acquaintance with Monadnock. It is a handsome mountain, and, as such,
is a general favorite with the ladies and the artists. Like a careful
shepherd, it every morning scans the valleys to see that none of its
flock of villages has wandered. For these villagers it is a sun-dial, a
weather-vane, an almanac; for the wayfarer, a sure guide; and for the
poet, a mountain with a soul.

[Illustration: SLIDING DOWN KEARSARGE.]

The cold was intense, the wind piercing. On its north side the house
was deeply incrusted with ice-spars--windows and all. I feel that only
scant justice can be done to their wondrous beauty. All the scrubby
bushes growing out of interstices of the crumbling summit--wee twig
and slender filament--were stemmed with ice; while the rocks bristled
with countless frost feathers. With my pitch-cakes and a few twigs
I lighted a fire, which might be seen from the half-dozen villages
clustered about the foot of the mountain, and pleased myself with
imagining the astonishment with which a smoke curling upward from
this peak would be greeted for fifty miles around. I then prepared to
descend--I say prepared to descend, for the thing at once so easy to
say and so difficult of performance suddenly revived the recollection
of the hazardous scramble up the ledges, and made it seem child's play
by comparison. For a brief hour I had forgotten all this. However, go
down I must. But how? The first step on the ice threatened a descent
more rapid than flesh and blood could calmly contemplate. I had no
hatchet to cut steps in the ice; no rope to attach to the rocks, and
thus lower myself, as is practised in crossing the glaciers of the
Alps; and there was no foothold. For a moment I seriously thought of
forcing an entrance into the house, and, making a signal of distress,
resign myself to the possibility of help from below. But while sitting
on a rock looking blankly at the glassy declivity stretching down from
the summit, a bright idea came to my aid. I remembered having read in
Bourrienne's "Memoirs" that Bonaparte--the great Bonaparte--was forced
to slide down the summit of the Great St. Bernard _seated_, while
making his famous passage of the Alps. Yes, the great Corsican really
advanced to the conquest of Italy in this undignified posture. But never
did great example find more unworthy imitator. Seating myself, as the
Little Corporal had done, using my staff as a rudder, and steering for
protruding stones in order to check the force of the descent from time
to time, I slid down with a celerity the very remembrance of which makes
my head swim, arriving safe, but breathless and much astonished, at
the first irregular patch of snow. The pleasure of standing erect on
something the feet could grasp was one not to be translated into words.

Upon reaching the hotel, I procured another pair of pantaloons of my
host, and some court-plaster from the village apothecary. If any of my
readers think my dignity compromised, I beg him to remember the example
of the great Napoleon, and his famous expedient for circumventing the
Great St. Bernard.




VI.

_FROM KEARSARGE TO CARRIGAIN._

    _Raleigh._--"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall."
    _Queen Elizabeth._--"If thy heart fail thee, climb thou not at all."


After the storm, we had a fine lunar bow. The corona in the centre was a
clear silver, the outer circle composed of pale green and orange fires.
Over the moon's disk clouds swept a continuous stormy flight. The great
planet resembled a splendid decoration hung high in the heavens.

Having now progressed to terms of easy familiarity with the village, it
was decided to pay our respects to the Intervale, which unites it with
the neighboring town of Bartlett.

The road up the valley first skirts a wood, and through this wood are
delicious glimpses of Mount Adams. During the heat of the day or cool
of the evening this extensive and beautiful forest has always been a
favorite haunt. Tall, athletic pines, that bend in the breeze like
whalebone, lift their immense clusters of impenetrable foliage on high.
The sighs of lovers are softly echoed in their green tops; voices and
laughter issue from it. We, too, will swing our hammock here, and
breathe the healing fragrance that is so grateful.

In a little enclosure of rough stone, on the Bigelow place, lie the
remains of the ill-fated Willey family, who were destroyed by the
memorable slide of 1826. The inscription closes with this not too lucid
figure:

    "We gaze around, we read their monument;
     We sigh, and when we sigh we sink."

Where the high terrace, making one grand sweep to the right, again
unveils the same superb view of the great summits, now wholly
unobstructed by houses or groves, we halt before that picture,
unrivalled in these mountains, not surpassed, perhaps, upon earth, and
which we never tire of gazing upon. Its most salient features have
already been described; but here in their very midst, from their very
heart, nature seems to have snatched a garden-spot from the haggard
mountains arrested in their advance by the command, "Thus far, and no
farther!" The elms, all grace, all refinement of form, bend before
the fierce blasts of winter, but stir not. The frozen east wind flies
shrieking through, as if to tear them limb from limb. The ground is
littered with their branches. They bow meekly before its rage, but stir
not. Really, they seem so many sentinels jealously guarding that repose
of which the vale is so eloquently the expression. The vale regards the
stormy summits around with the unconcern of perfect security. It is rest
to look at it.

[Illustration: CONWAY MEADOWS.]

Again we scan the great peaks which in clear days come boldly down and
stand at our very doors, but on hazy ones remove to a vast distance,
keeping vaguely aloof day in and day out. Sometimes they are in the
sulks, sometimes bold and forward. By turns they are graciously
condescending, or tantalizingly incomprehensible. One time they muffle
themselves in clouds from head to foot, so we cannot detect a suggestive
line or a contour; another, throwing off all disguise, they expose their
most secret beauties to the free gaze of the multitude. This is to set
the beholder's blood on fire with the passion to climb as high as those
gray shafts of everlasting rock that so proudly survey the creeping
leagues beneath them.

Nowhere is the unapproachable grandeur of Mount Washington more fully
manifested than here. This large and impressive view is at once
suggestive of that glorious pre-eminence always associated with high
mountains. There are mountains, respectable ones too, in the middle
distance; but over these the great peak lords it with undisputed sway.
The bold and firm, though gradual, lines of ascent culminating at the
apex, extend over leagues of sky. After a clear sunset, Mount Washington
takes the same dull lead-color of the clouds hovering like enormous
night-birds over its head.

North Conway permits, to the tourist, a choice of two very agreeable
excursions, either of which may be made in a day, although they could
profitably occupy a week. One is to follow the course of the Saco,
through the great Notch, to Fabyans, where you are on the westward
side of the great range, and where you take the rail to the summit
of Mount Washington. The other excursion is to diverge from the Saco
Valley three or four miles from North Conway, ascending the valley of
Ellis River--one of the lame affluents of the Saco--through the Pinkham
Notch to the Glen House, where you are exactly under the eastern foot
of Mount Washington, and may ascend it, by the carriage-road, in a
coach-and-four. We had already chosen the first route, and as soon as
the roads were a little settled we began our march.

The storm was over. The keen north wind drove the mists in utter rout
before it. Peak after peak started out of the clouds, glowered on us a
moment, and then muffled his enormous head in fleecy vapor. The clouds
seemed thronged with monstrous apparitions, struggling fiercely with
the gale, which in pure wantonness tore aside the magic drapery that
rendered them invisible, scattering its tattered rags far and wide over
the valley.

Now the sun entered upon the work begun by the wind. Quicker than
thought, a ray of liquid flame transfixed the vapors, flashed upon the
vale, and, flying from summit to summit, kindled them with newborn
splendor. One would have said a flaming javelin, hurled from high
heaven, had just cleft its dazzling way to earth. The mists slunk away
and hid themselves. The valley was inundated with golden light. Even the
dark faces of the cliffs brightened and beamed upon the vale, where the
bronzed foliage fluttered, and the river leaped for joy. In a little
time nothing was left but scattered clouds winging their way toward the
lowlands.

[Illustration: BARTLETT BOWLDER.]

Near Glen Station is one of those curiosities--a transported
boulder--which was undoubtedly left while on its travels through the
mountains, poised upon four smaller ones, in the position seen in the
engraving.

Three miles below the village of Bartlett we stopped before a
farm-house, with the gable-end toward the road, to inquire the distance
to the next tavern, where we meant to pass the night. A gruff voice from
the inside growled something by way of reply; but as its owner, whoever
he might be, did not take the trouble to open his door, the answer was
unintelligible.

"The churl!" muttered the colonel. "I have a great mind to teach him to
open when a gentleman knocks."

"And I advise you not to try it," said the voice from the inside.

The one thing a Kentuckian never shrinks from is a challenge. He only
said, "Wait a minute," while putting his broad shoulder against the
door; but now George and I interfered. Neither of us had any desire to
signalize our entry into the village by a brawl, and after some trouble
we succeeded in pacifying our fire-eater with the promise to stop at
this house on our way back.

"I shall know it again," said the colonel, looking back, and nibbling
his long mustache with suppressed wrath; "something has been spilled on
the threshold--something like blood."

We laughed heartily. The blood, we concluded, was in the colonel's eyes.

Some time after nightfall we arrived in the village, having put thirteen
miles of road behind us without fatigue. Our host received us with a
blazing fire--what fires they do have in the mountains, to be sure!--a
pitcher of cider, and the remark, "Don't be afraid of it, gentlemen."

All three hastened to reassure him on this point. The colonel began with
a loud smack, and George finished the jug with a deep sigh.

"Don't be afraid of it," repeated the landlord, returning presently with
a fresh pitcher. "There are five barrels more like it in the cellar."

"Landlord," quoth George, "let one of your boys take a mattress, two
blankets, and a pillow to the cellar. I intend to pass the night there."

"I only wish your well was full of it," said the colonel, taking a
second pull at the jug, and making a second explosion with his lips.

"Gentlemen," said I, "we have surely entered a land of milk and honey."

"You shall have as much of both as you desire," said our host, very
affably. "Supper is ready, gentlemen."

After supper a man came in for whom I felt, upon the instant, one of
those secret antipathies which are natural to me. The man was an utter
stranger. No matter: the repugnance seized me all the same.

After a tour of the tap-room, and some words with our landlord in an
undertone, the stranger went out with the look of a man who had asked
for something and had been refused.

"Where have I heard that man's voice?" said the colonel, thoughtfully.

Our landlord is one of the most genial to be found among the mountains.
While sitting over the fire during the evening, the conversation turned
upon the primitive simplicity of manners remarked among mountaineers in
general; and our host illustrated it with this incident:

"You noticed, perhaps, a man who left here a few moments ago?" he began.

We replied affirmatively. It was my antipathy.

"Well, that man killed a traveller a few years back."

We instinctively recoiled. The air seemed tainted with the murderer's
presence.

"Yes; dead as a mutton," continued the landlord, punching the logs
reflectively, and filling the chimney with sparks. "The man came to
his house one dark and stormy night, and asked to be admitted. The man
of the house flatly refused. The stranger pleaded hard, but the fellow
ordered him away with threats. Finding entreaties useless, the traveller
began to grow angry, and attempted to push open the door, which was
only fastened by a button, as the custom is. The man of the house said
nothing, but took his gun from a corner, and when the intruder crossed
the threshold he put three slugs through him. The wounded man expired on
the threshold, covering it with his blood."

"Murdered him, and for that? Come, come, you are joking!" ejaculated
George, with a half smile of incredulity.

"Blowed him right through, just as I tell you," reiterated the narrator,
without heeding the doubt George's question implied.

"That sounds a little like Old Kentuck," observed the colonel, coolly.

"Yes; but listen to the sequel, gentlemen," resumed the landlord. "The
murderer took the dead body in his arms, finding, to his horror, that
it was an acquaintance with whom he had been drinking the day before;
he took up the body, as I was saying, laid it out upon a table, and
then went quietly to bed. In the morning he very honestly exhibited the
corpse to all who passed his door, and told his story as I tell it to
you. I had it from his own lips."

"That beats Kentucky," asseverated the colonel. For my own part, I
believed the landlord was amusing himself at our expense.

"I don't know about Kentucky," observed the landlord; "I was never there
in my life; but I do know that, when the dead man was buried, the man
who killed him went to the funeral like any curious or indifferent
spectator."

This was too much. George rose from his chair, and began to be
interested in a placard on the wall. "And you say this happened near
here?" he slowly inquired; "perhaps, now, you could show us the very
house?" he finished, dryly.

"Nothing easier. It's only three miles back on the road you came. The
blood-stain is plain, or was, on the threshold."

We exchanged glances. This was the house where we halted to inquire our
way. The colonel's eyes dilated, but he said nothing.

"But was there no trial?" I asked.

"Trial? oh yes. After several days had run by, somebody thought of
that; so one morning the slayer saddled his horse and rode over to the
county-seat to inquire about it. He was tried at the next sessions, and
acquitted. The judge charged justifiable homicide; that a man's house is
his fort; the jury did not leave their benches. By-the-bye, gentlemen,
that is some of the man's cider you are drinking."

I felt decided symptoms of revolt in my stomach; George made a grimace,
and the colonel threw his unfinished glass in the fire. During the
remainder of the evening he rallied us a good deal on the subject of New
England hospitality, but said no more about going back to chastise the
man of the red house.[5]

The sun rose clear over the right shoulder of Kearsarge. After breakfast
the landlord took us out and introduced us to his neighbors, the
mountains. While he was making the presentation in due form, I jotted
down the following, which has, at least, the merit of conciseness:

_Upper Bartlett_: an ellipse of fertile land; three Lombardy poplars; a
river murmuring unseen; a wall of mountains, with Kearsarge looking up,
and Carrigain looking down the intervale. _Item_: the cider is excellent.

We had before us the range extending between Swift River and the Saco,
over which I looked from the summit of Chocorua straight to Mount
Washington. To the east this range is joined with the out-works of
Moat. Then come Table, Bear, Silver Spring (Bartlett Haystack), and
Tremont, in the order named. Then comes the valley of Sawyer's River,
with Carrigain rising between its walls; then, crossing to the north
side of the Saco, the most conspicuous object is the bold Hart's Ledge,
between which and Sawyer's Rock, on the opposite bank, the river is
crowded into a narrow channel. The mountain behind the hotel is Mount
Langdon, with Crawford more distant. Observe closely the curious
configuration of this peak. Whether we go up or down, it nods familiarly
to us from every point of approach.

But Kearsarge and Carrigain are the grand features here. One gives
his adieu, the other his welcome. One is the perfection of symmetry,
of grace; the other simply demands our homage. His snowy crown,
dazzling white against the pure blue, was the badge of an incontestable
superiority. These two mountains are the presiding genii of this
charming intervale. You look first at the massive lineaments of one,
then at the flowing lines of the other, as at celebrated men, whose
features you would strongly impress upon the memory.

From the village street we saw the sun go down behind Mount Carrigain,
and touch with his glittering sceptre the crest of Hancock. We looked up
the valley dominated by the giant of the Pemigewasset wilderness with
feelings of high respect for this illustrious hermit, who only deigns to
show himself from this single point, and whose peak long yielded only to
the most persevering and determined climbers.

Two days were formerly required for the ascent of this mountain, but
a long day will now suffice, thanks to the path constructed under the
direction of the Appalachian Club. The mountain is four thousand six
hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, and is wooded to its summit.
The valley of Sawyer's River drains the deep basin between Carrigain and
Hancock, entering the Saco near the railroad station called Livermore.
The lumbermen have now penetrated this valley to the foot of the
mountain, with their rude logging roads, offering a way soon, it is
hoped, to be made plainer for future climbers than it was our lot to
find it.

Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the mountains, we now regarded
distances with disdain, and fatigue with indifference. We had learned
to make our toilets in the stream, and our beds in the fragrant groves.
Truly, the bronzed faces that peered at us as we bent over some solemn,
pine-shaded pool were not those we had been accustomed to seeing at
home; but having solved the problem of man's true existence, we only
laughed at each other's tawny countenances while shouldering our packs
and tightening our belts for the day's march.

Leaving Bartlett at an early hour, we turned aside from the highway
a little beyond the bridge which spans Sawyer's River, and were soon
following a rough and stony cart-way ascending the banks of this
stream, which thundered along its rocky bed, making the woods echo with
its roar. The road grew rapidly worse, the river wilder, the forest
gloomier, until, at the end of two miles, coming suddenly out into the
sun, we entered a rude street of unpainted cabins, terminating at some
saw-mills. This hamlet, which to the artistic eye so disadvantageously
replaces the original forest, is the only settlement in the large
township of Livermore. Its mission is to ravage and lay waste the
adjacent mountains. Notwithstanding the occupation is legitimate, one
instinctively rebels at the waste around him, where the splendid natural
forest, literally hewed and hacked in pieces, exposes rudely all the
deformities of the mountains. But this lost hamlet is the first in which
a genuine emotion of any kind awaits the traveller. Ten to one it is
like nothing he ever dreamed of; his surprise is, therefore, extreme.
The men were rough, hardy-looking fellows; the women appeared contented,
but as if hard work had destroyed their good looks prematurely. Both
announced, by their looks and their manner, that the life they led was
no child's play; the men spoke only when addressed; the women stole
furtive glances at us; the half-dressed children stopped their play
to stare at the strangers. Here was neither spire nor bell. One cow
furnished all the milk for the commonalty. The mills being shut, there
was no sound except the river plashing over the rocks far down in the
gorge below; and had I encountered such a place on the sea-coast or the
frontier, I should at once have said I had stumbled upon the secret
hold of outlaws and smugglers, into which signs, grips, and passwords
were necessary to procure admission. To me, therefore, the hamlet of
Livermore was a wholly new experience.

From this hamlet to the foot of the mountain is a long and uninteresting
tramp of five miles through the woods. We found the walking good, and
strode rapidly on, coming first to a wood-cutter's camp pitched on the
banks of Carrigain Brook, and next to the clearing they had made at the
mountain's foot. Here the actual work of the ascent began in earnest.

Carrigain is solid, compact, massive. It is covered from head to foot
with forest. No incident of the way diverts the attention for a single
moment from the severe exertion required to overcome its steeply
inclined side; no breathing levels, no restful outlooks, no gorges, no
precipices, no cascades break the monotony of the escalade. We conquer,
as Napoleon's grenadiers did, by our legs. It is the most inexorable of
mountains, and the most exasperating. From base to summit you cannot
obtain a cup of water to slake your thirst.

Two hours of this brought us out upon the bare summit of the great
northern spur, beyond which the true peak rose a few hundred feet
higher. Carrigain, at once the desire and the bugbear of climbers, was
beneath our feet.

We have already examined, from the rocks of Chocorua, the situation
of this peak. We then entitled it the Hub of the White Mountains.
It reveals all the magnitude, unfolds the topography of the woody
wilderness stretching between the Saco and the Pemigewasset valleys. As
nearly as possible, it exhibits the same amazing profusion of unbroken
forest, here and there darkly streaked by hidden watercourses, as when
the daring foot of the first climber pressed the unviolated crest of the
august peak of Washington. In all its length and breadth there is not
one object that suggests, even remotely, the presence of man. We saw not
even the smoke of a hunter's camp. All was just as created; an absolute,
savage, unkempt wilderness.

Heavens, what a bristling array of dark and shaggy mountains! Now and
then, where water gleamed out of their hideous depths, a great brilliant
eye seemed watching us from afar. We knew that we had only to look up to
see a dazzling circlet of lofty peaks drawn around the horizon, chains
set with glittering stones, clusters sparkling with antique crests;
still we could not withdraw our eyes from the profound abysses sunk deep
in the bowels of the land, typical of the uncovered bed of the primeval
ocean, sad and terrible, from which that ocean seemed only to have just
receded.

But who shall describe all this solitary, this oppressive grandeur?
and what language portray the awfulness of these untrodden mountains?
Now and then, high up their bleak summits, a patch of forest had been
plucked up by the roots, or shaken from its hold in the throes of the
mountain, laid bare a long and glittering scar, red as a half-closed
wound. Such is the appearance of Mount Lowell, on the other side of the
gap dividing Carrigain from the Notch mountains. We saw where the dark
slope of Mount Willey gives birth to the infant Merrimack. We saw the
confluent waters of this stream, so light of foot, speeding through the
gloomy defiles, as if fear had given them wings. We saw the huge mass of
Mount Hancock force itself slowly upward out of the press. Unutterable
lawlessness stamped the whole region as its own.

That I have thus dwelt upon its most extraordinary feature, instead of
examining the landscape in detail, must suffice for the intelligent
reader. I have not the temerity to coolly put the dissecting-knife into
its heart. To science the things which belong to science. Besides, to
the man of feeling all this is but secondary. We are not here to make a
chart.

After a visit to the high summit, where some work was done in the
interest of future climbers, we set out at four in the afternoon, on
our return down the mountain. A second time we halted on the spur to
glance upward at the heap of summits over which Mount Washington lifts a
regular dome. The long line of peaks, ascending from Crawford's, seems
approaching it by a succession of huge steps. It was after dark when we
saw the lights of the village before us, and were again warmly welcomed
by the rousing fire and smoking viands of mine host.




VII.

_VALLEY OF THE SACO._

    With our faint heart the mountain strives;
    Its arms outstretched, the Druid wood
    Waits with its benedicte.
          _Sir Launfal._


At eight o'clock in the morning we resumed our march, with the intention
of reaching Crawford's the same evening. The day was cold, raw, and
windy, so we walked briskly--sharp air and cutting wind acting like whip
and spur.

I retain a vivid recollection of this morning. Autumn had passed her
cool hand over the fevered earth. Soft as three-piled velvet, the green
turf left no trace of our tread. The sky was of a dazzling blue, and
frescoed with light clouds, transparent as gauze, pure as the snow
glistening on the high summits. On both sides of us audacious mountains
braced their feet in the valley; while others mounted over their brawny
shoulders, as if to scale the heavens.

But what shall I say of the grand harlequinade of nature which the
valley presented to our view? I cannot employ Victor Hugo's odd simile
of a peacock's tail; that is more of a witticism than a description.
The death of the year seemed to prefigure the glorious and surprising
changes of color in a dying dolphin--putting on unparalleled beauty at
the moment of dissolution, and so going out in a blaze of glory.

From the meagre summits enfiladed by the north wind, and where a
solitary pine or cedar intensified the desolation, to the upper forests,
the mountains bristled with a scanty growth of dead or dying trees.
Those scattered birches, high up the mountain side, looked like quills
on a porcupine's back; that group, glistening in the morning sun,
like the pipes of an immense organ. From this line of death, which
vegetation crossed at its peril, the eye dropped down over a limitless
forest of dark evergreen spotted with bright yellow. The effect of the
sunlight on this foliage was magical. Myriad flambeaux illuminated the
deep gloom, doubling the intensity of the sun, emitting rays, glowing,
resplendent. This splendid light, which the heavy masses of orange
seemed to absorb, gave a velvety softness to the lower ridges and spurs,
covering their hard, angular lines with a magnificent drapery. The lower
forests, the valley, were one vast sea of color. Here the bewildering
melange of green and gold, orange and crimson, purple and russet,
produced the effect of an immense Turkish rug--the colors being soft
and rich, rather than vivid or brilliant. This quality, the blending
of a thousand tints, the dreamy grace, the sumptuous profusion, the
inexpressible tenderness, intoxicated the senses. Earth seemed no longer
earth. We had entered a garden of the gods.

From time to time a scarlet maple flamed up in the midst of the forest,
and its red foliage, scattered at our feet by the wind, glowed like
flakes of fire beaten from an anvil. A tangled maze of color changed the
road into an avenue bordered with rare and variegated plants. Autumn's
bright sceptre, the golden-rod, pointed the way. Blue and white daisies
strewed the greensward.

After passing Sawyer's River, the road turned abruptly to the north,
skirting the base of the Nancy range. We were at the door of the second
chamber in this remarkable gallery of nature.

Before crossing the threshold it is expedient to allude to the incident
which has given a name not only to the mountain, but to the torrent we
see tearing its impetuous way down from the upper forests. The story of
Nancy's Brook is as follows:

In the latter part of the last century, a maiden, whose Christian name
of Nancy is all that comes down to us, was living in the little hamlet
of Jefferson. She loved, and was betrothed to a young man of the farm.
The wedding-day was fixed, and the young couple were on the eve of
setting out for Portsmouth, where their happiness was to be consummated
at the altar. In the trustfulness of love, the young girl confided the
small sum which constituted all her marriage-portion to her lover. This
man repaid her simple faith with the basest treachery. Seizing his
opportunity, he left the hamlet without a word of explanation or of
adieu. The deserted maiden was one of those natures which cannot quietly
sit down under calamity. Urged on by the intensity of her feelings, she
resolved to pursue her recreant lover. He could not resist her prayers,
her entreaties, her tears! She was young, vigorous, intrepid. With her
to decide and to act were the same thing. In vain the family attempted
to dissuade her from her purpose. At nightfall she set out.

A hundred years ago the route taken by this brave girl was not, as
to-day, a thoroughfare which one may follow with his eyes shut. It was
only an obscure path, little travelled by day, deserted by night. For
thirty miles, from Colonel Whipple's, in Jefferson, to Bartlett, there
was not a human habitation. The forests were filled with wild beasts.
The rigor of the season--it was December--added its own perils. But
nothing could daunt the heroic spirit of Nancy; she had found man more
cruel than all besides.

[Illustration: NANCY IN THE SNOW.]

The girl's hope was to overtake her lover before dawn at the place where
she expected he would have camped for the night. She found the camp
deserted, and the embers extinguished. Spurred on by hope or despair,
she pushed on down the tremendous defile of the Notch, fording the
turbulent and frozen Saco, and toiling through deep snows and over rocks
and fallen trees, until, feeling her strength fail, she sunk exhausted
on the margin of the brook which seems perpetually bemoaning her sad
fate. Here, cold and rigid as marble, under a canopy of evergreen which
the snow tenderly drooped above, they found her. She was wrapped in her
cloak, and in the same attitude of repose as when she fell asleep on her
nuptial couch of snow-crusted moss.

The story goes that the faithless lover became a hopeless maniac on
learning the fate of his victim, dying in horrible paroxysms not long
after. Tradition adds that for many years, on every anniversary of her
death, the mountains resounded with ravings, shrieks, and agonized
cries, which the superstitious attributed to the unhappy ghost of the
maniac lover.[6]

It was not quite noon when we entered the beautiful and romantic glen
under the shadow of Mount Crawford. Upon our left, a little in advance,
a solidly-built English country-house, with gables, stood on a terrace
well above the valley. At our right, and below, was the old Mount
Crawford tavern, one of the most ancient of mountain hostelries. Upon
the opposite side of the vale rose the enormous mass of Mount Crawford;
and near where we stood, a humble mound, overgrown with bushes, enclosed
the mortal remains of the hardy pioneer whose monument is the mountain.

We had an excusable curiosity to see a man who, in the prime of life,
had forsaken the city, its pleasures, its opportunities, and had come
to pass the rest of his life among these mountains; one, too, whose
enormous possessions procured for him the title of Lord of the Valley.
We heard with astonishment that our day's journey, of which we had
completed the half only, was wholly over his tract--I ought to say his
dominions--that is, over thirteen miles of field, forest, and mountain.
This being equal to a small principality, it seemed quite natural and
proper to approach the proprietor with some degree of ceremony.

A servant took our cards at the door, and returned with an invitation to
enter. The apartment into which we were conducted was the most singular
I have ever seen; certainly it has no counterpart in this world, unless
the famous hut of Robinson Crusoe has escaped the ravages of time.
It was literally crammed with antique furniture, among which was a
high-backed chair used in dentistry; squat little bottles, containing
chemicals; and a bench, on which was a spirit-lamp; a turning-lathe, a
small portable furnace, and a variety of instruments or tools of which
we did not know the use. A few prints and oil-paintings adorned the
walls. A cheerful fire burnt on the hearth.

"Were we in the sixteenth century," said George, "I should say this was
the laboratory of some famous alchemist."

[Illustration: ABEL CRAWFORD.]

Further investigation was cut short by the entrance of our host, who was
a venerable-looking man, turned of eighty, with a silver beard falling
upon his breast, and a general expression of benignity. He stooped a
little, but seemed hale and hearty, notwithstanding the weight of his
fourscore years.

Doctor Bemis received us graciously. For an hour he entertained us with
the story of his life among the mountains, "to which," said he, "I
credit the last forty-five years--for I at first came here in pursuit of
health." After he had satisfied our curiosity concerning himself, which
he did with perfect _bonhomie_, I asked him to describe Abel Crawford,
the veteran guide of the White Hills.

"Abel," said the doctor, "was six feet four; Erastus, the eldest son,
was six feet six, or taller than Washington; and Ethan was still
taller, being nearly seven feet. In fact, not one of the sons was less
than six feet; so you may imagine what sort of family group it was
when 'his boys,' as Abel loved to call them, were all at home. Ah,
well!" continued the doctor, with a sigh, "that kind of timber does
not flourish in the mountains now. Why, the very sight of one of those
giants inspired the timid with confidence. Ethan, called in his day
the Giant of the Hills, was a man of iron frame and will. Fear and he
were strangers. He would take up an exhausted traveller in his sinewy
arms and carry him as you would a baby, until his strength or courage
returned. The first bridle-path up the mountain was opened by him
in--let me see--ah! I have it, it was in 1821. Ethan, with the help of
his father, also built the Notch House above.[7]

"Abel was long-armed, lean, and sinewy. Doctor Dwight, whose 'Travels
in New England' you have doubtless read, stopped with Crawford, on his
way down the Notch, in 1797. His nearest neighbor then, on the north,
was Captain Rosebrook, who lived on or near the site of the present
Fabyan House. Crawford's life of hardship had made little impression on
a constitution of iron. At seventy-five he rode the first horse that
reached the summit of Mount Washington. At eighty he often walked to
his son's (Thomas J. Crawford), at the entrance of the Notch, before
breakfast. I recollect him perfectly at this time, and his appearance
was peculiarly impressive. He was erect and vigorous as one of those
pines on yonder mountain. His long white hair fell down upon his
shoulders, and his fresh, ruddy face was always expressive of good-humor.

"The destructive freshet of 1826," continued the doctor, "swept
everything before it, flooding the intervale, and threatening the old
house down there with instant demolition. During that terrible night,
when the Willey family perished, Mrs. Crawford was alone with her young
children in the house. The water rose with such rapidity that she was
driven to the upper story for safety. While here, the thud of floating
trees, driven by the current against the house, awakened new terrors. At
every concussion the house trembled. Wooden walls could not long stand
that terrible pounding. The heroic woman, alive to the danger, seized a
stout pole, and, going to the nearest window, kept the side of the house
exposed to the flood free from the mass of wreck-stuff collected against
it. She held her post thus throughout the night, until the danger had
passed. When the flood subsided, Crawford found several fine trout alive
in his cellar."

"When do the great freshets usually occur?" I asked.

"In the autumn," replied our host. "It is not the melting snows, but the
sudden rainfalls that we fear."

"Yes," resumed he, reflectively, "the Crawfords were a family of
athletes. With them the race of guides became extinct. Soon after
settling here, Abel went with his wife to Bartlett on some occasion,
leaving their two boys in the care of a hired man. When they had gone,
this man took what he could find of value and decamped. When Abel
returned, which he did on the following day, he immediately set out
in pursuit of the thief, overtook him thirty miles from here, in the
Franconia forests, flogged him within an inch of his life, and let him
go."

"Sixty miles on foot, and alone, to recover a few stolen goods, and
punish a thief!" cried the astonished colonel; "that beats Daniel Boone."

"Yes; and what is more, the boys were brought up to face hunger, cold,
fatigue, with Indian stoicism, and even to encounter bears, lynxes, and
wolves with no other weapons than those provided by nature. There, now,
was Ethan, for example," said the doctor, smiling at the recollection.
"One day he took it into his head to have a tame bear for the diversion
of his guests. Well, he caught a young one, half grown, and remarkably
vicious, in a trap. But how to get him home! At length Ethan tied his
fore and hind paws together so he couldn't scratch, and put a muzzle of
withes over his nose so he couldn't bite. Then, shouldering his prize
as he would a bag of meal, the guide started for home, in great glee
at the success of his clever expedient. He had not gone far, however,
before Bruin managed to get one paw wholly and his muzzle partly free,
and began to scratch and struggle and snap at his captor savagely. Ethan
wanted to get the bear home terribly; but, after having his clothing
nearly torn off his back, he grew angry, and threw the beast upon the
ground with such force as to kill him instantly."

"Report," said I, "credits you with naming most of the mountains which
overlook the intervale."

"Yes," replied the doctor, "Resolution, over there"--indicating the
mountain allied to Crawford, and to the ridge which forms one of
the buttresses of Mount Washington--"I named in recognition of the
perseverance of Mr. Davis, who became discouraged while making a path to
Mount Washington in 1845."

"Is the route practicable?" I asked.

"Practicable, yes; but nearly obliterated, and seldom ascended. Have you
seen Frankenstein?" demanded the doctor, in his turn.

We replied in the negative.

"It will repay a visit. I named it for a young German artist who passed
some time with me, and who was fascinated by its rugged picturesqueness.
Here is some of his work," pointing to the paintings which, apparently,
formed the foundation of the collection on the walls.

Our host accompanied us to the door with a second injunction not to
forget Frankenstein.

"You have something there good for the eyes," I observed, indicating the
green carpet of the vale beneath us.

"True; but you should have seen it when the deer boldly came down the
mountain and browsed quietly among the cattle. That was a pretty sight,
and one of frequent occurrence when I first knew the place. At that
time," he continued, "the stage passed up every other day. Sometimes
there were one or two, but seldom three passengers."

Proceeding on our way, we now had a fine view of the Giant's Stairs,
which we had already seen from Mount Carrigain, but less boldly outlined
than they appear from the valley, where they really look like two
enormous steps cut on the very summit of the opposite ridge. No name
could be more appropriate, though each of the degrees of this colossal
staircase demands a giant not of our days; for they are respectively
three hundred and fifty, and four hundred and fifty feet in height. It
was over those steps that the Davis path ascended.

A mile or a mile and a half above the Crawford Glen, we emerged from
behind a projecting spur of the mountain which hid the upper valley,
when, by a common impulse, we stopped, fairly stupefied with admiration
and surprise.

Thrust out before us, athwart the pass, a black and castellated pile
of precipices shot upward to a dizzy height, and broke off abruptly
against the sky. Its bulging sides and regular outlines resembled the
clustered towers and frowning battlements of some antique fortress
built to command the pass. Gashed, splintered, defaced, it seemed to
have withstood for ages the artillery of heaven and the assaults of
time. With what solitary grandeur it lifted its mailed front above the
forest, and seemed even to regard the mountains with disdain! Silent,
gloomy, impregnable, it wanted nothing to recall those dark abodes of
the Thousand and One Nights, in which malignant genii are imprisoned for
thousands of years.

This was Frankenstein. We at once accord it a place as the most
suggestive of cliffs. From the other side of the valley the resemblance
to a mediæval castle is still more striking. It has a black gorge for a
moat, so deep that the head swims when crossing it; and to-day, as we
crept over the cat's-cradle of a bridge thrown across for the passage
of the railway, and listened to the growling of the torrent far down
beneath, the whole frail structure seemed trembling under us.

But what a contrast! what a singular freak of nature! At the foot of
this grisly precipice, clothing it with almost superhuman beauty, was a
plantation of maples and birches, all resplendent in crimson and gold.
Never have I seen such masses of color laid on such a background. Below
all was light and splendor; above, all darkness and gloom. Here the eye
fairly revelled in beauty, there it recoiled in terror. The cliff was
like a naked and swarthy Ethiopian up to his knees in roses.

We walked slowly, with our eyes fixed on these cliffs, until another
turn of the road--we were now on the railway embankment--opened a vista
deserving to be remembered as one of the marvels of this glorious
picture-gallery.

The perfection and magnificence of this truly regal picture, the
gigantic scale on which it is presented, without the least blemish to
mar its harmony or disturb the impression of one grand, unique whole, is
a revelation to the least susceptible nature in the world.

Frankenstein was now a little withdrawn, on our left. Upon the right,
fluttering its golden foliage as if to attract our attention, a
plantation of tall, satin-stemmed birches stretched for some distance
along the railway. Between the long buttress of the cliff and this
forest lay open the valley of Mount Washington River, which is driven
deep into the heart of the great range. There, through this valley,
cutting the sapphire sky with their silver silhouette, were the giant
mountains, surmounted by the splendid dome of Washington himself.

[Illustration: STORM ON MOUNT WILLEY.]

Passing beyond, we had a fine retrospect of Crawford, with his curved
horn; and upon the dizzy iron bridge thrown across the gorge beneath
Frankenstein, striking views are obtained of the mountains below. They
seemed loftier and grander, and more imposing than ever.

Turning our faces toward the north, we now beheld the immense bulk and
superb crest of Willey. On the other side of the valley was the long
battlement of Mount Webster. We were at the entrance of the great Notch.




VIII.

_THROUGH THE NOTCH._

    Around his waist are forests braced,
    The avalanche in his hand.--BYRON.


The valley, which had continually contracted since leaving Bartlett,
now appeared fast shut between these two mountains; but on turning the
tremendous support which Mount Willey flings down, we were in presence
of the amazing defile cloven through the midst, and giving entrance to
the heart of the White Hills.

These gigantic mountains divided to the right and left, like the Red
Sea before the Israelites. Through the immense trough, over which their
crests hung suspended in mid-air, the highway creeps and the river
steals away. The road is only seen at intervals through the forest; a
low murmur, like the hum of bees, announces the river.

I have no conception of the man who can approach this stupendous chasm
without a sensation of fear. The idea of imminent annihilation is
everywhere overwhelming. The mind refuses to reason, or rather to fix
itself, except on a single point. What if the same power that commanded
these awful mountains to remove should hurl them back to ever-during
fixedness? Should, do I say? The gulf seemed contracting under our very
eyes--the great mountains toppling to their fall. With an eagerness
excited by high expectation, we had pressed forward; but now we
hesitated.

This emotion, which many of my readers have doubtless partaken, was our
tribute to the dumb but eloquent expression of power too vast for our
feeble intellects to measure. It was the triumph of matter over mind; of
the finite over the infinite.

Below, it was all admiration and surprise; here, all amazement and fear.
The more the mountains exalted themselves, the more we were abased.
Trusting, nevertheless, in our insignificance, we moved on, looking with
all our eyes, absorbed, silent, and almost worshipping.

The wide split of the Notch, which we had now entered, had on one side
Mount Willey, drawn up to his full height; and on the other Mount
Webster, striped with dull red on clingy yellow, like an old tiger's
skin. Willey is the highest; Webster the most remarkable. Willey has
a conical spire; Webster a long, irregular battlement. Willey is a
mountain; Webster a huge block of granite.

For two miles the gorge winds between these mountains to where it is
apparently sealed up by a sheer mass of purple precipices lodged full
in its throat. This is Mount Willard. The vast chasm glowed with the
gorgeous colors of the foliage, even when a passing cloud obscured the
sun. These general observations made, we cast our eyes down into the
vale reposing at our feet. We had chosen for our point of view that to
which Abel Crawford conducted Sir Charles Lyell in 1845. The scientist
has made the avalanche bear witness to the glacier, precisely as one
criminal is made to convict another under our laws.

Five hundred feet below us was a little clearing, containing a hamlet
of two or three houses. From this hamlet to the storm-crushed crags
glistening on the summit of Mount Willey the track of an old avalanche
was still distinguishable, though the birches and alders rooted among
the débris threatened to obliterate it at no distant day.

We descended by this still plain path to the houses at the foot of the
mountain. One and the other are associated with the most tragic event
connected with the history of the great Notch.

We found two houses, a larger and smaller, fronting the road, neither
of which merits a description; although evidence that it was visited by
multitudes of curious pilgrims abounded on the walls of the unoccupied
building.

Since quite early in the century, this house was kept as an inn; and
for a long time it was the only stopping-place between Abel Crawford's
below and Captain Rosebrook's above--a distance of thirteen miles. Its
situation, at the entrance of the great Notch, was advantageous to the
public and to the landlord, but attended with a danger which seems not
to have been sufficiently regarded, if indeed it caused successive
inmates particular concern. This fatal security had a lamentable sequel.

[Illustration: MOUNT WILLARD FROM WILLEY BROOK.]

In 1826 this house was occupied by Samuel Willey, his wife, five
children, and two hired men. During the summer a drought of unusual
severity dried the streams, and parched the thin soil of the neighboring
mountains. On the evening of the 26th of June, the family heard a heavy,
rumbling noise, apparently proceeding from the mountain behind them. In
terror and amazement they ran out of the house. They saw the mountain
in motion. They saw an immense mass of earth and rock detach itself
and move toward the valley, at first slowly, then with gathered and
irresistible momentum. Rocks, trees, earth, were swooping down upon
them from the heights in three destroying streams. The spectators stood
rooted to the spot. Before they could recover their presence of mind the
avalanche was upon them. One torrent crossed the road only ten rods from
the house; another a little distance beyond; while the third and largest
portion took a different direction. With great labor a way was made over
the mass of rubbish for the road. The avalanche had shivered the largest
trees, and borne rocks weighing many tons almost to the door of the
lonely habitation.

This awful warning passed unheeded. On the 28th of August, at dusk,
a storm burst upon the mountains, and raged with indescribable fury
throughout the night. The rain fell in sheets. Innumerable torrents
suddenly broke forth on all sides, deluging the narrow valley, and
bearing with them forests that had covered the mountains for ages. The
swollen and turbid Saco rose over its banks, flooding the Intervales,
and spreading destruction in its course.

Two days afterward a traveller succeeded in forcing his way through the
Notch. He found the Willey House standing uninjured in the midst of
woful desolation. A second avalanche, descended from Mount Willey during
the storm, had buried the little vale beneath its ruins. The traveller,
affrighted by the scene around him, pushed open the door. As he did so,
a half-famished dog, sole inmate of the house, disputed his entrance
with a mournful howl. He entered. The interior was silent and deserted.
A candle burnt to the socket, the clothing of the inmates lying by their
bedsides, testified to the haste with which this devoted family had
fled. The death-like hush pervading the lonely cabin--these evidences
of the horrible and untimely fate of the family--the appalling scene of
wreck all around, froze the solitary intruder's blood. In terror he,
too, fled from the doomed dwelling.

On arriving at Bartlett, the traveller reported what he had seen.
Assistance was despatched to the scene of disaster. The rescuers came
too late to render aid to the living, but they found, and buried on the
spot, the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey, and the two hired men. The
remaining children were never found.

It was easily conjectured that the terrified family, alive at last to
the appalling danger that menaced them, and feeling the solid earth
tremble in the throes of the mountain, sought safety in flight. They
only rushed to their doom. The discovery of the bodies showed but too
plainly the manner of their death. They had been instantly swallowed up
by the avalanche, which, in the inexplicable order of things visible in
great calamities, divided behind the house, leaving the frail structure
unharmed, while its inmates were hurried into eternity.[8]

For some time after the disaster a curse seemed to rest upon the
old Notch House. No one would occupy it. Travellers shunned it. It
remained untenanted, though open to all who might be driven to seek its
inhospitable shelter, until the deep impression of horror which the fate
of the Willey family inspired had, in a measure, effaced itself.

The effects of the cataclysm were everywhere. For twenty-one miles,
almost its entire length, the turnpike was demolished. Twenty-one of
the twenty-three bridges were swept away. In some places the meadows
were buried to the depth of several feet beneath sand, earth, and
rocks; in others, heaps of great trees, which the torrent had torn
up by the roots, barricaded the route. The mountains presented a
ghastly spectacle. One single night sufficed to obliterate the work of
centuries, to strip their summits bare of verdure, and to leave them
with shreds of forest and patches of shrubbery hanging to their stark
and naked sides. Thus their whole aspect was altered to an extent hardly
to be realized to-day, though remarked with mingled wonder and dread
long after the period of the convulsion.

From the house our eyes naturally wandered to the mountain, where
quarrymen were pecking at its side like yellow-hammers at a dead
sycamore. All at once a tremendous explosion was heard, and a stream
of loosened earth and bowlders came rattling down the mountain. So
unexpected was the sound, so startling its multiplied echo, it seemed as
if the mountain had uttered a roar of rage and pain, which was taken up
and repeated by the other mountains until the uproar became deafening.
When the reverberation died away in the distance, we again heard the
metallic click of the miners' hammers chipping away at the gaunt ribs of
Mount Willey.

How does it happen that this catastrophe is still able to awaken the
liveliest interest for the fate of the Willey family? Why is it that
the oft-repeated tale seems ever new in the ears of sympathetic
listeners? Our age is crowded with horrors, to which this seems trifling
indeed. May we not attribute it to the influence which the actual scene
exerts on the imagination? One must stand on the spot to comprehend;
must feel the mysterious terror to which all who come within the
influence of the gorge submit. Here the annihilation of a family is but
the legitimate expression of that feeling. It seems altogether natural
to the place. The ravine might well be the sepulchre of a million human
beings, instead of the grave of a single obscure family.

We reached the public-house, at the side of the Willey house, with
appetites whetted by our long walk. The mercury had only risen to
thirty-eight degrees by the thermometer nailed to the door-post. We went
in.

In general, the mountain publicans are not only very obliging, but equal
to even the most unexpected demands. The colonel, who never brags, had
boasted for the last half-hour what he was going to do at this repast.
In point of fact, we were famishing.

A man was standing with his back to the fire, his hands thrust
underneath his coat-tails, and a pipe in his mouth. Either the pipe
illuminated his nose, or his nose the pipe. He also had a nervous
contraction of the muscles of his face, causing an involuntary twitching
of the eyebrows, and at the same time of his ears, up and down. This
habit, taken in connection with the perfect immobility of the figure,
made on us the impression of a statue winking. We therefore hesitated to
address it--I mean _him_--until a moment's puzzled scrutiny satisfied us
that it--I mean the strange object--was alive. He merely turned his head
when we entered the room, wagged his ears playfully, winked furiously,
and then resumed his first attitude. In all probability he was some
stranger like ourselves.

I accosted him. "Sir," said I, "can you tell us if it is possible to
procure a dinner here?"

The man took the pipe from his mouth, shook out the ashes very
deliberately, and, without looking at me, tranquilly observed,

"You would like dinner, then?"

"Would we like dinner? We breakfasted at Bartlett, and have passed six
hours fasting."

"And eleven miles. You see, a long way between meals," interjected
George, with decision.

"It's after the regular dinner," drawled the apathetic smoker, using his
thumb for a stopper, and stooping for a brand with which to relight his
pipe.

"In that case we are willing to pay for any additional trouble," I
hastened to say.

The man seemed reflecting. We _were_ hungry; that was incontestable;
but we were also shivering, and he maintained his position astride the
hearth-stone, like the fabled Colossus of old.

"A cold day," said the colonel, threshing himself.

"I did not notice it," returned the stranger, indifferently.

"Only thirty-eight at the door," said George, stamping his feet with
unnecessary vehemence.

"Indeed!" observed our man, with more interest.

"Yes," George asserted; "and if the fireplace were only larger, or the
screen smaller."

The man hastily stepped aside, knocking over, as he did so, a blazing
brand, which he kicked viciously back into the fire.

Having carried the outworks, we approached the citadel. "Perhaps, sir,"
I ventured, "you can inform us where the landlord may be found?"

"You wanted dinner, I believe?" The tone in which this question was put
gave me goose-flesh. I could not speak, George dropped into a chair.
The colonel propped himself against the chimney-piece. I shrugged my
shoulders, and nodded expressively to my companions, who returned two
glances of eloquent dismay. Evidently nothing was to be got out of this
fellow.

"Dinner for one?" continued the eternal smoker.

"For three!" I exclaimed, out of all patience.

"For four; I shall eat double," added the colonel.

"Six!" shouted George, seizing the dinner-bell on the mantel-piece.

"Stop," said the man, betraying a little excitement; "don't ring that
bell."

"Why not?" demanded George; "we want to see the landlord; and, by Jove,"
brandishing the bell aloft, "see him we will!"

"He stands before you, gentlemen; and if you will have a little patience
I will see what can be done." So saying, he put his pipe on the
chimney-piece, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and went out,
muttering, as he did so. "The world was not made in a day."

In three-quarters of an hour we sat down to a funereal repast, the
bare recollection of which makes me ill, but which was enlivened by the
following conversation:

"How many inhabitants are in your tract?" I asked of the man who waited
on us.

"Do you mean inhabitants?"

"Certainly, I mean inhabitants."

"Well, that's not an easy one."

"How so?"

"Because the same question not only puzzled the State Legislature, but
made the attorney-general sick."

We became attentive.

"Explain that, if you please," said I.

"Why, just look at it: with only eight legal voters in the tract" (he
called it track), "we cast five hundred ballots at the State election."

"Five hundred ballots! then your voters must have sprung from the ground
or from the rocks."

"Pretty nearly so."

"Actual men?"

"Actual men."

"You are jesting."

My man looked at me as if I had offered him an affront. The supposition
was plainly inadmissible. He was completely innocent of the charge.

"You hear those men pounding away up the hill?" he demanded, jerking his
thumb in the direction indicated.

"Yes."

"Well, those are the five hundred voters. On election morning they came
to the polling-place with a ballot in one hand, and a pick, a sledge,
or a drill in the other. Our supervisor is a very honest, blunt sort of
man: he refused their ballots on the spot."

"Well?"

"Well, one of them had a can of nitro-glycerine and a coil of wire. He
deposited his can in a corner, hitched on the wire, and was going out
with his comrades, when the supervisor, feeling nervous, said,

"'The polls are open, gentlemen.'"

"Ingenious," remarked George.

The man looked astounded.

"He means dangerous," said I; "but go on."

"I will. When the votes were counted, at sundown, it was found that our
precinct had elected two representatives to the General Court. But when
the successful candidates presented their certificates at Concord, some
meddlesome city fellow questioned the validity of the election. The
upshot of it was that the two nitro-glycerites came back with a flea in
each ear."

"And the five hundred were disfranchised," said George.

"Why, as to that, half were French Canadians, half Irish, and the devil
knows what the rest were; I don't."

"Never mind the rest. You see," said George, rising, "how, with the
railway, the blessings of civilization penetrate into the dark corners
of the earth."

The colonel began his sacramental, "That beats--" when he was
interrupted by a second explosion, which shook the building. We paid our
reckoning, George saying, as he threw his money on the table, "A heavy
charge."

"No more than the regular price," said the landlord, stiffly.

"I referred, my dear sir, to the explosion," replied George, with the
sardonic grin habitual to him on certain occasions.

"Oh!" said the host, resuming his pipe and his fireplace.

We spent the remaining hours of this memorable afternoon sauntering
through the Notch, which is dripping with cascades, and noisy with
mountain torrents. The Saco, here nothing but a brook, crawls languidly
along its bed of broken rock. From dizzy summit to where they meet the
river, the old wasted mountains sit warming their scarred sides in the
sun. Looking up at the passage of the railway around Mount Willey, it
impressed us as a single fractured stone might have done on the Great
Pyramid, or a pin's scratch on the face of a giant. The locomotive,
which groped its way along its broken shell, stopped, and stealthily
moving again, seemed a mouse that the laboring mountain had brought
forth. But when its infernal clamor broke the silence, what demoniacal
yells shook the forests! Farewell to our dream of inviolable nature. The
demon of progress had forced his way into the very sanctuary. There were
no longer any White Mountains.

We passed by the beautiful brook Kedron, flung down from the utmost
heights of Willey, between banks mottled with colors. Then, high up on
our right, two airy water-falls seemed to hang suspended from the summit
of Webster. These, called respectively the Silver Cascade, and the
Flume withdrew the attention from every other object, until a sharp turn
to the right brought the overhanging precipice of Mount Willard full
upon us. This enormous mass of granite, rising seven hundred feet above
the road, stands in the very jaws of the gorge, which it commands from
end to end.

[Illustration: THE CASCADES, MOUNT WEBSTER.]

Here the railway seems fairly stopped; but with a graceful sweep it
eludes the mountain, and glides around its massive shoulder, giving, as
it does so, a hand to the high-road, which comes straggling up the sharp
ascent. The river, now shrunken to a rivulet, is finally lost to view
beneath heaped-up blocks of granite, which the infuriated old mountain
has hurled down upon it. It is heard painfully gurgling under the ruins,
like a victim crushed, and dying by inches.

Now and here we entered a close, dark defile hewn down between cliffs,
ascending on the right in regular terraces, on the left in ruptured
masses. These terraces were fringed at the top with tapering evergreens,
and displayed gaudy tufts of maple and mountain-ash on their cool gray.
Those on the right are furthermore decorated with natural sculptures,
indicated by sign-boards, which the curious investigate profitably or
unprofitably, according to their fertility of imagination.

For a few rods this narrow cleft continues; then, on a sudden, the rocks
which lift themselves on either side shut together. An enormous mass
has tumbled from its ancient location on the left side, and, taking a
position within twenty feet of the opposite precipice, forms the natural
gate of the Notch, through which a way was made for the common road
with great labor, through which the river frays a passage, but where
no one would imagine there was room for either. The railway has made a
breach for itself through the solid rock, greatly diminishing the native
grandeur of the place. All three emerge from the shadow and gloom of the
pass into the cheerful sunshine of a little prairie, at the extremity of
which are seen the white walls of a hotel.

The whole route we had traversed is full of contrasts, full of
surprises; but this sudden transition was the most picturesque, the most
startling of all. We seemed to have reached the end of the world.




IX.

_CRAWFORD'S._

    The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
    Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.
               SHAKSPEARE.


All who have passed much time at the mountains have seen the
elephant--near the gate of the Notch.

Though it is only from Nature's chisel, the elephant is an honest one,
and readily admitted into the category of things curious or marvellous
constantly displayed for our inspection. Standing on the piazza of the
hotel, the enormous forehead and trunk seem just emerging from the
shaggy woods near the entrance to the pass. And the gray of the granite
strengthens the illusion still more. From the Elephant's Head, a title
suggestive of the near vicinity of a public-house, there is a fine view
down the Notch for those who cannot ascend Mount Willard.

The Crawford House, being built at the highest point of the pass,
nearly two thousand feet above the sea, is not merely a hotel--it is a
water-shed. The roof divides the rain falling upon it into two streams,
flowing on one side into the Saco, on the other into the Ammonoosuc.
Here the sun rises over the Willey range, and sets behind Mount Clinton.
The north side of the piazza enables you to look over the forests into
the valley of the Ammonoosuc, where the view is closed by the chain
dividing this basin from that of Israel's River. But we are not yet
ready to conduct the reader into this Promised Land.

My window overlooked a grassy plain of perhaps half a mile, the view
being closed by the Gate of the Notch, now disfigured by snow-sheds
built for the protection of the railway. The massive, full-rounded bulk
of Webster rose above, the forests of Willard tumbled down into the
ragged fissure. Half-way between the hotel and the Gate, over-borne by
the big shadow of Mount Clinton, extends the pretty lakelet which is
the fountain-head of the Saco. Beyond the lake, and at the left, is
where the old Notch House stood. This lake was once a beaver-pond, and
this plain a boggy meadow, through which a road of corduroy and sods
conducted the early traveller. The highway and railway run amicably side
by side, dividing the little vale in two.

[Illustration: ELEPHANT'S HEAD, WINTER.]

This pass, which was certainly known to the Indians, was, in 1771,
rediscovered by Timothy Nash, a hunter, who was persuaded by Benjamin
Sawyer, another hunter, to admit him to an equal share in the discovery.
In 1773 Nash and Sawyer received a grant of 2184 acres, skirting the
mountains on the west, as a reward. With the prodigality characteristic
of their class, the hunters squandered their large acquisition in a
little time after it was granted. Both the Crawford and Fabyan hotels
stand upon their tract.

Of many excursions which this secluded retreat offers, that to the
summit of Mount Washington, by the bridle-path opened in 1840 by Thomas
J. Crawford, and that to the top of Mount Willard, are the principal.
The route to the first begins opposite to the hotel, at the left; the
latter turns from the glen a quarter of a mile below, on the right.
Supposing Mount Washington a cathedral set on an eminence, you are here
on the summit of the eminence, with one foot on the immense staircase of
the cathedral.

Our resolve to ascend by the bridle-path was already formed, and we
regarded the climb up Mount Willard as indispensable. As for the
cascades, which lulled us to sleep, who shall describe them? We could
not lift our eyes to the heights above without seeing one or more
fluttering in the play of the breeze, and making rainbows in pure
diversion. President Dwight, in his "Travels," has no more eloquent
passage than that describing the Flume Cascade. How many since have
thrown down pen or pencil in sheer despair of reproducing, by words
or pigments, the aerial lightness, the joyous freedom; above all, the
exuberant, unquenchable vitality that characterize mountain water-falls!
Down the Notch is a masterpiece, hidden from the eye of the passer-by,
called Ripley Falls, which fairly revels in its charming seclusion.
Only a short walk from the hotel, by a woodland path, there is another,
Beecher's Cascade, whose capricious leaps and playful somersaults, all
the while volubly chattering to itself, like a child alone with its
playthings, fascinates us, as sky, water, and fire charm the eyes of an
infant. It is always tumbling down, and as often leaping to its feet to
resume its frolicsome gambols, with no loss of sprightliness or sign of
weariness that we can detect. Only a lover may sing the praises of these
mountain cascades falling from the skies:

"The torrent is the soul of the valley. Not only is it the Providence or
the scourge, often both at once, but it gives to it a physiognomy; it
gladdens or saddens it; it lends it a voice; it communicates life to it.
A valley without its torrent is only a hole."

They give the name of Idlewild to the romantic sylvan retreat, reached
by a winding path, diverging near the hotel, on the left. I visited
it in company with Mr. Atwater, whose taste and enthusiasm for the
work have converted the natural disorder of the mountain side into
a trysting-place fit for elves and fairies; but where one encounters
ladies in elegant toilets, enjoying a quiet stroll among the fern-draped
rocks. Some fine vistas of the valley mountains have been opened through
the woods--beautiful little bits of blue, framed in illuminated foliage.
One notes approvingly the revival of an olden taste in the cutting and
shaping of trees into rustic chairs, stairways, and arbors.

After a day like ours, the great fires and admirable order of the
hotel were grateful indeed. If it is true that the way to man's heart
lies through his stomach, the cherry-lipped waiter-girl, who whispered
her seductive tale in my too-willing ear at supper, made a veritable
conquest. My compliments to her, notwithstanding the penalty paid for
lingering too long over the griddle-cakes.

The autumn nights being cool, it was something curious to see the parlor
doors every now and then thrown wide open, to admit a man who came
trundling in on a wheelbarrow a monster log fit for the celebration of
Yule-tide. The city guest, accustomed to the economy of wood at home,
because it is dear, looks on this prodigality first with consternation,
and finally with admiration. When the big log is deposited on the
blazing hearth amid fusees of sparks, the easy-chairs again close around
the fireplace a charmed circle; and while the buzz of conversation goes
on, and the faces are illuminated by the ruddy glow, the wood snaps,
and hisses, and spits as if it had life and sense of feeling. The men
talk in drowsy undertones; the ladies, watching the chimney-soot catch
fire and redden, point out to each other the old grandame's pictures
of "folks coming home from meeting." This scene is the counterpart of
a warm summer evening on the piazza--both typical of unrestrained,
luxurious indolence. How many pictures have appeared in that old
fireplace! and what experiences its embers revived! Water shows us only
our own faces in their proper mask--nothing more, nothing less; but
fire, the element of the supernatural, is able, so at least we believe,
to unfold the future as easily as it turns our eyes into the past. If
only we could read!

When we arose in the morning, what was our astonishment to see the
surrounding mountains white with snow. Like one smitten with sudden
terror, they had grown gray in a night. Striking, indeed, was the
transformation from yesterday's pomp; beautiful the contrast between
the dark green below and the dead white of the upper zones. Thickly
incrusted with hoar-frost, the stiffened foliage of the pines and firs
gave those trees the unwonted appearance of bursting into blossom. Over
all a dull and brooding sky shed its cold, wan light upon the glen,
forbidding all thought of attacking the high summits, at least for this
day.

Dismissing this, therefore, as impracticable, we nevertheless determined
on ascending Mount Willard--an easy thing to do, considering you have
only to follow a good carriage-road for two miles and a half to reach
the precipices overlooking the Saco Valley.

Startling, indeed, by its sublimity was the spectacle that rewarded our
trouble a thousand-fold. Still, the sensations partook more of wonder
than admiration--much more. The unpractised eye is so utterly confounded
by the immensity of this awful chasm of the Notch, yawning in all its
extent and all its grandeur far down beneath, that, powerless to grasp
the fulness and the vastness thus suddenly encountered, it stupidly
stares into those far-retreating depths. The scene really seems too
tremendous for flesh and blood to comprehend. For an instant, while
standing on the brink of the sheer precipice, which here suddenly drops
seven or eight hundred feet, my head swam and my knees trembled.

[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN THE NOTCH.]

First came the idea that I was looking down into the dry bed of some
primeval cataract, whose mighty rush and roar the imagination summoned
again from the tomb of ages, and whose echo was in the cascades, hung
like two white arms on the black and hairy breast of the adjacent
mountain. This idea carries us luck to the Deluge, of which science
pretends to have found proofs in the basin of the Notch. What am I
saying? to the Deluge! it transports us to the Beginning itself, when
"_Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters._"

You see the immense walls of Mount Willey on one side, and of Webster
on the other, rushing downward thousands of feet, and meeting in one
magnificently imposing sweep at their bases. This vast natural inverted
archway has the heavens for a roof. The eye roves from the shaggy head
of one mountain to the shattered cornices of the other. One is terrible,
the other forbidding. The naked precipices of Willey, furrowed by
avalanches, still show where the fatal slide of 1826 crushed its way
down into the valley, traversing a mile in only a few moments. Far down
in the distance you see the Willey hamlet and its bright clearing. You
see the Saco's silver.

Such, imperfectly, are the more salient features of this immense cavity
of the Notch, three miles long, two thousand feet deep, rounded as if
by art, and as full of suggestions as a ripe melon of seeds. I recall
few natural wonders so difficult to get away from, or that haunt you so
perpetually.

Like ivy on storied and crumbling towers, so high up the cadaverous
cliffs of Willey the hardy fir-tree feels its way, insinuating its long
roots in every fissure where a little mould has crept, but mounting
always like the most intrepid of climbers. Upon the other side, the
massed and plumed forest advances boldly up the sharp declivity of
Webster; but in mid-ascent is met and ploughed in long, thin lines by
cataracts of stones, poured down upon it from the summit. Only a few
straggling bushes succeed in mounting higher; and far up, upon the very
edge of the crumbling parapet, one solitary cedar tottered. The thought
of imminent destruction prevailed over every other. Indeed, it seemed
as if one touch would precipitate the whole mass of earth, stones, and
trees into the vale beneath.

Between these high, receding walls, which draw widely apart at the
outlet of the pass, mountains rise, range upon range. Over the flattened
Nancy summits, Chocorua lifts his crested head once more into view. We
pass in review the summits massed between, which on this morning were
of a deep blue-black, and stood vigorously forth from a sad and boding
sky.

From the ledges of Mount Willard, Washington and the peaks between are
visible in a clear day. This morning they were muffled in clouds, which
a strong upper current of air began slowly to disperse. We, therefore,
secured a good position, and waited patiently for the unveiling.

Little by little the clouds shook themselves free from the mountain, and
began a slow, measured movement toward the Ammonoosuc Valley. As they
were drawn out thinner and thinner, like fleeces, by invisible hands,
we began to be conscious of some luminous object behind them, and all
at once, through a rift, there burst upon the sight the grand mass of
Washington, all resplendent in silvery whiteness. From moment to moment
the trooping clouds, as if pausing to pay homage to the illustrious
recluse, encompassed it about. Then moving on, the endless procession
again and again disclosed the snowy crest, shining out in unshrouded
effulgence. To look was to be wonder-struck--to be dumb.

As the clouds unrolled more and more their snowy billows, other and
lower summits rose above, as on that memorable morn after the Deluge,
where they appeared like islands of crystal floating in a sea of
silvery vapor. We gazed for an hour upon this unearthly display, which
derived unique splendor from fitful sun-rays shot through the folds of
surrounding clouds, then drawing off, and again darting unawares upon
the stainless white of the summits. It was a dream of the celestial
spheres to see the great dome, one moment glittering like beaten silver,
another shining with the dull lustre of a gigantic opal.

I have since made several journeys through the Notch by the railway.
The effect of the scenery, joined with some sense of peril in the minds
of the timid, is very marked. Old travellers find a new and veritable
sensation of excitement; while new ones forget fatigue, drop the novels
they have been reading, maintaining a state of breathless suspense and
admiration until the train vanishes out at the rocky portal, after an
ascent of nearly six hundred feet in two miles.

In effect, the road is a most striking expression of the maxim,
"_L'audace, et toujours de l'audace_," as applied to modern engineering
skill. From Bemis's to Crawford's its way is literally carved out of
the side of the mountain. But if the engineers have stolen a march upon
it, the thought, how easily the mountain could shake off this puny,
clinging thing, prevailing over every other, announces that the mountain
is still the master.

There are no two experiences which the traveller retains so long or so
vividly as this journey through the great Notch, and this survey from
the ledges of Mount Willard, which is so admirably placed to command it.
To my mind, the position of this mountain suggests the doubt whether
nature did not make a mistake here. Was not the splitting of the
mountains an after-thought?




X.

_THE ASCENT FROM CRAWFORD'S._

    On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds.
    With a diadem of snow.--_Manfred._


At five in the morning I was aroused by a loud rap at the door. In an
instant I had jumped out of bed, ran to the window, and peered out. It
was still dark; but the heavens were bright with stars, so bright that
there was light in the room. Now or never was our opportunity. Not a
moment was to be lost.

I began a vigorous reveille upon the window-pane. George half opened one
sleepy eye, and asked if the house was on fire. The colonel pretended
not to have heard.

"Up, sluggards!" I exclaimed; "the mountain is ours!"

"Do you know who first tempted man to go up into a high mountain?"
growled George.

"Satan!" whined a smothered voice from beneath the bedclothes.

The case evidently was one which demanded heroic treatment. In an
instant I whipped off the bedclothes; in another I received two violent
blows full in the chest, which compelled me to give ground. The pillows
were followed by the bolster, which I parried with a chair, the bolster
by a sortie of the garrison _in puris naturalibus_. For a few seconds
the mélée was furious, the air thick with flying missiles. By a common
instinct we drew apart, with the intention of renewing the combat, when
we heard quick blows upon the partition at the left, and scared voices
from the chamber at the right demanding what was the matter. George
dropped his pillow, and articulated in a broken voice, "Malediction! I
am awake."

"Come, gentlemen," I urged, "if you are sufficiently diverted, dress
yourselves, and let us be off. At the present moment you remind me of
the half-armed warriors on the pediment of the Parthenon."

"I take it you mean the frieze," said George, with chattering teeth.

The colonel was on all-fours, picking up the different articles of his
wardrobe from the four corners of the chamber. "My stocking," said he,
groping among the furniture.

"What do you call this?" inquired George, fishing the dripping article
from the water-pitcher.

"Eh! where the deuce is my watch?" redemanded the colonel, still seeking.

"Perhaps this is yours?" George again suggested, drawing it, with mock
dexterity, as he had seen Hermann do, from a boot-leg.

We quickly threw on our clothes, but at the moment of starting George
put his hand into his breast and made a frightful grimace.

"What is it?" we both asked in one breath. "What is the matter?"

"My pocket-book is gone."

After five minutes' ransacking in every hole and corner of the room,
and after shaking the bedclothes carefully, all to no purpose, it was
discovered that George and myself had exchanged coats. We then went
down-stairs into the great hall, where a solitary jet of gas burnt
blue, and a sleepy watchman dozed on a settee. The morning air was
more than chilly: it was "a nipping and an eager air." There were two
or three futile attempts at pleasantry, but hunger, darkness, and the
cold quickly silenced them. A man is never himself when roused at five
in the morning. No matter how desirable the excursion may have looked
the night before, turning out of a warm bed to hurry on your clothes by
candle-light, and to take the road fasting, strips it of all glamour.

Day broke disclosing a clear sky, up which the rosy tints of sunrise
were streaming. The last star trembled in the zone of dusky blue above
the grand old hills, like a tear-drop on the eyelids of the night. The
warm color flowed over the frosted heads of the pines, mantling their
ghastly white with the warm glow of reviving life. Then the eye fell
upon the lower forests, still wrapped in deep shadows, the tiny lake,
the boats, and, lastly, the oval plain, or vestibule of the Notch, above
which ascended the shaggy sides of Mount Willard, and the retreating
outline of Mount Webster. The little plain was white with hoar-frost;
the frozen fountain dripped slowly into its basin, like a penitent
telling its beads.

After a hasty breakfast, despatched with mountain appetites, behold us
at half-past six entering the forest in Indian file! My companions
again found their accustomed gayety, and soon the solemn old woods
echoed with mirth. Our hopes were as high as the mountain itself.

A détour as far as Gibbs's Falls cost a good half-hour in recovering
the bridle-path; but we were at length _en route_, myself at the head,
George behind. The colonel carried the flask, and marched in the
middle. He was considered the most incorruptible of the three; but this
precaution was deemed an indispensable safeguard, should he, in a moment
of forgetfulness, carry the flask to his lips.

The side of Mount Clinton, which we were now climbing, is very steep.
The name of bridle-path, which they give the long gully we had entered,
is a snare for pedestrians, but a greater delusion for cavaliers. The
rains, the melting snows, have so channelled it as to leave little
besides interlaced roots of old trees and loose bowlders in its bed.
Higher up it is nothing but the bare course of a mountain torrent.

The long rain had thoroughly soaked the earth, rendering it miry and
slippery to the feet; the heavy air, compounded of a thousand odors,
hindered, rather than assiste

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