USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > History of the White mountains > Part 19
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" His companion was one calculated to excite and retain the deep, strong energies of manly love. She had possessed ex- traordinary beauty, and had, in the full maturity of an excellent judgment, relinquished several splendid alliances, and incurred her father's displeasure, for the sake of Cor- nelius Campbell. Had political circumstances proved favor- able, his talents and ambition would unquestionably have worked out a path to emolument and fame ; but he had been a zealous and active enemy of the Stuarts, and the restora- tion of Charles II. was the death-warrant of his hopes. Immediately flight became necessary, and America was the chosen place of refuge. His adherence to Cromwell's party was not occasioned by religious sympathy, but by political views too liberal and philosophical for the state of the peo- ple ; therefore, Cornelius Campbell sought a home with our
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forefathers, and, being of a proud nature, he withdrew with his family to the solitary place we have mentioned.
" A very small settlement in such a remote place was, of course, subject to inconvenience and occasional suffering. From the Indians they received neither injury nor insult. No cause of quarrel had ever arisen; and, although their frequent visits were sometimes troublesome, they never had given indications of jealousy or malice. Chocorua was a prophet among them, and, as such, an object of peculiar respect. He had a mind which education and motive would have nerved with giant strength; but, growing up in savage freedom, it wasted itself in dark, fierce, ungovernable pas- sions. There was something fearful in the quiet haughtiness of his lips ; it seemed so like slumbering power -too proud to be lightly roused, and too implacable to sleep again. In his small, black, fiery eye, expression lay coiled up like a beau- tiful snake. The white people knew that his hatred would be terrible; but they had never provoked it, and even the children became too much accustomed to him to fear him.
" Chocorua had a son, nine or ten years old, to whom Car- oline Campbell had occasionally made such gaudy presents as were likely to attract his savage fancy. This won the child's affections, so that he became a familiar visitant, almost an inmate, of their dwelling; and, being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized life, he would inspect everything, and taste of everything which came in his way. Some poison, prepared for a mischievous fox, which had long troubled the little_settlement, was discovered and drunk by the Indian boy, and he went home to his father to sicken and die. From that moment jealousy and hatred took possession of Chocorua's soul. He never told his suspicions; he brooded over them
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in secret, to nourish the deadly revenge he contemplated against Cornelius Campbell.
" The story of Indian animosity is always the same. Cor- nelius Campbell left his hut for the fields early one bright, balmy morning in June. Still a lover, though ten years a husband, his last look was turned towards his wife, answer- ing her parting smile; his last action a kiss for each of his children. When he returned to dinner, they were dead - all dead ! and their disfigured bodies too cruelly showed that an Indian's hand had done the work !
" In such a mind grief, like all other emotions, was tempest- uous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of life. In his wife and children he had garnered up all his heart; and now that they were torn from him, the remembrance of their love clung to him like the death-grap- ple of a drowning man, sinking him down, down, into dark- ness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible - the creeping agony of despair, that brings with it no power of resistance.
" It was as if the dead could feel The icy worm around him steal.'
" Such, for many days, was the state of Cornelius Camp- bell. Those who knew and reverenced him feared that the spark of reason was forever extinguished. But it rekindled again, and with it came a wild, demoniac spirit of revenge. The death-groan of Chocorua would make him smile in his dreams; and, when he waked, death seemed too pitiful a vengeance for the anguish that was eating into his very soul.
" Chocorua's brethren were absent on a hunting expedition at the time he committed the murder, and those who watched his movements observed that he frequently climbed the high
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precipice, which afterwards took his name, probably looking out for indications of their return. Here Cornelius Camp- bell resolved to effect his deadly purpose. A party was formed, under his guidance, to cut off all chance of retreat, and the dark-minded prophet was to be hunted like a wild beast to his lair.
" The morning sun had scarce cleared away the fogs, when Chocorua started at a loud voice from beneath the precipice, commanding him to throw himself into the deep abyss below. He knew the voice of his enemy, and replied, with an In- dian's calmness, 'The Great Spirit gave life to Chocorua, and Chocorua will not throw it away at the command of the white man.' 'Then hear the Great Spirit speak in the white man's thunder !' exclaimed Cornelius Campbell, as he pointed his gun to the precipice. Chocorua, though fierce and fearless as a panther, had never overcome his dread of fire-arms. He placed his hands upon his ears, to shut out the stunning report; the next moment the blood bubbled from his neck, and he reeled fearfully on the edge of the precipice. But he recovered himself, and, raising himself on his hand, he spoke in a loud voice, that grew more terrific as its huskiness increased, 'A curse upon ye, white men ! May the Great Spirit curse ye when he speaks in the clouds, and his words are fire ! Chocorua had a son, and ye killed him while the sky looked bright! Lightning blast your crops ! Winds and fire destroy your dwellings ! The Evil Spirit breathe death upon your cattle ! Your graves lie in the war-path of the Indian ! Panthers howl and wolves fat- ten over your bones ! Chocorua goes to the Great Spirit,- his curse stays with the white man ! '
"The prophet sunk upon the ground, still uttering inaudible curses, and they left his bones to whiten in the sun. But
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his curse rested on that settlement. The tomahawk and scalping-knife were busy among them; the winds tore up trees, and hurled them at their dwellings ; their crops were blasted, their cattle died, and sickness came upon their strongest men. At last the remnant of them departed from the fatal spot to mingle with more populous and prosperous colonies. Cornelius Campbell became a hermit, seldom seeking or seeing his fellow-men ; and two years after he was found dead in his hut."
This disease among cattle at one time excited considerable interest among scientific men. Prof. Dana, of Dartmouth College, was appointed, in 1821, to visit the town of Burton, now Albany, and learn, if he could, the cause of the disease. After much investigation he found the difficulty to be in the water. It was a weak solution of muriate of lime. He recommended as a remedy or preventive weak ley, or ashes, or soap-suds. A certain kind of mud, however, had been discovered by the citizens, which was used with great benefit. " This mud is found on a meadow, and, during the summer, it is collected for use ; it is made into balls as large as an ordinary potato, and forced down the animal's throat ; by it the tonic effect of the muriate of lime is prevented, and the bowels are kept lax. I visited the spot where the mud is procured. A spring issues from the place, and the water brings with it a grayish-white matter, which is deposited in the rill leading from the spring. This whitish substance is
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the matter in question. After being heated to redness, it becomes snow-white; when digested in an acid, a slight effervescence occurs, a portion is dissolved, and the remainder has the character of fine, white, siliceous sand ; the portion dissolved in the acid was found by appropriate tests to be carbonate of lime."
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Albany was much frequented by the Indians for the ex- cellent hunting which it afforded. Its many streams abounded in otter and beaver, after they had begun to disappear in many of their old resorts. The beaver ever retires before the advance of civilization. Of the hundreds of ponds and dams which they had reared on these mountain streams, many of which were still existing in our boyhood, scarcely one now is to be found. Traces of their dams and houses are occasionally to be seen, but the ingenious builders are gone. The Indian considered them rich game, and hunted them as unsparingly as the whites, and still they seem to accompany the one in his wanderings, and shun the other. Our clattering mills and destruction of the forests are more unpleasant to them than the wild war-whoop and tomahawk of the Indian. A traveller thus remarks on the peculiar attractiveness of their young : " A gentleman long resident in this country espied five young beavers sporting in the water, leaping upon the trunk of a tree, pushing one another off, and playing a thousand interesting tricks. He approached softly, under cover of the bushes, and prepared to fire on the unsuspecting creatures ; but a nearer approach discovered to him such a similitude between their gestures and the infantile caresses of his own children, that he threw aside his gun."
The population of this town was, for many years, very small. The superstitious fear of the Indian's curse, perhaps, - certainly the difficulty of keeping cattle,- kept its number of inhabitants much reduced. The soil is fertile, and along its streams are beautiful intervales, which, since the discovery of a remedy for the disease, are fast beginning to be occu- pied. A most amusing incident is told of one Farnham in the first legal meeting of its citizens. Warrants had been sent out for a " May training." Every soldier in town had
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assembled. Officers were chosen, and, after the choice, come to form the company, it consisted of only one private. " Looking wistfully upon his superiors, standing in terrible array before him, he said : ‘Gentlemen, I have one request to make; that is, as I am the only soldier, I hope your honors will not be too severe in drilling me, but will spare me a little, as I may be needed another time.' He could form a solid column, he said, ' but it racked him shockingly to display.'"
The objects of interest at Franconia we have described in a previous chapter. The town was granted, under the name of Morristown, in the year 1764, to Edward Searle and others. Permanent settlement was made in 1774 by Capt. Artemas Knight, Lemuel Barnett, Zebedee Applebee, and others. The town owes its rise and prosperity to the discovery of iron ore in its vicinity. There are two establishments for working it in town. The lower works are situated on the south branch of the Ammonoosuc river, and are owned by the New Hampshire Iron Factory Company. Their establish- ment is very extensive, consisting of a blast furnace, erected in 1808, an air furnace, a forge and trip-hammer shop. The ore is obtained from a mountain in the east part of Lisbon, three miles from the furnace, and is considered the richest in the United States, yielding from fifty-six to sixty-three per cent.
The vein has been opened and wrought forty rods in length and one hundred and forty-four feet in depth. The ore is blasted out. The mine is wrought open to daylight, and is but partially covered to keep out the rain. The first miners, ignorant of any other means of discovering the veins than such as the pickaxe afforded, wasted much labor and expense in fruitless search. At one place they cut a gulley one hundred and twenty feet long into the solid granite ; and at
CHOCORUA.
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another there is a similar cut, seventy-one feet in length. Many curious and remarkable caverns have thus been formed in the rocky hill-side.
Numerous interesting minerals have been brought to light, and may be found among the rejected masses which have been thrown out. The most interesting and abundant are a deep brownish-red manganesian garnet, crystallized and gran- ular epidote, prismatic and bladed crystals of hornblende.
Artemas Knight, whom we have mentioned as one of the first settlers of the town, during a severe famine which pre- vailed in its early history, one bleak December's day, shoul- dered his gun, and made his way through the deep snow to Round Meadows in Button Woods, a distance of ten miles or more. On his way he forded Gale's river, a tributary of the Ammonoosuc, his wet clothes almost instantly freezing as he came out of the water. The water was quite deep, and he was nearly in the same condition as though he had swam the stream. At Round Meadows he killed a moose weighing over four hundred pounds, skinned it with his jack-knife, cut it up with his hatchet, buried three quarters in the snow, and with the fourth on his back, returning to his hut in Franconia, again fording Gale's river, and reached home in the evening of the same day.
The village of Bethlehem is about seventeen miles west of the Notch of the White Mountains, on the road to Franconia and Littleton. The road here passes over a broad, undulat- ing hill, in an open and airy situation, which gives the trav- eller an opportunity to admire, at his leisure, the view of the range of the White Mountains, the finest and most satisfactory to be anywhere seen. Mount Washington is here brought into its true place in the centre of the chain, and takes the precedence which belongs to its greatly superior breadth and
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height. The mountains on each side are well arranged in their proper and subordinate situations ; the pointed peaks of Adams, Jefferson and Clay, contrasting finely with the smoother and flatter summits of Monroe, Franklin, Pleasant and Clinton.
Jonas Warren, Nathaniel Snow, Nathan Wheeler and others, made a permanent settlement in Bethlehem in 1790. It was then known by the name of " Lord's Hill." Like the early settlers of all these towns, privations, sufferings and hardship, were their daily lot. Now their cattle would wan- der away and be lost in the broad pasture in which they roamed, requiring days and sometimes weeks to find them. Without carts or carriages of any kind, they performed all their labor, piling the bags of corn upon the steers' backs, and marching them through the rough forest twenty-five miles to mill, when meal in the settlement got low. Capt. Rose- brook, not long after the settlement of the town, projected a road and with others cut out a decent path from his own lone hut in Nash and Sawyer's location, to his neighbors on Lord's Hill. A log bridge was built over the Ammonoosuc, but did not withstand long the many sudden rises of the rapid stream.
The settlers of this town were hardy, persevering men, more nearly resembling Capt. Rosebrook than any we have before met. To help out their small stock of provisions a party went at one time to Whitefield ponds for fish. On their return in the night a thick fog arose, completely hiding the trees which they followed as their guides, and, ere they were aware, they were lost. The cold was intense; they had no fire-arms, and life hung on their devising some method to keep themselves warm. Cutting down long, slender trees, they trimmed them, and, placing them across a log, with a man at each end, they
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commenced rapidly pushing them back and forwards, as men do a " cross-cut " saw. Diligently they plied their toothless saws all the night, working as only men work for their lives.
Lord's Hill was incorporated into a town by the name of Bethlehem, December 25th, 1799, and the first town-meeting was held in the house of Amos Wheeler. The following year the town voted to raise four dollars to defray town charges, twenty-four dollars for schooling, and sixty dollars for bridges and highways. In April of the same year the project of build- ing a bridge over the Ammonoosuc was started, and the fol- lowing month the town voted, in town-meeting convened, to build the bridge, and raised three hundred and ninety dollars to do it with. So scarce was provision during the construc- tion of this bridge, that all the poor laborers, working in the water all day, had to eat was milk-porridge, carried to them hot by their wives. Eight cents were allowed per hour to the men for their services, and six cents for a yoke of oxen.
So great was the famine at this time that the citizens were obliged to desist from their labors, go into the woods, and cut and burn wood sufficient to make ashes enough to load a team of four oxen with potash. This load of potash they dispatched with a teamster to Concord, Mass., a distance of one hundred and seventy miles. It was four weeks ere the teamster re- turned with provisions. During his absence they saved them- selves from starvation only by cooking green chocolate roots and such other plants as would yield them any nourishment.
The little settlement of early times is now a flourishing village. Two beautiful churches send their spires up to heaven from its midst. Five large mills for sawing lumber are in constant operation, and a large factory manufactures yearly one hundred and forty tons of starch, requiring thirty- three thousand bushels of potatoes.
CHAPTER XXI.
GEOLOGY.
INDIAN THEORY OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. - INDIAN IDEA OF THE CREATION OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. - DR. JACKSON'S THEORY. - SIR CHARLES LYELL'S THEORY.
THE rude Indian's idea of the creation of this world, with its hills and mountains, and the formation of the fearful Agiocochook, and the theories of scientific scholars concern- ing the origin and history of these mountains, we may be pardoned for placing in the same chapter.
" Water at first overspread the face of the world, which is a plain surface. At the top of the water a musk-rat was swimming about in different directions. At length he con- cluded to dive to the bottom, to see what he could find on which to subsist; but he found nothing but mud, a little of which he brought in his mouth, and placed it on the surface of the water, where it remained. He then went for more mud, and placed it with that already brought up; and thus he continued his operations until he had formed a consider- able hillock. This land increased by degrees, until it over- spread a large part of the world, which assumed at length its present form. The earth, in process of time, became peopled in every part, and remained in this condition for many years. Afterward a fire run over it all, and destroyed every human
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being except one man and one woman. They saved them- selves by going into a deep cave, in a large mountain, where they remained for several days, until the fire was extin- guished. They then came forth from their hiding-place, and from these two persons the whole earth has been peopled."
ORIGIN OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
" Cold storms were in the northern wilderness, and a lone red hunter wandered without food, chilled by the frozen wind. He lost his strength, and could find no game ; and the dark cloud that covered his life-path made him weary of wandering. He fell down upon the snow, and a dream car- ried him to a wide happy valley, filled with musical streams, where singing-birds and game were plenty. His spirit cried aloud for joy ; and the 'Great Master of life' waked him from his sleep, gave him a dry coal and a flint-pointed spear, telling him that by the shore of the lake he might live, and find fish with his spear, and fire from his dry coal. One night, when he had laid down his coal, and seen a warm fire spring therefrom, with a blinding smoke, a loud voice came out of the flame, and a great noise, like thunder, filled the air, and there rose up a vast pile of broken rocks. Out of the cloud resting upon the top came numerous streams, dancing down, foaming cold; and the voice spake to the astonished red hunter, saying, 'Here the Great Spirit will dwell, and watch over his favorite children ! ' "
GEOLOGICAL.
Dr. Jackson, in his report of New Hampshire, thus speaks of the White Mountains : -
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" The White Mountains are the centre of a most interest- ing geological section. If a measure is applied to a correct map of the Northern and Middle States, taking the White Mountains for a centre, and measuring south-west and north- east, it will be noticed that the secondary rocks are nearly equi-distant from this centre of elevation, on each side of the axis, and the beds and included fossils will correspond in a remarkable manner, indicating that when the strata were horizontal, they formed a continuous deposit, effected under nearly the same conditions.
" If we estimate the strata of Vermont and Maine as horizon- tal, by imagining the primary rocks which separate them to be removed, and the lines of stratification brought to coincide in direction, it is evident that the whole of New England would be regarded as sunk far below the level of the ocean, and a space would still remain between the ends of the strata where the primary rocks had been removed. Now, since the strata were formed when the present rocks were beneath the sea, we may suppose the whole of the primary unstrati- fied rocks to have been below the stratified deposits, and, by a sudden outburst and elevation, to have been more or less broken up, altered in composition, and included between masses of the molten gneis and granite. Thus, we may ac- count for the loss of a portion of the disrupted strata, while we also explain the intercalation of masses of argillaceous slate in the primary series, and the metamorphosis of the sedimentary deposits by igneous action. A heaving sea of molten rocks, probably bearing on its surface the sedi- mentary strata, elevated, overturned, and effected chemical changes in them, the results of which we behold along the line of junction of the two classes of rocks.
" The reader would be able better to conceive of this state
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of things, by the contemplation of the breaking up of a vol- canic crater, or may figure the scene in his mind by imagin- ing a frozen lake, with successive and thick layers of snow and ice, to be broken up by an earthquake, and the whole mass suddenly frozen while in the highest state of disturb- ance. This, however grand the scale, would not give a suf- ficiently enlarged idea of the vast movements of the earth's crust, nor of the changes which the materials must have un- dergone in the immense periods of geological time; for the action of a comparatively moderate heat for ages effects changes in the position of elementary particles which are not duly appreciated. This hypothesis will appear more plausible to those who will take the trouble to go over the ground from one end of the section to the other, noting the changes which are manifested in the order of strata, and considering the known causes of chemical action on the in- gredients of rocks. It will be observed that the sedimen- tary deposits have all been disturbed by upheaval, and that portions of strata are included in the unstratified rocks, showing their posterior eruption, while, in some places, the fracturing of strata has been still more remarkable, a com- plete breccia being formed with their comminuted fragments, and the thick pasty rocks of eruption.
" Occasionally, the mechanical power of elevated granite is manifested by the complete overturning, or doubling back of large sheets of mica slate, and its chemical effects are seen in the remarkable induration of the rock along the line of junction, those slabs, when not bent, being chosen by the quarrymen, on account of their superior firmness.
" The geological features of Mount Washington possess but little interest. The rocks in place consisting of a coarse variety of mica slate, passing in gneis, which contains a few
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crystals of black tourmaline and quartz. The cone of the mountain and its summit are covered with myriads of angu- lar and flat blocks and slabs of mica slate, piled in confusion one upon the other. They are identical in nature with the rocks in place, and bear no marks of transportation or abra- sion by the action of water."
Sir Charles Lyell, the eminent English geologist, thus writes concerning these mountains : -
" The flora of the uppermost region of Mount Washington consists of species which are natives of the cold climate of Labrador, Lapland, Greenland and Siberia, and are impatient, says Bigelow, of drought, as well as of both extremes of heat and cold ; they are, therefore, not at all fitted to flour- ish in the ordinary climate of New England. But they are preserved here, during winter, from injury, by a great depth of snow, and the air in summer never attains, at this eleva- tion, too high a temperature, while the ground below is always cool. When the snow melts they shoot up instantly with vigor proportioned to the length of time they have been dormant, rapidly unfold their flowers, and mature their fruits, and run through the whole course of their vegetation in a few weeks, irrigated by clouds and mist.
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