USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Incidents in White mountain history, fourth > Part 19
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' Which is played upon the shingles, By the patter of the rain.'
" It seems like the times of bygone days, when we used to sleep in a chamber with nothing overhead but the humble roof.
' Every tinkle on the shingles Has an echo on the heart, And a thousand dreary fancies Into busy being start, And a thousand recollections Weave their bright hues into woof,
As I listen to the patter Of the soft rain on the roof.' "
"The father of Oliver Peabody, who resided at Andover, Mass., in one of his excursions into New Hampshire, met with an adventure, which has connected his name with the geography of the country, and which, for that reason, as well as for its singularity, may perhaps with propriety be men- tioned here. He was passing the night in the cabin of an Indian, situated on the side of a mountain, in the neighbor- hood of Saco river. The inmates of this rude dwelling were awakened in the course of the night by a loud noise, and had scarcely time to make their escape, before their hut was swept away by a torrent of water rushing impetuously down the hill. On reconnoitring the ground, they found that this torrent had burst out suddenly from a spot where there was no spring before. It has continued flowing ever since, and forms the branch of the Saco which bears the name of Pea- body's river."
A late number of the State of Maine contains the fol- lowing narrative, which it almost curdles one's blood to read. We were in Shelburne, at the time it transpired, collecting
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materials for our work, and saw ourselves young Goulding, who was at the hotel under the care of a physician. Who besides these men would not have yielded to death in such an extremity ?
" On January 31st, Nathaniel Copp, son of Hayes D. Copp, of Pinkham's Grant, near the Glen House, White Mountains, commenced hunting deer, and was out four suc- cessive days. On the fifth day, he left again for a deer killed the day previously, about eight miles from home. He dragged the deer (weighing two hundred and thirty pounds) home through the snow, and at one o'clock, P. M., started for another one discovered near the place where the former was killed, which he followed until he lost the track, about dark. He then found he had lost his own way, and should, in all probability, be obliged to spend the night in the woods, the thermometer at the time ranging from thirty-two to thirty- four degrees below zero.
" Despair being no part of his composition, with perfect self-possession and presence of mind, he commenced walking, having no provisions, matches, or even a hatchet; knowing that to remain quiet was certain death. He soon after heard a deer, and, pursuing him by moonlight, overtook him, leaped upon his back, and cut his throat. He then dressed him, and, taking out the heart, placed it in his pocket for a trophy. He continued walking twenty-one hours, and the next day, at about ten o'clock, A. M., he came out at or near Wild river, in Gilead, in Maine; having walked on snow-shoes the unparalleled distance of forty miles without rest, a part of the time through an intricate growth of underbrush.
" His friends at home becoming alarmed at his prolonged absence, and the intensity of the cold, three of them started in pursuit of him, viz., John Goulding, Mr. Hayes D.
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Copp, his father, and Thomas Culbane. They followed his track, until it was lost in darkness, and, by the aid of dogs, found the deer which young Copp had killed and dressed. They then built a fire, and waited five or six hours for the moon to rise, to enable them to continue their search. They again started, with but the faintest hopes of ever finding the lost one alive ; pursued his track, and, being out twenty-six hours in the intense cold, found the young man of whom they were in search.
" Goulding froze both his feet so badly that it is feared he will have to suffer amputation. Mr. Copp and Mr. Culbane froze their ears badly. No words can reward the heroic self- denial and fortitude with which these men continued an almost hopeless search, when every moment expecting to find the stiffened corpse of their friend.
" Young Copp seems not to have realized the great danger he has passed through, and, although his medical advisers say he cannot entirely recover the use of his limbs for from three to six months, talks with perfect coolness of taking part in hunts which he planned for the next week."
·CHAPTER XX.
ALBANY, FRANCONIA, AND BETHLEHEM.
DRAKE'S VERSION OF CHOCORUA'S CURSE. - POPULAR LEGEND CONNECTED WITH THIS CURSE. - CAUSE OF THE DISEASE AMONG CATTLE IN ALBANY. - REMEDY FOR THE DISEASE. - BEAVERS. - MILITARY INCIDENT. - FRAN- CONIA. - IRON MINE. - EXTENT OF THE MINE. - KNIGIIT'S MOOSE STORY. - VILLAGE OF BETHLEHEM. - VIEW OF THE MOUNTAINS FROM BETHLE- HEM. - EARLY SETTLEMENT. - FIRST ROAD TO THE WHITE MOUNTAINS FROM BETHLEHEM .- EXPEDIENT TO KEEP FROM FREEZING. - FIRST TOWN MEETING. - BUILDING BRIDGE OVER AMMONOOSUCK. - SCARCITY OF PRO- VISION. - EXTREMITY TO WHICH INHABITANTS WERE DRIVEN. - BETHLE- HEM OF THE PRESENT DAY.
" What a rich, sonorous word, by the way, that ' Chocorua ' is ! To my ears it suggests the wildness, freshness and loneliness, of the great hills. It always brings with it the sigh of the wind through mountain pines."
WE have given in another place what Drake, the author of the " History of North American Indians," considers the correct account of Chocorua's curse. There is, however, a beautiful story connected with it, whether true or not we cannot say, which should not be passed over unnoticed.
A small colony of hardy pioneers had settled at the base of this mountain. Intelligent, independent men, impatient of restraint, they had shunned the more thickly-settled por- tions of the country, and retired into this remote part of New Hampshire. "But there was one master-spirit among
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them who was capable of a higher destiny than he ever ful- filled.
"The consciousness of this had stamped something of proud humility on the face of Cornelius Campbell,- something of a haughty spirit, strongly curbed by circumstances he could not control, and at which he seemed to murmur. He assumed no superiority ; but, unconsciously, he threw around him the spell of intellect, and his companions felt, they knew not why, that he was 'among them, but not of them.' His stature was gigantic, and he had the bold, quick tread of one who had wandered frequently and fearlessly among the ter- rible hiding-places of nature. His voice was harsh, but his whole countenance possessed singular capabilities for tender- ness of expression ; and sometimes, under the gentle influence of domestic excitement, his hard features would be rapidly lighted up, seeming like the sunshine flying over the shaded fields in an April day.
"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 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
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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.
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CHAPTER XXI.
GEOLOGY.
INDIAN THEORY OF THIE 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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