USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Incidents in White mountain history, fourth > Part 2
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Facing the north, on either hand, rise up steep perpen- dicular walls, two thousand feet above the road at their base,
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regular and equal, for a great part of the way. On the left is Mount Willey, gloomy and grand ; its sides torn and fur- rowed by the slides, and here and there abrupt ledges, over whose topmost edge the gathering mass of rocks and earth leaped into the depths below.
On the right is Mount Webster. " This vast and regular mass rises abruptly, from the plain below, to the height of about two thousand feet. Its shape is that of a high fort, with deep scarred sides; its immense front apparently wholly inaccessible. Its top, nearly horizontal and rough with pre- cipitous crags, juts over with heavy and frowning brows; so mighty a mountain wall, so high, so wide, so vast, and so near the spectator, that all its gigantic proportions and parts are seen with the utmost distinctness. It fills at once the eye and the mind with awe, admiration, and delight. In a bright day, when its outline at the top is seen sharp and dis- tinct against the blue sky, its gray granite cliffs and ledges colored with iron-brown or stained with darker shades, its sides seamed with long gullied slides of brown gravel, its wide beds of great loose rocks, black with lichens, contrasted with the summer greens, or varied autumnal colors of the trees, make it as beautiful and interesting in its varied hues and parts, as it is great and sublime in its total impression."
Passing through the gate of the Notch, we come to the valley of the Ammonoosuc; and after a distance of four miles, generally through a thick wood, which prevents all views of the surrounding mountains, we come out suddenly into a wide cleared opening, where the whole mountain cluster bursts upon our view. Standing upon an isolated eminence, about sixty feet in height, known as the Giant's grave, the whole range of mountains is in sight.
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You stand in the centre of a broad amphitheatre of moun- tains; the lofty pyramid of Washington, with its basin- shaped top, resembling the crater of a volcano, and its bare gray rock sides marked by long gullies, and lower down by broad slides, directly before you, while, far away on the right and left, Mounts Webster and Madison stand at the extrem- ities of the range.
The tops of the mountains are covered with snow from the last of October to the end of May. Occasionally, during the months of July and August, they are almost white with a new-fallen snow or sleet. As the snow melts away, on most of the rocks may be seen mosses and lichens of various hues ; while here and there, in the spaces sheltered by high rocks, beautiful and brilliant flowers, tiny alpine plants, spring up, mixed with the coarse mountain grass.
"The base and sides of the mountains are clothed with a dense and luxurious forest of the trees of the country; and the ground beneath their shade is ornamented with the beau- tiful flowers of the northern woods, and deeply covered with a rich carpet of mosses. Below is the sugar-maple, with its broad angular leaves, changing early in autumn, when every leaf is a flower, scarlet or crimson, or variegated with green, yellow, and brown ; the yellow birch, of great size, with its ragged bark, and wide-spreading arms; the beech, with its. round trunk, its smooth bark, marbled, clouded, and em- broidered with many-colored lichens; its stiff slender branches, and its glossy leaves; the white birch, with its smooth and white bark - most abundant in the districts for- merly burnt-showing, after its changed yellow leaves have fallen, its slender, wand-like white trunks ranged closely and regularly on the hill sides. With these are mixed a frequent, but generally less abundant growth of black spruces and
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balsam firs, - the tall spruce, with its stiff and ragged out- line, and horizontal branches, the fir, with its beautiful spires, regularly tapering from its base to its tip, and its dark rich foliage, often, as it grows old, hoary with the long, hanging, entangled tufts of the beard-moss, which here so abundantly covers its dying branches. Of the many other trees, smaller or less frequent, we will only mention the striped maple, the mountain ash, the aspen poplars, the hem- lock, and the white pine. Higher up, the spruce and fir be- come the prevailing growth, with the yellow and white birch, gradually growing smaller as they ascend, until the dwarf firs, closely interwoven together, and only a few feet high, form a dense and almost impenetrable hedge, many rods wide, above which project, in fantastic forms, like the horns of a deer, the bare, bleached tops and branches of the dead trees. The dwarf trees are so closely crowded and interwoven to- gether that it is as easy to walk on their tops as to struggle through them on the ground ; and the road is made by re- moving them with their roots. Above this hedge of dwarf trees, which is about four thousand feet above the level of the sea, the scattered fir and spruce bushes, shrinking from the cold mountain wind, and clinging to the ground in sheltered hollows by the side of the rocks, with a few similar bushes of white and yellow birch, reach almost a thousand feet higher. Above are only alpine plants, mosses, and lichens."
Over the mountains are scattered a variety of berries, such as cranberries, whortleberries, and several other kinds. They grow high up the mountains, and some of them far above any other vegetable, except grass and moss. Their · flower is, however, very different from those of the plain. Even the whortleberry, which grows on these hills, has, in its ripest state, considerable acidity.
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The vicissitudes of sunshine and shade are here very fre- quent, not exactly like the shadows flying over the plains ; for here the individual is actually enveloped in the cloud, while there it only passes over him. The cloud is discovered at a considerable distance, rolling along on the surface of the mountain ; it approaches you rapidly ; in an instant it encircles you, and as soon passes away, to be followed by others in endless succession. These phenomena are pre- sented only when the clouds are light and scattered. When they are surcharged with rain, even at mid-day, all is darkness and gloom.
Although the waters of these hills apparently give life to no animal or insect, yet, in the heat of summer, the black fly, a little, tormenting insect, is very troublesome. At the same time, the grasshopper is here as gay as on the finely-cultivated field. The swallow, too, appears to hold his flight as high over these mountains as over the plain. It is, however, a place of extreme solitude. The eye often wan- ders in vain to catch something that has life and animation ; yet a bear has been known to rise up, even in this solitude, to excite and to terrify the traveller.
Says a correspondent of the New York Express, writing from the top of Mount Washington : "I have seen but few birds here, and they do not tarry long after getting here ; the ground-sparrow and plover are the only species I have noticed. Insects are quite plenty, and of various kinds. The honey-bee and humble-bee occasionally find the way up here, but are not plenty. There are scarcely any of the com- mon house-fly here, but a large blue fly, and another of a bright gold color, are exceedingly plenty in warm days, but the first fog that arises scatters them, and they are not seen again for several days."
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The dead trees, slightly referred to by Oakes, are deserv- ing of more notice. From different persons these trees have received different names. Some call them buck's horns, and others bleached bones. The winds and weather have ren- dered them perfectly white; and, as neither the stem nor branches take any definite direction, they are of all the diver- sified forms which nature, in her freaks, can create. The cold seasons, which prevailed from 1812 to the end of 1816, probably occasioned the death of these trees ; and their con- stant exposure to the fierce winds which prevail on the moun- tains has, aided by other causes, rendered them white. It can hardly be doubted that, during the whole of the year 1816, these trees continued frozen ; and frost, like fire, is capable of extinguishing life, even in the vegetable kingdom. " Fire could not have caused the death of these trees ; for fire will not spread here, in consequence of the humidity of the whole region at this elevation.
The mountains, seen, with their well-defined outlines and shapes, in a clear day, present not the only aspect in which to behold them. Clouds sailing up their long ranges, now float- ing along their sides, severing their summits from their base, now settling down and capping their peaks, now drooping down still lower, till rock, and moss, and flower, and luxu- riantly wooded base, are all hid in the dun, thick pall; then, bursting and fleeing with a wind-like speed, as the storm clears up, and the mountains come out, their wet sides glis- tening, in the returning rays of the sun, like huge piles of burnished silver, give to the rugged heights an aspect of beauty unsurpassed. The mountains are seldom seen free from clouds. Light, fleecy vapors are almost continually hovering about the different peaks.
By moonlight, in those clear, autumnal evenings, when the
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full, round moon looks so calmly down, throwing the shad- ows of the mighty giants broadly over the valleys, peopling each hidden nook and lurking ravine with grotesque forms and superstitious fancies, gazing on those majestic heights, one almost involuntarily repeats the matchless lines of Col- eridge : -
" Thou, most awful form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently ! Around thee and above Deep is the air, and dark, substantial black, An ebon mass ; methinks thou piercest it As with a wedge ! But when I look again, It is their own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity ! O, dread and silent mount ! I gaze upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought ; entranced in prayer I worshipped the invisible alone."
Nor in winter are they destitute of beauty. Their white summits standing out so distinctly from the deep blue depth of sky in the background, the trees around their sides and base loaded with ice, glistening in the dazzling rays of the sun like the enchanted diamond and jewelled halls of Eastern story, the reflecting and glittering of the moonbeams upon the frozen crust, all give to them a bewildering splendor in- describable.
The slides now seen at the White Mountains are mostly those which took place in the year 1826. At the Notch they present the appearance of deep gullies a few rods wide. On Mount Washington and the higher peaks many of the slides are a quarter or a half à mile in width. The amount of mat- ter torn in that one night of dreadful storm from the moun- tains, and hurled into the valleys below, is incalculable. Thousands of acres of rocks, and earth, and trees, slipped from
TOP OF MY WASHINGTON 6285 FEET ABOVE THE LEVEL OF THE SEA.
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their fastening, and were thrown into the valleys. As seen from a distance of twenty or thirty miles, they look like long roads, winding up the mountains in all directions.
From the summit of Mount Washington the eye com- mands the circumference of the entire group of mountains. You stand in the centre, looking down upon a multitudinous sea of ridges and peaks, here extending out in long ranges, enclosing broad valleys, through which wind rivers, glitter- ing amid the forest and settlement like polished metal, now towering up like insulated cones, now grouped together like loving friends.
" In the west, through the blue haze, are seen in the dis- tance the ranges of the Green Mountains; the remarkable outlines of the summits of Camel's Hump and Mansfield Mountain being easily distinguished when the atmosphere is clear. To the north-west, under your feet, are the clearings and settlement of Jefferson, and the waters of Cherry Pond ; and, further distant, the village of Lancaster, with the waters of Israel's river. The Connecticut is barely visible, and often its appearance for miles is counterfeited by the fog rising from its surface. To the north and north-east, only a few miles distant, rise up boldly the great north-east- ern peaks of the White Mountain range, - Jefferson, Ad- ams, and Madison, - with their ragged tops of loose, dark rocks. A little further to the east are seen the numerous and distant summits of the mountains of Maine. On the south-east, close at hand, are the dark and crowded ridges of the mountains of Jackson ; and, beyond the conical summit of Kearsarge, standing by itself, on the outskirts of the mountains, and, further over the low country of Maine, Se- bago Pond, near Portland. Still further, it is said, the ocean itself has sometimes been distinctly visible.
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" The White Mountains are often seen from the sea, even at thirty miles distance from the shore; and nothing can pre- vent the sea from being seen from the mountains, but the difficulty of distinguishing its appearance from that of the sky near the horizon.
"Further to the south are the intervales of the Saco, and the settlements of Bartlett and Conway, the sister ponds of Lovell in Fryeburg, and, still further, the remarkable four- toothed summit of the Chocorua, the peak to the right being much the largest, and sharply pyramidical. Almost exactly south are the shining waters of the beautiful Winnipisogee, seen with the greatest distinctness in a favorable day. To the south-west, near at hand, are the peaks of the south- western range of the White Mountains; Monroe, with its two little alpine ponds sleeping under its rocky and pointed summit ; the flat surface of Franklin, and the rounded top of Pleasant, with their ridges and spurs. Beyond these, the Willey Mountain, with its high, ridged summit ; and, beyond that, several parallel ranges of high wooded mountains. Fur- ther west, and over all, is seen the high, bare summit of Mount Lafayette in Franconia."'
The appearance of the mountains and the surrounding country at sunrise is worth the journey and toil from any part of the country to witness. In the language of the elo- quent Brydone, "The whole eastern horizon is gradually lighted up. The sun's first golden ray, as he emerges from the ocean, strikes the eye, and sheds a glimmering but un- certain light; but soon his broad disc diffuses light and beauty, first on the hills, and soon on the region eastward. The sides of the mountains fronting him appear like a solid mass of gold dazzling by its brightness. While this process is going on to the eastward, the whole country to the west-
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ward is shrouded with darkness and gloom. The eye turns away from this comfortless scene, to the gay and varied one to the eastward. If this prospect is beheld immediately after a rain, the tops of a thousand hills rise above the fogs, ap- pearing like so many islands in the midst of a mighty ocean. As these mists clear away, the houses, the villages, and the verdant fields within the circle of vision, arise to view. At the moment of the sun's rising, the noble vale of the Con- necticut, which stretches along from the north till it is lost among the hills at the south-west, appears like an inland sea. This is occasioned by the vapors which had ascended from the river during the night. As the sun advances in his course, these vapors are chased away by his rays, and the farms in Jefferson, Bethlehem, and Lancaster, with its village, appear as if rising by magic from what but a little time before seemed nothing but water. The various hills, in the mean time, which surround the mountains, appear to be arranged in many concentric circles ; and the circle the fur- thest removed seems the highest and most distinct, giving to the whole an air of order and grandeur beyond the power of description."
From this lofty summit the Indians had a tradition that Passaconaway, a powerful chief, famed to hold a conference with the spirits above, once passed to a council in heaven.
" A wondrous wight ! For o'er 'Siogee's ice, With brindled wolves, all harnessed three and three, High seated on a sledge, made in a trice, On Mount Ogiocochook, of hickory, He lashed and reeled, and sung right jollily ; And once upon a car of flaming fire, The dreadful Indian shook with fear to see The king of Penacook, his chief, his sire, Ride flaming up towards heaven, than any mountain higher."
CHAPTER II.
MOUNTAINS CONTINUED.
THE MANY OBJECTS OF INTEREST. - - THE GREAT GULF. OAKES' GULF. - TUCKERMAN'S RAVINE. - SNOW CAVERN. - SOURCE OF THE MANY SPRINGS ON THE MOUNTAINS. - SACO AND MERRIMAC RIVERS. - ELLIS AND PEA- BODY RIVERS. - CASCADES. - SILVER CASCADE. - THE FLUME. - THE DEVIL'S DEN. - CRYSTAL FALLS. - GLEN ELLIS FALLS. - AMMONOOSUC. - FALLS OF THE AMMONOOSUC. - FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS. - MOUNT LA- FAYETTE. - EAGLE CLIFF. - CANNON MOUNT. - OLD MAN OF THE MOUN- TAINS. - PROFILE LAKE. - OPTICAL ILLUSION FROM CANNON MOUNT. - ECHO LAKE. - THE BASIN. - THE FLUME. - THE POOL. - NARROW ES- CAPE FROM A FALL INTO THE POOL.
" Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again."
Ir would be vain to attempt a description of all the curious localities of interest connected with these mountains. Wan- der over them ever so much, and fresh wonders and beauties are continually being discovered. From no two points does the collected mountain-group present the same appearance to the beholder; while each separate mount will well repay the toil and labor of climbing its rugged sides.
Some of the most striking and peculiar scenery among the mountains are the deep ravines and hollows immediately surrounding Mount Washington. Leaving the old Fabyan
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road, the first path cut out by Ethan A. Crawford, from the old Rosebrook-place, not far from the summit of Mount Washington, and going a few rods northward, you come to the brink of an almost unfathomable abyss, known as the Great Gulf. It is a rocky, precipitous descent of two thou- sand feet. Rising up opposite you from the bottom of this Gulf, almost perpendicularly, is the great range of mountains, comprising Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison. This vast range' may be seen from their roots to their summits by one standing on the brink. Deep down in the very bottom of the hollow are rough, confused piles of rocks, with narrow and deeply-worn ravines between them. Springing up occasion- ally, near the very base of the mountain range, are tall spruces, while further up on their sides are birches and small fir- bushes. Toward the east, the Gulf has an opening, sur- rounded on all its other sides by mountains.
Winding round the double-headed summit of Mount Monroe, far down on the right, is another seemingly bottom- less abyss, known as Oakes' Gulf. It presents nearly the same general characteristics as the last -huge, rough boulders covering the lowest depths, while trees and bushes cover the steep and craggy sides, wherever the crevices contain soil enough to support vegetation. At times the wind drives the thick mist into these gulfs, filling them, like a " huge caldron, with dark-blue vapor, whirling and eddying round their sides."
Tuckerman's Ravine, on the eastern side of the mountains, for wildness and grandeur is unsurpassed. Ascending the mountains by the Davis road, from the Mount Crawford House, it lies to the right of the road, as it passes over the high spur immediately south-east of Mount Washington. Leaving the path, after arriving at the top of the spur, and 3*
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turning to the right, you stand upon the edge of the ravine. Descending its rough, steep sides a great distance, you reach the bottom. It is a long, deep, narrow hollow ; its craggy walls in many places almost perpendicular, and wholly inac- cessible. A small stream runs through its whole length, forming beautiful cascades after a storm. In this valley, but above the ravine, is the great plain from which the ascent to the top of Mount Washington was formerly made. Early explorers always ascended from the eastern side of the mountains.
In winter all the snow which blows from Mount Wash- ington lodges in this ravine, filling it to the depth of hundreds of feet.
" Huge recess, · That keeps till June December's snows."
As the warm weather approaches, the little brook thaws _ out upon the sides of the mountain, and gradually works its way through the vast mass covering its bed, forming a complete arch of pure snow. This arch continues to enlarge until the last of summer, when the intense heat and warm rains melt it away.
Last year the engineer of the White Mountain Carriage Road, measured the arch, and found it to be 180 feet long, 84 feet wide, and 40 feet high, on the inside; and 266 feet long, and 40 feet wide, on the outside. The snow forming the arch was twenty feet thick. The engineer went through this arch in the bed of the brook, to the foot of the cataract, which falls a thousand feet down the side of the mountain. This was done in July.
Nor for beauty and grandeur were those bold summits reared so far up among the clouds. New England owes to
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her granite peaks more than to her extensive commerce and flourishing trade. Her thousand mills, and the ripening harvest of her hardy husbandmen, are the offspring of these Alpine cliffs. Wealth and health flow from their sides; and liberty is always safe among their passes.
" The immense bed of moss," says Belknap, "which covers these mountains, serves as a sponge to retain the moisture brought by the clouds and vapors which are frequently rising and gathering round the mountains. The thick growth of wood prevents the rays of the sun from pen- etrating to exhale it; so that there is a constant supply of water deposited in the crevices of the rocks, and issuing in the form of springs from every part of the mountains."
From the springs originate some of the largest and finest rivers in New England. Barren themselves, these moun- tains send wealth and fertility to five different states. On the southern side, the Saco and the Merrimac, -
" Two rills which from one fountain flow, But eastward one, the other westward hies ; Both to a common goal their journey go, But this one's path along green meadows lies, Through flowery banks, and under softest skies ; That o'er its rocky bed, with turbid flow, Mid noise and tumult to the ocean flies."
On the eastern side, Ellis and Peabody rivers start their downward courses so near together that they may be stepped across at one stride. On the western side, far up on the mountains, at the " Lake of the Clouds," starts the Ammo- noosuc, a tributary of the Connecticut. The streams on the eastern side run parallel with the ranges of mountains ; while on the western side they run at right angles.
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Cascades innumerable are formed by these brooks and riv- ulets as they come tumbling down the mountains. The glittering of these different falls in the moonbeams, Dr. Belknap thinks, gave rise to the idea of the huge carbuncles, the superstitious Indians saw suspended over the steep pre- cipices and cliffs. These cascades are unrivalled in their romantic beauty.
About half a mile from the gate of the Notch, on the southern side, is seen the Silver Cascade, issuing from the mountain on the right, about eight hundred feet above the adjacent valley, and about two miles distant. It is said to be one of the most beautiful in the world. Ordinarily it is but a mere rill, falling over high perpendicular ledges, with sufficient current to make it perfectly white. The following, an excel- lent description, is from the pen of Mr. D. P. Pages : " Imagine yourself, gentle reader, standing upon a narrow bridge, under which one of these cascades finds its way to the Saco, now on your left. Away, for more than a mile to your right, and far up toward the summit of the mountains, you see the silver thread of falling water, now still, now tremulous, glittering in the sunbeams. Now it disappears behind a crag, and now it struggles on amid some broken rocks ; anon it approaches an abrupt precipice, from which it gayly leaps off, scattering its pearls and gems in rich pro- fusion, as it salutes the rock below. Now it flows on ; for a moment slowly, through a little pool in the lofty hill-side ; now again, in a dozen streamlets, it is seen gushing forth, among the fragments of rock, and thence seems to slide for a long distance down the unbroken surface of the smooth ledge. Thence it dashes among the rocks, throwing its whitened spray above them ; again it falls over a projecting brink, and plunges murmuring into another basin. Once more it quickly
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