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.
CONWAY MEADOWS.
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.
BARTLETT BOWLDER.
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.
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.
NANCY IN THE SNOW.
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.”
ABEL CRAWFORD. 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.
STORM ON MOUNT WILLEY. 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.
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.
MOUNT WILLARD FROM WILLEY BROOK. 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.
THE CASCADES, MOUNT WEBSTER. 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.