THIRD JOURNEY. (continued 2)

We are now, I imagine, sufficiently instructed in the general characteristics of the famed Ox-Bow to pass from its picturesque and topographical features into the domain of history, and to summon from the past the details of a tragedy in war, which, had it occurred in the days of Homer, would have been embalmed in an epic. Our history begins at a period before any white settlement existed in the region immediately about us. No wonder the red man relinquished it only at the point of the bayonet. It was a country worth fighting for to the bitter end.

VI. THE SACK OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.

“L’histoire à sa vérité; la legende a la sienne.”

IN the month of September, 1759, the army of Sir Jeffrey Amherst was in cantonments at Crown Point. A picked corps of American rangers, commanded by Robert Rogers, was attached to this army. One day an aide-de-camp brought Rogers an order to repair forthwith to head-quarters, and in a few moments the ranger entered the general’s marquee.

“At your orders, general,” said the ranger, making his salute.

“About that accursed hornet’s-nest of St. Francis?” said the general, frowning.

“When I was a lad, your excellency, we used to burn a hornet’s-nest, if it became troublesome,” observed Rogers, significantly.

“And how many do you imagine, major, this one has stung to death in the last six years?” inquired General Amherst, fumbling among his papers.

“I don’t know; a great many, your excellency.”

“Six hundred men, women, and children.”

The two men looked at each other a moment without speaking.

“At this rate,” continued the general, “his Majesty’s New England provinces will soon be depopulated.”

“For God’s sake, general, put a stop to this butchery!” ejaculated the exasperated ranger.

“That’s exactly what I have sent for you to do. Here are your orders. You are commanded, and I expect you to destroy that nest of vipers, root and branch. Remember the atrocities committed by these Indian scoundrels, and take your revenge; but remember, also, that I forbid the killing of women and children. Exterminate the fighting-men, but spare the non-combatants. That is war. Now make an end of St. Francis once and for all.”

ROBERT ROGERS.

Nearly a hundred leagues separated the Abenaqui village from the English; and we should add that once there, in the heart of the enemy’s country, all idea of help from the army must be abandoned, and the rangers, depending wholly upon themselves, be deprived of every resource except to cut their way through all obstacles. But this was exactly the kind of service for which this distinctive body of American soldiers was formed.

Sir Jeffrey Amherst had said to Rogers, “Go and wipe out St. Francis for me,” precisely as he would have said to his orderly, “Go and saddle my horse.”

But this illustrates the high degree of confidence which the army reposed in the chief of the rangers. The general knew that this expedition demanded, at every stage, the highest qualities in a leader. Rogers had already proved himself possessed of these qualities in a hundred perilous encounters.

That night, without noise or display, the two hundred men detailed for the expedition left their encampment, which was habitually in the van of the army. On the evening of the twenty-second day since leaving Crown Point a halt was ordered. The rangers were near their destination. From the top of a tree the doomed village was discovered three miles distant. Not the least sign that the presence of an enemy was suspected could be seen or heard. The village wore its ordinary aspect of profound security. Rogers therefore commanded his men to rest, and prepare themselves for the work in hand.

At eight in the evening, having first disguised himself, Rogers took Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery, and with them reconnoitred the Indian town. He found it the scene of high festivity, and for an hour watched unseen the unsuspecting inhabitants celebrating with dancing and barbaric music the nuptials of one of the tribe. All this marvellously favored his plans. Not dreaming of an enemy, the savages abandoned themselves to unrestrained enjoyment and hilarity. The fête was protracted until a late hour under the very eyes of the spies, who, finding themselves unnoticed, crept boldly into the village, where they examined the ground and concerted the plan of attack.

At length all was hushed. The last notes of revelry faded on the still night air. One by one the drowsy merry-makers retired to their lodges, and soon the village was wrapped in profound slumber—the slumber of death. This was the moment so anxiously awaited by Rogers. Time was precious. He quickly made his way back to the spot where the rangers were lying on their arms. One by one the men were aroused and fell into their places. It was two in the morning when he left the village. At three the whole body moved stealthily up to within five hundred yards of the village, where the men halted, threw off their packs, and were formed for the assault in three divisions. The village continued silent as the grave.

St. Francis was a village of about forty or fifty wigwams, thrown together in a disorderly clump. In the midst was a chapel, to which the inhabitants were daily summoned by matin and vesper bell to hear the holy father, whose spiritual charge they were, celebrate the mass. The place was enriched with the spoil torn from the English and the ransom of many miserable captives. We have said that these Indians had slain and taken, in six years, six hundred English: that is equivalent to one hundred every year.

The knowledge of numberless atrocities nerved the arms and steeled the hearts of the avengers. When the sun began to brighten the east the three bands of rangers, waiting eagerly for the signal, rushed upon the village.

A deplorable and sickening scene of carnage ensued. The surprise was complete. The first and only warning the amazed savages had were the volleys that mowed them down by scores and fifties. Eyes heavy with the carousal of the previous night opened to encounter an appalling carnival of butchery and horror. Two of the stoutest of the rangers—Farrington and Bradley—led one of the attacking columns to the door where the wedding had taken place. Finding it barred, they threw themselves so violently against it that the fastenings gave way, precipitating Bradley headlong among the Indians who were asleep on their mats. All these were slain before they could make the least resistance.

On all sides the axe and the rifle were soon reaping their deadly harvest. Those panic-stricken, half-dazed wretches who rushed pell-mell into the streets either ran stupidly upon the uplifted weapons of the rangers or were shot down by squads advantageously posted to receive them. A few who ran this terrible gauntlet plunged into the river flowing before the village, and struck boldly out for the opposite shore; but the avengers had closed every avenue of escape, and the fugitives were picked off from the banks. The same fate overtook those who tumbled into their canoes and pushed out into the stream. The frail barks were riddled with shot, leaving their occupants an easy target for a score of rifles. The incessant flashes, the explosions of musketry, the shouts of the assailants, and the yells of their victims were all mingled in one horrible uproar. For two hours this massacre continued. Combat it cannot be called. Rendered furious by the sight of hundreds of scalps waving mournfully in the night-wind in front of the lodges, the pitiless assailants hunted the doomed savages down like blood-hounds. Every shot was followed by a death-whoop, every stroke by a howl of agony. For two horrible hours the village shook with explosions and echoed with frantic outcries. It was then given up to pillage, and then to the torch, and all those who from fear had hid themselves perished miserably in the flames. At seven o’clock in the morning all was over. Silence once more enveloped the hideous scene of conflagration and slaughter. The village of St. Francis was the funeral pyre of two hundred warriors. Rogers had indeed taken the fullest revenge enjoined by Sir Jeffrey Amherst’s orders.

From this point our true history passes into the legendary.

While the sack of St. Francis was going on a number of the Abenaquis took refuge in the little chapel. Their retreat was discovered. A few of their assailants having collected in the neighborhood precipitated themselves toward it, with loud cries. Others ran up. Two or three blows with the butt of a musket forced open the door, when the building was instantly filled with armed men.

An unforeseen reception awaited them. Lighted candles burnt on the high altar, shedding a mild radiance throughout the interior, and casting a dull glow upon the holy vessels of gold and silver upon the altar. At the altar’s foot, clad in the sacred vestments of his office, stood the missionary, a middle-aged, vigorous-looking man, his arms crossed upon his breast, his face lighted up with the exaltation of a martyr. Face and figure denoted the high resolve to meet fate half-way. Behind him crouched the knot of half-crazed savages, who had fled to the sanctuary for its protection, and who, on seeing their mortal enemies, instinctively took a posture of defence. The priest, at two or three paces in advance of them, seemed to offer his body as their rampart. The scene was worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt.

At this sight the intruders halted, the foremost even falling back a step, but the vessels of gold and silver inflamed their cupidity to the highest pitch; while the hostile attitude of the warriors was a menace men already steeped in bloodshed regarded a moment in still more threatening silence, and then by a common impulse recognized by covering the forlorn group with their rifles.

Believing the critical moment come, the priest threw up his hands in an attitude of supplication, arresting the fatal volley as much by the dignity of the gesture itself, as by the resonant voice which exclaimed, in French, “Madmen, for pity’s sake, for the sake of Him on the Cross, stay your hands! This violence! What is your will? What seek ye in the house of God?”

A gunshot outside, followed by a mournful howl, was his sole response.

The priest shuddered, and his crisped lips murmured an ave. He comprehended that another soul had been sent, unshriven, to its final account.

“Hear him!” said a ranger, in a mocking undertone; “his gabble minds me of a flock of wild geese.”

A burst of derisive laughter followed this coarse sally.

In fact, they had not too much respect for the Church of Rome, these wild woodsmen, but were filled with ineradicable hatred for its missionaries, domesticated among their enemies, in whom they believed they saw the real heads of the tribes, and the legitimate objects, therefore, of their vengeance.

“Yield, Papist! Come, you shall have good quarter; on the word of a ranger you shall,” cried an authoritative voice, the speaker at the same time advancing a step, and dropping his rifle the length of his sinewy arms.

“Never!” answered the ecclesiastic, crossing himself.

A suppressed voice from behind hurriedly murmured in his ear, “Écoutez: rendez-vous, mon père: je vous en supplie!”

“Jamais! mieux vaut la mort que la miséricorde de brigands et meurtriers!” ejaculated the missionary, rejecting the counsel also, with a vehement shake of the head.

“Grand Dieu! tout, donc, est fini,” sighed the voice, despairingly.

The rangers understood the gesture better than the words. An officer, the same who had just spoken, again impatiently demanded, this time in a higher and more threatening key,

“A last time! Do you yield or no? Answer, friar!”

The priest turned quickly, took the consecrated Host from the altar, elevated it above his head, and, in a voice that was long remembered by those who heard it, exclaimed,

“To your knees, monsters! to your knees!”

What the ranger understood of this pantomime and this command was that they conveyed a scornful and a final refusal. Muttering under his breath, “Your blood be upon your own head, then,” he levelled his gun and pulled the trigger. A general discharge from both sides shook the building, filling it with thick and stifling smoke, and instantly extinguishing the lights. The few dim rays penetrating the windows, and which seemed recoiling from the frightful spectacle within, enabled the combatants vaguely to distinguish each other in the obscurity. Not a cry was heard; nothing but quick reports or blows signaled the progress of this lugubrious combat.

This butchery continued ten minutes, at the end of which the rangers, with the exception of one of their number killed outright, issued from the chapel, after having first stripped the altar, despoiled the shrine of its silver image of the Virgin, and flung the Host upon the ground. While this profanation was enacting a voice rose from the heap of dead at the altar’s foot, which made the boldest heart among the rangers stop beating. It said,

“The Great Spirit of the Abenaquis will scatter darkness in the path of the accursed Pale-faces! Hunger walks before and Death strikes their trail! Their wives weep for the warriors that do not return! Manitou is angry when the dead speak. The dead have spoken!”

The torch was then applied to the chapel, and, like the rest of the village, it was fast being reduced to a heap of cinders. But now something singular transpired. As the rangers filed out from the shambles the bell of the little chapel began to toll. In wonder and dread they listened to its slow and measured strokes until, the flames having mounted to the belfry, it fell with a loud clang among the ruins. The rangers hastened onward. This unexpected sound already filled them with gloomy forebodings.

After the stern necessities of their situation rendered a separation the sole hope of successful retreat, the party which carried along with it the silver image was so hard pressed by the Indians, and by a still more relentless enemy, famine, that it reached the banks of the Connecticut reduced to four half-starved, emaciated men. More than once had they been on the point of flinging their burden into some one of the torrents every hour obstructing their way; but as one after another fell exhausted or lifeless, the unlucky image passed from hand to hand, and was thus preserved up to the moment so eagerly and so confidently looked for, during that long and dreadful march, to end all their privations.

But the chastisement of heaven, prefigured in the words of the expiring Abenaqui, had already overtaken them. Half-crazed by their sufferings, they mistook the place of rendezvous appointed by their chief, and, having no tidings of their comrades, believed themselves to be the sole survivors of all that gallant but ill-fated band. In this conviction, to which a mournful destiny conducted, they took the fatal determination to cross the mountains under the guidance of one of their number who had, or professed, a knowledge of the way through the Great Notch of the White Hills.

For four days they dragged themselves onward through thickets, through deep snows and swollen streams, without sustenance of any kind, when three of them, in consequence of their complicated miseries, aggravated by finding no way through the wall of mountains, lost their senses. What leather covered their cartouch-boxes they had already scorched to a cinder and greedily devoured. At length, on the last days of October, as they were crossing a small river dammed by logs, they discovered some human bodies, not only scalped, but horribly mangled, which were supposed to be some of their own band. But this was no time for distinctions. On them they accordingly fell like cannibals, their impatience being too great to await the kindling of a fire to dress their horrid food by. When they had thus abated somewhat the excruciating pangs they before endured, the fragments were carefully collected for a future store.

My pen refuses to record the dreadful extremities to which starvation reduced these miserable wretches. At length, after some days of fruitless wandering up and down, finding the mountains inexorably closing in upon them, even this last dreadful resource failed, and, crawling under some rocks, they perished miserably in the delirium produced by hunger and despair, blaspheming, and hurling horrible imprecations at the silver image, to which, in their insanity, they attributed all their sufferings. One of them, seizing the statue, tottered to the edge of a precipice, and, exerting all his remaining strength, dashed it down into the gulf at his feet.

Tradition affirms that the first settlers who ascended Israel’s River found relics of the lost detachment near the foot of the mountains; but, notwithstanding the most diligent search, the silver image has thus far eluded every effort made for its recovery.

VII. MOOSEHILLOCK.

MOOSEHILLOCK, or Moosilauke,[34] is one of four or five summits from which the best idea of the whole area of the White Mountains may be obtained. It is not so remarkable for its form as for its mass. It is an immense mountain.

Lifted in solitary grandeur upon the extreme borders of the army of peaks to which it belongs, and which it seems defending, haughtily over-bearing those lesser summits of the Green Mountains confronting it from the opposite shores of the Connecticut, which here separates the two grand systems, like two hostile armies, the one from the other, Moosehillock resembles a crouching lion, magnificent in repose, but terrible in its awakening.

This immense strength, paralyzed and helpless though it seems, is nevertheless capable of arousing in us a sentiment of respectful fear—respect for the creative power, fear for the suspended life we believe is there. The mountain really seems lying extended under the sky listening for the awful command, “Arise and walk!”

This mountain received a name before Mount Washington, and is in some respects, as I hope to point out, the most interesting of the whole group. In the first place, it commands a hundred miles of the Connecticut Valley, including, of course, all the great peaks of the Green Mountain and Adirondack chains. Again, its position confers decided advantages for studying the configuration of the Franconia group, to which, in a certain sense, it is allied, and of the ranges enclosing the Pemigewasset Valley, which it overlooks. Moosehillock stands in the broad angle formed by the meeting waters of the Connecticut and the Ammonoosuc. In a word, it is an advanced bastion of the whole cluster of castellated summits, constituting the White Mountains in a larger meaning.

Therefore no summit better repays a visit than Moosehillock; yet it is astonishing, considering the ease of access, how few make the ascent. The traveller can hardly do better than begin here his experiences of mountain adventure, should chance conduct him this way; or, if making his exit from the mountain region by the Connecticut Valley, he may, taking it in his way out, make this the appropriate pendant of his tours, romantic and picturesque.

Having been so long known to and frequented by the Indian as well as white hunters, the mountain is naturally the subject of considerable legend,[35] which the historian of Warren has scrupulously gathered together. One of these tales, founded on the disaster of Rogers, recounts the sufferings of two of his men, hopelessly snared in the great Jobildunk ravine. But that tale of horror needs no embellishment from romance. This enormous rent, equally hideous in fact as in name, cut into the vitals of the mountain so deeply that a dark stream gushes from the gaping wound, conceals within its mazes several fine cascades. Owing to long-continued drought, the streams were so puny and so languid when I visited the mountain that I explored only the upper portion of the gorge, which bristles with an untamed forest, levelling its myriad spears at the breast of the climber.

The greater part of the mountain lies in the town of Benton, or, perhaps, it would be nearer the truth to say that fully half the township is appropriated by its prodigious earthwork. But, to reach it without undergoing the fatigues of a long march through the woods, it is necessary to proceed to the village of Warren, which is twenty miles north of Plymouth, and about fourteen south of Haverhill. Behind the village rises Mount Carr. Still farther to the north the summits of Mounts Kineo, Cushman, and Waternomee, continuing this range now separating us from the Pemigewasset Valley, form also the eastern wall of the valley of Baker’s River, which has its principal source in the ravines of Moosehillock. There is a bridle-path opening communication with the mountain from the Benton side, on the north; and so with Lisbon and Franconia. A carriage-road is also contemplated on that side, which will render access still more feasible for a large summer population; while a bridle-path, lately opened between two peaks of the Carr range, facilitates ingress from the Pemigewasset side.

I set out from the village of Warren on one of the hottest afternoons of an intensely hot and dry summer. The five miles between the village and the base of the mountain need not detain the sight-seer. At the crossing of Baker’s River I remarked again the granite-bed honey-combed with those curious pot-holes sunk by whirling stones, first set in motion and then spun around by the stream, which here, breaking up into several wild pitches, pours through a rocky gorge. But how gratefully cool and refreshing was even the sound of rushing water in that still, stifling atmosphere, coming, one would think, from a furnace! Then for two miles more the horse crept along the road, constantly ascending the side of the valley, until the last house was reached. Here we passed a turnpike-gate, rolled over the crisped turf of a stony pasture through a second gate, and were at the foot of Moosehillock.

In a trice we exchanged the sultriness, the dryness, the dust, parching or suffocating us, of a shadeless road, for the cool, moist air of the mountain-forest and the delectable sound of running water. A brook shot past; then another; then the horse, who stopped when he liked, and as often as he liked, like a man forced to undertake a task which he is determined shall cost his task-masters dearly, began a languid progress up the increasing declivity before us. His sighs and groans, as he plodded wearily along, were enough to melt a heart of stone. I therefore dismounted and walked on, leaving the driver to follow as he could. The question was, not how the horse should get us up the mountain, but how we should get the horse up.

They call it four and a half miles from the bottom to the top. The distances indicated by the sign-boards, nailed to trees, did not appear to me exact. They are not exact; and the reason why they are not is sufficiently original to merit a word of explanation. Having long observed the effect of imagination, especially in computing distances, the builder of the road, as he himself informed me, adopted a truly ingenious method of his own. He lengthened or shortened his miles according as the travelling was good or bad. For example: the first mile, being an easy one, was stretched to a mile and a quarter. The last mile is also very good travelling. That, too, he lengthened to a mile and a half. In this way he reduced the intervening two and a half miles of the worst road to one and three-fourth miles. This absolutely harmless piece of deception, he averred, considerably shortened the most difficult part of the journey. No one complained that the good miles were too long, while the bad ones were now passed over with far less grumbling than before they were abbreviated by this simple expedient, which very few, I am convinced, would have thought of. In fact, the sum of the whole distance being scrupulously adhered to, it is the most civil piece of engineering of which I have any knowledge.

The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. The trees now visibly dwindled. Just before reaching the ridge, where it joins this peak, a fine spring, deliciously cold, gushed from the mountain side. A few rods more of ascent brought us quite out upon the long, narrow, curving backbone of the mountain, uplifting its sharp edge between two profound gorges, connecting the peaks set at its two extremes, between which Nature has decreed a perpetual divorce. The sun was just setting as we emerged upon this natural way conducting from peak to peak along the airy crest of the mountain.

Although this, it will be remembered, is one of the longest miles, according to the scale of computation in vogue here, the unexpected speed which the horse now put forth, the sight of the squat, little Tip-Top House, clinging to the summit beyond, the upper and nether worlds floating or fading in splendor, while the night-breezes sweeping over cooled our foreheads, and rudely jostled the withered trees, drawn a little apart to the right and left to let us pass, quickly replaced that weariness of mind and body which the mountain exacts of all who pass over it on a sultry midsummer’s day.

At the extremity of the ridge, which is only wide enough for the road, a gradual ascent led to the high summit and to a level plateau of a few acres at its top. This was treeless, but covered with something like soil, smooth, and, being singularly free from the large stones found everywhere else, affords good walking in any direction. The house is built of rough stone, and, though of primitive construction, is comfortable, and even inviting. Furthermore, its materials being collected on the spot, one accepts it as still constituting a part of the mountain, which, indeed, at a little distance it really seems to be. In the evening I went out, to find the mountain blindfolded with clouds. Soon rain began to drive against the window-panes in volleys. At a late hour we heard wheels grinding on the rocks outside, and then a party of tourists drove up to the door, dripping and crestfallen at having undertaken the ascent with a storm staring them in the face. But they had only this one day, they said, and were “bound” to go up the mountain. So up they toiled through pitch darkness, through rain and cloud, passed the night in a building said to be on the summit, and returned down the mountain in the morning, to catch their train, through as dense a fog as ever exasperated a hurried tourist. But they had been to the top! Are there anywhere else in the world people who travel two hundred miles for a single day’s recreation?

It is very curious, this being domesticated on the top of a mountain. We go to bed wondering if the scene will not all vanish in our dreams. It was very odd, too, to see the tourists silently mount their buck-board in the morning, and disappear, within a stone’s throw, in clouds. Detaching themselves to all intents from earth, they began a flight in air. Walking a short distance, perhaps a gunshot, from the house, I groped my way back with difficulty. The case seemed desperate.

But grandest scene of all was the breaking up of the storm. Shortly after noon the high sun began to exert a sensible influence upon the clouds. A perceptible warmth, replacing the chill and clammy mists, began to pervade the mountain-top. Presently a dim sun-ray shot through. Then, as if a noiseless explosion had suddenly rent them, the whole mass of clouds was torn in ten thousand tatters flying through space. All nature seemed seized with sudden frenzy. Here a summit and there a peak was seen, struggling fiercely in the grasp of the storm. Coming up with rushing noise, the west wind charged home the routed storm-clouds with fresh squadrons. What indescribable yet noiseless tumult raged in the heavens! Even the mountains seemed scarcely able to stem the tide of fugitives. A panic seized them. Fear gave them wings. They rushed pell-mell into the ravines and clung to the tree-tops; they dashed themselves blindly against the adamant of Lafayette, only to fall back broken into the deep fosse beneath. Bolts of dazzling sunshine continually tore through them. The gorges themselves seemed heaped with the wounded and the dying. But the rushing wind, trampling the fugitives down, dispersed and cut them mercilessly to pieces. One was irresistibly carried away by this rage of battle. In ten minutes I looked around upon a clear sky. One cloud, impaled on the gleaming spear of Lafayette, hung limp and lifeless; another floated like a scarf from the polished casque of Chocorua; a third, taken prisoner en route, humbly held the train of Washington. All the rest of the phantom host, using its power to render itself invisible, vanished from sight as if the mountains had swallowed it up.

The landscape being now fully uncovered, I enjoyed all its rare perfection. It is a superb and fascinating one, invested with a powerful individuality, surrounded by a charm of its own. You wish to see the two great chains? There they are, the greater rising over the lesser, in the order fixed by Nature. That sunny space in the softened coloring of old tapestry, more to the right, is the Pemigewasset Valley, and the spot from where not long ago we looked up at this mountain looming large in the distance. We raise our eyes to glance up the East Branch upon Mount Hancock and the peaks of Carrigain peeping over. We touch with magic wand the faint cone of Kearsarge, so dim that it seems as if it must rise and float away; then, continuing to call the roll of mountains, Moat, Tripyramid, Chocorua, and all our earlier acquaintances rise or nod among the Sandwich peaks. Some draw their cloud-draperies over their bare shoulders, some sun their naked and hairy breasts in savage luxury. We alight like a bird upon the glassy bosom of Winnepiseogee the incomparable, and, like the bird, again rise, refreshed, for flights still more remote. We sweep over the Uncanoonucs into Massachusetts, steadying the eye upon far Wachusett as we pass from the Merrimac Valley. Now come thronging in upon us the mountains of the Connecticut Valley. We rest awhile upon the transcendently beautiful expanse of the Ox-Bow, and its playthings of villages, strung along the glittering necklace of the river. Across this valley, lifting our eyes, we wander among the loftiest peaks of the Green Mountains—those colossal verd-antiques—exchanging frozen glances across the placid expanse of Champlain with the haughtiest summits of the Adirondacks. We grow tired of this. One last look, this time up the valley, reveals to us the wide and curious gap between two distant mountains, and far beyond Memphremagog, where these mountains rise, we scan all the route travelled by Rogers, the perils of which are fresh in our memory. We pass on unchallenged into the dominions of Victoria.

Is not this a landscape worth coming ten miles out of one’s way to see? And yet the half is not told. I have merely indicated its dimensions. Now let the reader, drawing an imaginary line from peak to peak, go over at leisure all that lies between. I merely prick the chart for him. Moosehillock, not quite five thousand feet high, overlooks all New Hampshire, pushes investigation into Maine and Massachusetts, is familiar with Vermont, distant with New York, and has an eye upon Canada. It is said the ocean has been seen, but I did not see it.

Circumstances compelled me to drive the old horse, who has made more ascensions of the mountain than any living thing, back to Warren. No other was to be had for love or money. Had there been time I would have preferred walking, but there was not. This horse measured sixteen hands. His thin body and long legs resembled a horse upon stilts. He looked dejected, but resigned. I argued that he would be able to get down the mountain somehow; and, once out of the woods, I could count on his eagerness to get home, to some extent, perhaps. I was not deceived in either expectation.

The road, as I have said, is for most of the way a rough, steep, and stony one. In order to check the havoc made by sudden showers, and to hold the thin soil in place, hemlock-boughs were spread over it, artfully concealing those protruding stones which the scanty soil refused to cover. He who intrusted himself to it did not find it a bed of roses. The buck-board was the longest, clumsiest, and most ill-favored it has ever been my lot to see. This vehicle, being peculiar to the mountains, demands, at least, a word. It is a very primitive and ingenious affair, and cheaply constructed. Naturally, therefore, it originated where the farmers were poor and the roads bad. But what is the buck-board? Every one has seen the spring-board of a gymnasium or of a circus. A smooth plank, ten feet long, resting upon trestles placed at either end, assists the acrobat to vault high in the air. Each time he falls the rebound sends him up again. This is the principle of the buck-board. Remove the trestles, put a pair of wheels in the place of each, and you have the vehicle itself, minus shafts or pole, according as one or two horses are to draw it. Increased weight bends the board or the spring more and more until it is in danger of touching the ground. The passengers sit in the hollow of this spring, the natural tendency of which is to shoot them into the air.

THE BUCK-BOARD WAGON.

I am justified in speaking thus of the road and the vehicle. But who shall describe the horse? That animal was possessed of a devil, and, like the swine of the miracle, ran violently all the way down the mountain, without stopping for water or breath. Fortunate indeed for me was it that the sea was not at the bottom. In three-quarters of an hour, half of which was spent in the air, I was at the foot of the mountain which had required two tedious hours to ascend. How the quadruped managed to avoid falling headlong fifty times over the concealed stones I have no idea. How I contrived to alight, when a wheel, coming violently against one of these stones, put the spring-board in play—how I contrived to alight, I remark, during this game of battledoor and shuttlecock, never twice in the same place, is to this day an enigma.

The houses of ancient Rome frequently bore the inscription for the benefit of strangers, “Cave canem.” This could be advantageously replaced here, upon the first turnpike-gate, at the mountain’s foot, with the warning, “Beware of the horse!”

VIII. BETHLEHEM.

HAVING finished with the western approach to the White Mountains, I was now at liberty to retrace my route up the Ammonoosuc Valley, which so abounds in picturesque details—farms, hamlets, herds, groups of pines, maples, torrents, roads feeling their way up the heights—to that anomaly of mountain towns, Bethlehem. Thanks to the locomotive, the journey is short. The villages of Bath, Lisbon, Littleton, are successively entered; the same flurry gives a momentary activity to each station, the same faces crowd the platforms, and the same curiosity is exhibited by the passengers, whose excitement receives an increase with every halt of the laboring train.

Bethlehem is ranged high up, along the side of a mountain, like the best china in a cupboard. The crest of Mount Agassiz[36] rises behind it. Beneath the village the ground descends, rather abruptly, to the Ammonoosuc, which winds, through matted woods, its way out of the mountains. There are none of those eye-catching gleams of water which so agreeably diversify these interminable miles of forest and mountain land.

It is only by ascending the slopes of Mount Agassiz that we can secure a stand-point fairly showing the commanding position of Bethlehem, or where its immediate surroundings may be viewed all at once. It is so situated, with respect to the curvature of this mountain, that at one end of the village they do not know what is going on at the other. One end revels in the wide panorama of the west, the other holds the unsurpassed view of the great peaks to the east.

Bethlehem has risen, almost by magic, at the point where the old highway up the Ammonoosuc is intersected by that coming from Plymouth, the Pemigewasset Valley, and the Profile House. In time a small roadside hamlet naturally clustered about this spot. Dr. Timothy Dwight, the pioneer traveller for health and pleasure among these mountains, passed through here in 1803. Speaking of the appearance of Bethlehem, he says: “There is nothing which merits notice, except the patience, enterprise, and hardihood of the settlers which have induced them to stay upon so forbidding a spot; a magnificent prospect of the White Mountains; and a splendid collection of other mountains in their neighborhood, particularly on the south-west.” It was then reached by only one wretched road, which passed the Ammonoosuc by a dangerous ford. The few scattered habitations were mere log-cabins, rough and rude. The few planting-fields were still covered with dead trees, stark and forbidding, which the settlers, unable to fell with the axe, killed by girdling, as the Indians did.

From this historical picture of Bethlehem in the past, we turn to the Bethlehem of to-day. It is turning from the post-rider to the locomotive. Not a single feature is recognizable except the splendid prospect of the White Mountains, and the magnificent collection of other mountains, which call forth the same admiration to-day. Fortunate geographical position, salubrity, fine scenery—these, and these alone, are the legitimate cause of what may be termed the rise and progress of Bethlehem. All that the original settlers seem to have accomplished is to clear away the forests which intercepted, and to make the road conducting to the view.

It is the position of Bethlehem with respect to the recognized points or objects of interest that gives to it a certain strategic advantage. For example, it is admirably situated for excursions north, south, east, or west. It is ten miles to the Profile, twelve to the Fabyan, seventeen to the Crawford, fifteen to the Waumbek, and eighteen to the base of Mount Washington. One can breakfast at Bethlehem, dine on Mount Washington, and be back for tea; and he can repeat the experience with respect to the other points named as often as inclination may prompt. Moreover, the great elevation exempts Bethlehem from the malaria and heat of the valleys. The air is dry, pure, and invigorating, rendering it the paradise of those invalids who suffer from periodical attacks of hay-fever. Lastly, it is new, or comparatively new, and possesses the charm of novelty—not the least consideration to the thousands who are in pursuit of that and that only.

Bethlehem Street is the legitimate successor of the old road. This is a name sui generis which seems hardly appropriate here, although it is so commonly applied to the principal thoroughfares of our inland New England villages. It has a spick-and-span look, as if sprung up like a bed of mushrooms in a night. And so, in fact, it has; for Bethlehem as a summer resort dates only a few years back its sudden rise from comparative obscurity into the full blaze of popular fame and favor. The guide-book of fifteen years ago speaks of the one small but comfortable hotel, kept by the Hon. J. G. Sinclair. In fact, very little account was made of it by travellers, except to remark the magnificent view of the White Mountains on the east, or of the Franconia Mountains on the south, as they passed over the then prescribed tour from North Conway to Plymouth, or vice versa.

But this newness, which you at first resent, besides introducing here and there some few attempts at architectural adornment, contrasts very agreeably with the ill-built, rambling, and slip-shod appearance of the older village-centres. They are invariably most picturesque from a distance. But here there is an evident effort to render the place itself attractive by making it beautiful. Good taste generally prevails. I suspect, however, that the era of good taste, beginning with the incoming of a more refined and intelligent class of travellers, communicated its spirit to two or three enterprising and sagacious men,[37] who saw in what Nature had done an incentive for their own efforts. We walk here in a broad, well-built thoroughfare, skirted on both sides with hotels, boarding-houses, and modern cottages, in which three or four thousand sojourners annually take refuge. All this has grown from the “one small hotel” of a dozen years ago. Shade-trees and grass-plots beautify the way-side. An immense horizon is visible from these houses, and even the hottest summer days are rendered endurable by the light airs produced and set in motion by the oppressive heats of the valley. The sultriest season is, therefore, no bar to out-of-door exercise for persons of average health, rendering walks, rambles, or drives subject only to the will or caprice of the pleasure-seeker. But in the evening all these houses are emptied of their occupants. The whole village is out-of-doors, enjoying the coolness or the panorama with all the zest unconstrained gratification always brings. The multitudes of well-dressed promenaders surprise every new-comer, who immediately thinks of Saratoga or Newport, and their social characteristics. Bethlehem, he thinks, must be the ideal of those who would carry city or, at least, suburban life among the mountains; who do not care a fig for solitude, but prefer to find their pleasures still connected with their home life. They are seeing life and seeing nature at the same time.

Sauntering along the street from the Sinclair House, a strikingly large and beautiful prospect opens as we come to the Belleview. Here the road, making its exit from the village, descends to the Ammonoosuc. The valley broadens and deepens, exposing to view all the town of Littleton, picturesquely scattered about the distant hill-sides. Its white houses resemble a bank of daisies. The hills take an easy attitude of rest. Six hundred feet below us the bottom of the valley exhibits its rich savannas, interspersed with cottages and groves. Above its deep hollow the Green Mountains glimmer in the far west. “Ah!” you say, “we will stop here.”

Let us now again, leaving the Sinclair House behind, ascend the road to the Profile. It is not so much travelled as it was before the locomotive, in his coat-of-mail, sounded his loud trumpet at the gates of Franconia. A mile takes us to the brow of the hill. We hardly know which way to look first. Two noble and comprehensive views present themselves. To the left Mount Agassiz rears his commanding peak. In front of us, across a valley, is the great, deeply-cloven Franconia Notch. Lafayette is superb here. Now the large, compact mass of Moosehillock looms on the extreme right, together with all those striking objects lately studied or observed from the village of Franconia, which so quietly reposes beneath us. But this landscape properly belongs to the environs of Bethlehem, and never is it so incomparably grand as when the summits are fitfully revealed, battling fiercely with storm-clouds. Every phase of the conflict is watched with eager attention. Seeing all this passion above, it calls up a smile to look down at the unbroken and unconscious tranquillity of the valley.

MOUNT LAFAYETTE, FROM BETHLEHEM.

Facing now in the direction of Bethlehem, the eye roves over the broad basin of the Ammonoosuc for many miles up and down. The hills of Littleton, Whitefield, Dalton, Carroll, and Jefferson bend away from the opposite side; and over the last the toothed Percy Peaks[38] rise blue and clear at the point where the waters of the Connecticut and the Androscoggin, approaching each other, conduct the Grand Trunk Railway out of the mountains. The west is packed with the high summits of the Green Mountain chain. The great White Mountains are concealed, as yet, by the swell of the mountain down whose side the road conducts to the village. “This,” you exclaim, “this is the spot where we will pitch our tents!” But there is no public-house here, and we are reluctantly forced to descend. In proportion as we go down, this seemingly limitless panorama suffers a partial eclipse. The landscape changes from the high-wrought epic to the grand pastoral, if such a distinction may be applied to differing forms of mountain scenery. This approach is, without doubt, the most striking introduction to Bethlehem. It is curiously instructive, too, as regards the relative merits of successive elevations, each higher than the other, as proper view-points.

A third ramble is altogether indispensable before we can say that we know Bethlehem of the Hills. The direction is now to the east, by the road to the Crawford House, or Fabyan’s, or the Twin. We continue along the high plateau, in the shade of sugar-maples or Lombardy poplars, to the eastern skirt of the village, the houses getting more and more unfrequent, until we come upon the edge of the slope to the Ammonoosuc, where the road to Whitefield, Lancaster, and Jefferson, leaving the main thoroughfare, drops quietly down into Bethlehem Hollow. No envious hill now obstructs the truly “magnificent view.” Through the open valley the lordly mountains again inthrall us with the might of an overpowering majesty.

This locality has taken the name of the great hotel erected here by Isaac Cruft, whose hand is visible everywhere in Bethlehem. The Maplewood, as it is called, easily maintains at its own end the prestige of Bethlehem for rapid growth. When I first visited the place, in 1875, I found a modest roadside hostelry accommodating sixty guests; five years later a mammoth structure, in which six hundred could be accommodated, had risen, like Aladdin’s palace, on the same spot. Instead of our little musical entertainment, our mock-trial, our quiet rubber of whist, of an evening, there were readings, lectures, balls, masquerades, theatricals, musicales, for every day of the week.

But Bethlehem is emphatically the place of sunsets. In this respect no other mountain resort can pretend to equal it. From no other village are so many mountains visible at once; at no other has the landscape such length and breadth for giving full effect to these truly wonderful displays. More because the sublimity of the scene deserves a permanent chronicle than from any confidence in my own ability to reproduce it, I attempt in black and white to describe one of unparalleled intensity of color, one that may never be repeated, certainly never excelled, while the sun, the heavens, and the mountains shall last.

A cold drizzle having set in on the day of my arrival, the mountains were invisible when I rose in the morning. I looked, but they were no longer there. I was much vexed at the prospect of being storm-bound, or of making under compulsion a sojourn I had beforehand resolved to make at my own good will and pleasure. So strongly is the spirit of resistance developed in us. After a critical investigation of the weather, it crossed my mind like an intuition that something extraordinary was preparing behind the enormous masses of clouds clinging like wet draperies to the skirts of the mountains, forming an impenetrable curtain, now and then slowly lifted by the fresh north wind, now suddenly distended or collapsing like huge sails, but noiselessly and mysteriously as the ghostly canvas of the Flying Dutchman.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, the wind having freshened, the lower clouds broke apart here and there—just enough to reveal to us that ever-new picture of the White Mountains, beautifully robed in fresh snow, above the darker line of forest; but so thoroughly were the high summits blended with the dull silver-gray of upper sky that the true line of separation defied the keenest scrutiny to detect it. This produced a curious optical illusion. Extended sumptuously along the crest-line, rivalling the snow itself, a bank of white clouds rendered the deception perfect, since just above them began that heavy and dull expanse which overspread and darkened the whole heavens, thus imperfectly delineating a second line of summits mounting to a prodigious height. They seemed miles upon miles high.

Up stretched this gigantic and shadowy phantasm of towers, domes, and peaks, illimitably, as if mountains and heavens were indeed come together in eternal alliance. At the same time the finger dipped in water could trace a more conclusive outline on glass than the eye could find here. The summits, a little luminous, emitted a cold, spectral glare. It gave you a chill to look at them. No sky, no earth, no deep gorges, no stark precipices—no anything except that dead wall, so sepulchral in its gray gloom that equally mind and imagination failed to find one familiar outline or contour. The true peaks seemed clouds, and the clouds peaks. But this phantasm was only the prologue.

At the hour of sunset all the lower clouds had disappeared. The upper heavens now wore that deep grape-purple impervious to light or warmth, and producing the effect of a vast dome hung with black. The storm replaced the azure tint of the sky with the most sombre color in its laboratory. The light visibly waned. The icy peaks still reflected a boreal glitter. But in the west these funereal draperies fell a little short of touching the edge of the horizon—a bare hand’s-breadth—leaving a crevice filled with golden light, pure and limpid as water, clear and vivid as winnowed sunshine. The sun’s eye would soon be applied to this peep-hole. A feverish impatience seized us. We could see the people at their doors and in the street standing silent and expectant, with their faces turned to the heavens. From a station near Cruft’s Ledge we watched intently for the moment when this splendid light, concentrated in one level sheet, should fall upon the great mountains.

In a few seconds a yellow spot of piercing brilliancy appeared in this narrow band of light. One look at it was blinding; a second would have paralyzed the optic nerve. Mechanically we put up our hands to shut it out. Imagine a stream of molten iron—hissing-hot and throwing off fiery spray—gushing from the side of a furnace! Even that can give but a feeble idea of the unspeakable intensity of this last sun-ray. It blazed. It flooded us with a suffocating effulgence. Suppose now this cataract of liquid flame suddenly illuminating the pitchy darkness of a cavern in the bowels of the earth. The effect was electrifying. Confined between the upper and nether expanse—dull earth and brooding sky—rendered tenfold more dazzling by the blackness above, beneath, the sun poured upon the great mountains one magnificent torrent of radiance. In an instant the broad land was deluged with the supreme glories of that morning when the awful voice of God uttered the sublime command,

An electric shock awoke the torpid earth, transfigured the mountains. On swept the mighty wave, shedding light, and warmth, and splendor where a moment before all was dark, cold, and spiritless. Like Ajax before Troy, the giant hills braced on their dazzling armor. Like Achilles’s shield, they threw back the brightness of the sun. Every tree stood sharply out. Every cavern disclosed its inmost secrets. Twigs glittered diamonds, leaves emitted golden rays. All was ravishingly beautiful.

This superb exhibition continued while one might count a hundred. Then all the lower mountains took on that ineffable purple that baffles description. Starr King, Cherry Mountain, were resplendent. As if the livid and thick-clustered clouds above had been trodden by invisible feet, these peaks seemed drenched with the juice of the wine-press. The high summits, buried in snow and cloud, were yet coldly impassive, but presently, little by little, the light crept up and up. Now it seized the topmost pinnacles. Heavens, what a sight! Ineffable glory seemed quenched in the sublime terrors of that moment. On our right the Twin and Franconia mountains glowed, from base to summit, like coals of fire. The lower forests were wrapped in flame. Then all the snowy line of peaks, from Adams to Clinton, turned blood-red. No pale rose or carnation tints, as in those enrapturing summer sunsets so often witnessed here. The stupendous and flaming mountains of hell seemed risen before us, clothed with immortal terrors. We stood rooted to the spot, like men who saw the judgment-day dawning, the solid earth consuming, before their doubting eyes. Everlasting, unquenchable fires seemed encompassing us about. Nothing more weird, more unearthly, or more infernal was ever seen. Even the country-people, stolid and indifferent as they usually are, regarded it with mingled stupefaction and dismay.

The drama approached its climax. Before we were aware, the valley grew dark. But still, the granite peaks of Lafayette, and of that admirable pyramid, Mount Garfield, which even the greater mountain cannot reduce to impotence, glowed like iron drawn from the fire. Their incandescent points, thrust upward into the black gulf of the heavens, towered above the blacker gulfs below unspeakably. By degrees the scorching heat cooled. The great Franconia spires successively paled. But long after they seemed reduced to ashes, the red flame still lingered upon the snows of Mount Washington. At last that, too, faded out. Life was extinct. The great summit took on a wan and livid hue. Night kindly spread her mantle over the lifeless form of the mountain, which still disclosed its larger outlines rigid, majestic, even in death.

Twilight succeeded—twilight steeped in silence and coolness, in the thousand odors exhaled by the teeming earth. One by one the birds hushed their noisy twitter. Overcome by their own perfumes, flowers shut their dewy petals and drooped their tender little heads. The river seemed a drowsy voice rising from the depths of the forest, complaining that it alone should toil on while all else reposed. With night comes the feeling of immensity. With sleep the conviction that we are nothing, and that the order of nature disturbs itself in nothing for us. If we awake, well; if not, well again. What if we should never wake? One such splendid pageant as I have attempted to describe instinctively quenches human pride. It is true, a sunset is in itself nothing, but it compels you to admit that the world moves for itself, not for you. Believe it not a gorgeous display in which you, the critical spectator, assist, but the signal that the day ends and the night cometh. A spectacle that can arouse the emotions of joy, fear, hope, suspense—nothing? Perhaps. God knows.

There are very pleasant walks, affording fine views of all the highest mountains, around the eastern slope or to the summit of the mountain rising at the back of the hotel. The bare but grassy crest of this mountain, one of my favorite haunts, enabled me to reconnoitre my route in advance up the valley, and to look over into the yet unvisited region of Jefferson, or back again, at the environs of Franconia. The glory that pours down upon these hills, the vales they infold, the wild streams, the craggy mountain spurs, the soft, velvety clearings that turn their dimpled cheeks to be kissed by the sunshine, may all be seen and fully enjoyed from this spot.

The heights behind us are well-wooded on the summits, but below this belt of woodland extends a broad band of sunny clearings checkered with fields of waving grain. These fields are among the highest cultivated lands in New England. Long tillage was necessary to reduce this refractory soil to subjection. Farther down, toward the railway-station, the pastures are so encumbered with stones that a sheep would turn from them in dismay. To mow among these stones a man would have to go down on his knees.

There is a beautiful orchard of sugar-maples down the road to the Hollow; but it always makes me sad to see these trees standing with their naked sides pierced and bleeding from gaping wounds.

At the corner of this road my attention was arrested by a sign-board planted in front of an unpainted cottage, behind which rose a clump of magnificent birches. I walked over to see what it could mean. The sign-board bore the name “Sir Isaac Newton Gay,” in large black letters. Here was a spur to curiosity! A knight, or at least a baronet, living in humble seclusion, yet parading his quality thus in the face of the world! Going to the gate, my perplexity increased upon seeing the grass-plot in front of the dwelling literally covered with broken glass, lamp-chimneys, bits of colored china, bottles of every imaginable shape and size stuck upright upon sticks, interspersed with lumps of white quartz. Some cabalistic meaning, doubtless, attached to the display. This brilliant rubbish sparkled in the sun, filling the enclosure with the cheap glitter of a pawnbroker’s shop-window. The thing so far announced a little eccentricity, at least, so I made bold to push my investigation still farther, and was rewarded by finding, piled against the trunk of a tree, at the back of the house, a heap of skulls of animals as high as my head. The recluse’s intent was now plain. Here was a lesson that he who ran might read. The rubbish in the front yard illustrated the pomp, glitter, and emptiness of life; the monument of skulls its true estate, divested of all false show or pretence. Without doubt this was a philosopher worthy of his name.

I was admitted by a singular-looking being, with dry, straight, lank hair, weak features, watery eyes, and a shuffling gait. Some accident having partially closed one eye, gave him a look of preternatural wisdom. He was ready to give an opinion on any subject under the sun, no matter how difficult or abstruse, as soon as broached, and stroked his scanty beard while doing so with evident self-complacency. I had a moment to see that the walls were papered with old handbills of county fairs, travelling shows, and the like, the floor covered with patches of carpet as various as Joseph’s coat, when my man began a formula similar to what the Bearded Lady drawls out or the Tattooed Man recites through his nose to gaping rustics at a country muster, at ten cents a head. He told where he was born, how old he was, and how long he had lived in Bethlehem. At the proper moment I put my hand in my pocket and took out a dime, which he thankfully accepted, and dropped inside a broken coffee-pot.

“Sir,” I observed, “seeing you are American-born, I infer your title must have been conferred by some foreign potentate?”

“No; that is my name.”

“But,” I pursued, “has it not an unrepublican sound in a country where titles are regarded with distrust, not to say aversion?”

“I tell you it is my name,” with some heat; “I was named for the great Sir Isaac Newton.”

“Your pardon, Sir Isaac. May I ask if you inherit the genius of your distinguished namesake?”

“Well, yes, to some extent I do; I philoserphize a good deal. I read a good many books folks leaves here, besides what newspapers I can pick up; but you see it costs a lifetime to get knowledge.”

Jaques, the misanthrope, wandering in the Forest of Arden, was not more astonished at Touchstone’s philosophy than I at this answer. “Very true,” I assented. “What is your philosophy of life?”

He tapped his forehead with his forefinger, but it was only too evident the apartment was untenanted. He remained a moment or two as if in deep thought, and then began,

“Well, I’m eighty-six years of age, come next July.”

My flesh began to creep: he was beginning, for the third time, his eternal formula. The hermit, fumbling a red handkerchief, resumed,

“I can say I’ve never wanted for necessaries, and don’t propose to give myself any trouble about it.” And then he expatiated on the folly of fretfulness.

The Hermit of Bethlehem, as he is called, but who opens his door wide for the world to enter, is a very ordinary sort of hermit indeed. Still, his very feebleness of intellect, his vanity even, should be a shield instead of a target for those who, like myself, are lured by the unmeaning trumpery at his door, which has no other significance in the world than a childish passion for objects that glitter in the sun.

The constituents of hotel life do not belong to any locality: they are universal. It is curious to see here people who have spent half their lives in India, or China, or Australia moving about among the untravelled with the well-bred ease and adaptation to circumstances that newly-fledged tourists can neither understand nor imitate. It is very droll, too, that people who have lived ten years in the same street, at home, without knowing each other, meet here for the first time.

I beg to introduce another acquaintance picked up by the roadside while walking from the Twin Mountain House to Bethlehem. Had I been driving, the incident would still have waited for a narrator.

Climbing the hill-side at a snail’s pace was a peddler’s cart, drawn by a scrubby little white horse, and bearing a new broom for an ensign, which seemed to symbolize that this petty trader meant to sweep the road clean of its loose cash. The sides of the cart were gayly decorated with pans, basins, dippers by the dozen, and bristled with knickknacks for barter or ready money, from a gridiron to a door-mat. The movement of the vehicle over the stony road kept up a lively clatter, which announced its coming from afar. There being for the moment, no house in sight, the proprietor was engaged in picking raspberries by the roadside.

The peddler—well, he was little, and stubby too, like his horse, for whom he had dismounted to lighten the pull up-hill. The animal seemed to know his business, for he stopped short as often as he came to a water-bar, blew a cloud from his nostrils, champed his bit, and distended his sides so alarmingly with a long, deep respiration, that the patched-up harness seemed in danger of bursting. He then glanced over his shoulder toward his master, shook his head deprecatingly, and, with a deep sigh, moved on.

The little merchant of small wares and great had on a rusty felt hat, rakishly set on one side of his bullet head, and a faded olive-green coat, rather short in the skirts, to conceal two patches in his trousers. The latter were tucked into a pair of dusty boots very much turned up at the toes. His face was a good deal sunburnt, and his hair, eyebrows, and mustache were the color of the road—sandy. Except a pair of scissors, the points of which protruded from his left-hand vest-pocket, I perceived no weapon offensive or defensive about him. He was a very innocent-looking peddler indeed.

As I was passing him he held out a handful of ripe fruit. The hand was disfigured with an ugly cicatrice: it was rather dirty. He accompanied the offer with an invitation to “hop on” his cart and ride. This double civility emanated from a gentleman and a peddler.

The walk from Crawford’s to Bethlehem is rather fatiguing; but I said, as in duty bound, “No” (I said it because the thought of riding through Bethlehem Street on the top of a peddler’s cart appeared ridiculous in my eyes—with shame I confess it), “thank you; your horse already has all he can pull, and I have only a mile or two farther to go.”

The peddler then fell into step with me, taking a long, even stride that brought back old recollections. I said,

“You have been a soldier.”

“How know you dat?”

“By your gait—you do not walk, you march: by that sabre-cut on your right hand.”

“Ha! you goot eyes haf; but it a payonet vas.”

Believing I saw a veteran of our great civil war, I asked, with undisguised interest,

“Where did you serve? Where were you wounded?”

“Von year und half in war mit Danemark, von year und half mit Oustria, und two mit Vrance.”

I looked at him again. What! That undersized, insignificant appearing little chap, whom I could easily have pitched into the ditch, he a soldier of Sadowa, of Metz, of Paris. Bah!

“So, the wars over, you emigrated to America?”

“Right avay. Ven I get home from Baris I tell Linda, my vife, ‘Look here, Linda: I been soldier six year. Now I plenty fighting got. Dere’s two hunder thaler in the knapsack. Shut your mouth tight, open your eye close, and we get out of dis double-quig.’ She say ‘Where I go?’ und I tell her the U-nited States, by hell, befor anoder var come. She begin to cry, I begin to schwear, und we settle it right avay.”

I asked if he minded telling how he came by the wound in his hand. This is what he told me in his broken English:

When Marshal Bazaine made his last desperate effort to shake off the deadly gripe the Prussians had fastened upon Metz, a battalion of tirailleurs suddenly surrounded an advanced post established by the Germans in the suburbs. The morning was foggy, and the surprise complete. The picket had hardly the time to run to their arms before they were driven back pell-mell on the reserve, amid a shower of balls. The reserve took refuge in a stone building surrounded by a thick hedge, maintaining an irregular fire from the windows. One of the last to cross the court-yard, with the French at his heels, was our German. Before he could gain the friendly shelter of the house he stumbled and fell headlong, his gun flying through the air as he came to the ground, so that he was not only prostrate but disarmed.

Half-stunned, he scrambled to his knees just as his nearest pursuer made a savage lunge with his sabre-bayonet. The Prussian instinctively grasped it. While trying thus to parry the deadly thrust, the keen weapon pierced his hand, and he was a second time borne to the earth, or, rather, pinned to it by his adversary’s bayonet.

“Rendez-vous Allemand, cochon!” screamed the Frenchman, bestriding the little Prussian with a look of mortal hatred.

“Je ne fous combrends,” replied the wounded man, drawing a revolver with his free hand and shooting his enemy dead. “I couldn’t helb it, I vas so mad,” finished the ex-soldier, running to serve two of his customers, who stood waiting for him at a gate by the roadside. I left him exhibiting ribbons, edgings, confectionery—heaven knows what!—with all the volubility of an experienced shopman.

IX. JEFFERSON, AND THE VALLEY OF ISRAEL’S RIVER.

IT remains to introduce the reader into the valley watered by Israel’s River, and for this purpose we take the rail from Bethlehem to Whitefield, and from Whitefield to Jefferson.

Like Bethlehem, Jefferson lies reposing in mid-ascent of a mountain. Here the resemblance ends. The mountain above it is higher, the valley beneath more open, permitting an unimpeded view up and down. The hill-side upon which the clump of hotels is situated makes no steep plunge into the valley, but inclines gently down to the banks of the river. Instead of crowding upon and jostling each other, the mountains forming opposite sides of this valley remain tranquilly in the alignment they were commanded not to overstep. The confusion there is reduced to admirable order here; the smooth slopes, the clean lines, the ample views, the roominess, so to speak, of the landscape, indicate that everything has been done without haste, with precision, and without deviation from the original plan, which contemplated a paradise upon earth.

Issuing from the wasted sides of Mount Jefferson and Mount Adams, Israel’s River runs a short north-westerly course of fifteen miles into the Connecticut at Lancaster. This beautiful stream received its name from Israel Glines, a hunter, who frequented these regions long before the settlement of the country. The road from Lancaster to Gorham follows the northern highlands of its valley to its head, then crossing the dividing ridge which separates its waters from those of Moose River, descends this stream to the Androscoggin at Gorham.

On the north side Starr King Mountain rises 2400 feet above the valley and 3800 feet above the sea. On the south side Cherry Mountain lifts itself 3670 feet higher than the tide-level. These two mountains form the broad basin through which Israel’s River flows for more than half its course. The village of Jefferson Hill lies on the southern slope of Starr King, and, of course, on the north side of the valley. Cherry Mountain, the most prominent object in the foreground, is itself a fine mountain study. It looks down through the great Notch, greeting Chocorua. It is conspicuous from any elevated point north of the Franconia group—from Fabyan’s, Bethlehem, Whitefield, Lancaster, etc. Owl’s Head is a conspicuous protuberance of this mountain. Over the right shoulder of Cherry Mountain stand the great Franconia Peaks, and to the right of these, its buildings visible, is Bethlehem. Now look up the valley.

THE NORTHERN PEAKS FROM JEFFERSON.

We see that we have taken one step nearer the northern wing of the great central edifice whose snowy dome dominates New England. We are advancing as if to turn this magnificent battle-line of Titans, on whose right Madison stands in an attitude to repel assault. Adams next erects his sharp lance, Jefferson his shining crescent, Washington his broad buckler, and Monroe his twin crags against the sky. Jefferson, as the nearest, stands boldly forward, showing its tremendous ravines, and long, supporting ridges, with great distinctness. Washington loses something of its grandeur here; at least it is not the most striking object; that must be sought for among the sable-sided giants standing at his right hand. The southern peaks, being foreshortened, show only an irregular and flattened outline which we do not look at a second time. From Madison to Lafayette, our two rallying points, the distance can hardly be less than forty miles as the eye travels: the entire circuit it is able to trace cannot fall short of seventy or eighty miles. As at Bethlehem, the view out of the valley is chiefly remarkable for its contrast with every other feature.

I took a peculiar satisfaction in these views, they were so ample, so extensive, so impressive. Here you really feel as if the whole noble company of mountains were marshalled solely for your delighted inspection. At no other point is there such unmeasured gratification in seeing, because the eye roves without hinderance over the grandest summits, placed like the Capitol at the head of its magnificent avenue. It alights first on one pinnacle, then flits to another. It interrogates these immortal structures with a calm scrutiny. It dives into the cool ravines; it seeks to penetrate, like the birds, the profound silence of the forests. It toils slowly up the broken crags, or loiters by the cascades, hanging like athletes from dizzy brinks. It shrinks, it admires, it questions; it is grave, gay, or thoughtful by turns. I do not believe the man lives who, looking up to those mountains as in the face of the Deity, can deliberately utter a falsehood: the lie would choke him.

Furthermore, you get the best idea of height here, because the long amphitheatre of mountains is seen steadily growing in stature toward the great central group; and comparison is, by all odds, the best of teachers for the eye.

If for no other reason than the respect due to age, Jefferson deserves a moment to itself. It was granted, October 3d, 1765, to John Goffe, under the name of Dartmouth. The road diverging here, and crossing Cherry Mountain to Fabyan’s, is the oldest, as it long was the only highway through the White Mountains. In those early times the travelled way was by the Connecticut River and Lancaster through this valley to the White Mountain Notch. The divergent road is the old turnpike between Vermont and Portland. Gradually, as settlements were pushed farther and farther up the Ammonoosuc, a way was made by Bath, Lisbon, Littleton, and Dalton, to Lancaster; but to pass beyond it was still necessary to follow the old route; nor was it until after the settlement of Bethlehem cleared the way that an execrable horse-path was made over the present great highway up the Ammonoosuc. In 1803 President Dwight passed over this new road on his second excursion to the great Notch. Few travellers would now be willing to undergo what he did to see the mountains. There were then only three or four houses in the sixteen miles between Bethlehem and the Notch.

One of the first settlers of Jefferson was Colonel Joseph Whipple, mentioned in the narrative of Nancy, the ill-starred mountain-maid, who died while following her faithless lover in his flight from Jefferson out of the mountains. Colonel Whipple lived on the road to Cherry Mountain, near the mill. In 1797 his was the only house on the road. During the Revolution a party of Indians, led by a white man, surrounded the house, and made Whipple their prisoner. Inventing some pretext, the colonel obtained leave to go into another room, from which he made his escape by a window and fled to the woods, where he successfully eluded pursuit.

Finding myself already well advanced toward the summit of Starr King, I finished the ascent of this mountain during an afternoon’s stroll. Nothing worthy of remark, except the exquisite view from the summit, presented itself. Here I met again a throng of old acquaintances, and encountered a crowd of new ones. Here I saw something like a shadow darken the side of Mount Washington, and watched it creep steadily up and up to the summit. The shadow was the smoke of the locomotive making its last ascent for the day, under the eyes of thousands of spectators, who look at it to turn away with a smile, a shrug, or a shake of the head.

The name of Starr King has become a household word with all travellers in the White Mountains. It was most fitting that he who interpreted Nature so well and so truly should receive his monument at her hands. To him the mountains were emblematic of her highest perfection. He loved them. His tone when speaking of them is always tender and caressing. They appealed to his rare and exquisite perception of the beautiful, to his fine and sensitive nature, capable of detecting intuitively what was hid from common eyes. He felt their presence to be ennobling and uplifting. He opened for us the charmed portal. We accompanied him through an earthly paradise then first revealed to us by the fervor and wealth of his description. He led us to the shadiest retreats, the coolest groves, the most secluded glens. He guided our footsteps up the steep mountain-side to the bleak summit. Thrice fitting was it that a mountain should perpetuate the name of Thomas Starr King. As was said at the grave of Gautier, he too dated “from the creation of the beautiful.”

I have now rested four days at Ethan Crawford’s, who lives on the side of Boy Mountain, five miles east of Jefferson Hill, on the road to Gorham. This Ethan is a son of the celebrated guide and host so well known to former travellers by the sobriquet of Keeper of the Mountains.

I go to the window, and facing toward the setting sun look down the broadening valley of Israel’s River, over the glistening house-tops of Whitefield, into and beyond the Connecticut Valley. I have Mitten Mountain and Cherry Mountain, both heavily wooded, just over the way, although the view of these elevations is in part intercepted by a nearer mountain, also covered with a vigorous forest. At this moment I hear the rush of the stream far down in the Hollow; and, following the serpentine line its dark course makes among the press of hills, am confronted by the massive slopes of Madison and Adams, the sombre ravine and castled crags of Jefferson, and the hoary crest of Washington. I am really in the heart of the mountains.

Swiftly from these mountains descend, with exquisite grace, enormous billows of deep sea-green, which do not subside but lift themselves proudly at the foot of those great overhanging walls of olive and malachite. Here rolling together, their foliage, bright or dark, repeats the effect of flaws sweeping over a sunny sea. Their deep hollows, arching sides, and limpid crests perfect the resemblance to the moment when, having exerted its utmost energy, the panting ocean stands exhausted and motionless in the grasp of the north wind.

These lower mountains, interposing a barrier between the two valleys of the Ammonoosuc and of Israel’s River, seem, you think, pushed up from the yielding earth simply by the enormous weight of the higher and neighboring mountains whose keen summit-lines cut New England in halves. At this hour these lines are edged with dull gold. All along the wavering heights I can detect with the naked eye isolated black crags, and can plainly see the deep dents in the broken cornices and capitals of the grand old mountains—those vestiges of their primordial architecture. Here the inclined ridge of the plateau, connecting the pinnacle of Washington with the peaks of Monroe, is traced along its whole extent. At this distance its craggy outline breaks in light ripples, announcing nothing of that wilderness of stones assailing the climber. All the asperities are softened into capricious harmonies. Below yawn the ravines.

The tracks of old slides and torrents in the side of Monroe remind you of the branches of a gigantic fossil tree, exposed by a fracture dividing the mountain in two. Such is, in fact, the impression received by looking at this mountain; but the object which most excites my attention is the broad and deep rent in the side of Jefferson, over which hang on one side the crumbling counterfeits of towers and battlements, while on the other cataracts, like necklaces, are suspended over its unfathomed abysses. Cloud-shadows drift noiselessly along the warm steeps. Cataracts glisten brightly in the sun. The grave peaks look down unmoved on the play of the one and the sport of the other.

The picture of life in East Jefferson would not be complete without the old hound dozing in the sun, the turkey-cocks strutting consequentially up and down, the barn-swallows darting swiftly in and out, the ring of young Ethan’s anvil, and the bleating of sheep far up the mountain-side. I see them nibbling the fresh herbage, and watch the gambols of the lambs like a child—only the child laughs aloud, and I do not laugh. Voices come down the hillside, and I see the slow movement of a hammock and the flutter of a dress in the maple-grove. Poetry and perfume mingle with the scent of wild-flowers and songs of golden-mouthed birds.

Evening does not drive us within doors, the nights are so enchanting. Day fades imperceptibly out. Even the stars seem disconcerted. One by one they peep, and then flit from view. We watch the slow mustering of the celestial host in silence. A meteor leaps from heaven to earth. The fire-flies resemble a shower of sparks, or, as darkness deepens, a phosphorescent sea. Dorbeetles hurtle the still air, and frogs sing barcarolles in the misty fens. Now the mountains put on their sable armor that is to render them invisible. Here the poet must assist us:

Light seems reluctant to leave the summits. It does not wholly fade out of the west until a late hour. In a clear and starry night all the surrounding mountains can be distinguished long after the valley is steeped in darkness. At half-past nine I could easily tell the time by my watch; and even at this hour a pale, nebulous light still lingered where the sun had gone down. So at near two thousand feet above the full sea one peers over into that deeper horizon where twilight and dawn meet and embrace on the dusky threshold of midnight.

While in the neighborhood, I devoted a day to an exploration of the Ravine of the Cascades. This ravine is entered from a point on the Gorham road about three miles distant from the Mount Adams House. A cart-way crosses the meadow here to an abandoned mill which is on the stream coming from the ravine, and by which you must ascend. A more beautiful example of a mountain brook it has never been my lot to see. The ascent is, however, tedious and toilsome in the extreme over the smooth and slippery rocks in its bed. Four hours of this brought me to the region of low trees, and to the foot of the first fall, which, I judged, descended about thirty feet. This way to the summit is open only to the most vigorous climbers. Even then it is better to descend into the ravine from the gap between Adams and Jefferson in order to visit these cascades.

The two most profitable excursions to be made here are undoubtedly the ascent of Mount Adams and the drive to the top of Randolph Hill. I have found on the first summit irrefragable evidence that, next to Washington and Lafayette, Adams is the peak which summer tourists are most desirous of ascending. A good path, on which there is a camp, leads to the summit. Having other views in regard to this mountain, which I had so often admired from a distance, I made a third reconnoisance of its outworks and its remarkable ravine, while en route for Randolph Hill.

Unquestionably fine as the views are along this road, on which you are at one time rolling smoothly over meadow or upland, with the great northern peak rising to its full height, or again toiling up a stony hill-side to obtain a much better idea of its real character and prodigious dimensions, the climax is reserved until, turning from the highway, you begin a slow advance up the long hill-side that makes an almost uninterrupted descent for five miles to the Androscoggin. Here I saw from a balcony what I had before seen from the ground-floor. The view is large and expansive. You look down the surging land into the Androscoggin. You look over among the mountains circling its head, huddled together like a frightened herd. You look down into the valley of the Moose, and through the gap in the great chain you again see the valley of the Peabody and the Carter Notch. Now you hold the great northern peaks admiringly at arm’s-length, as you would an old friend. Putting an imaginary hand on each broad shoulder, you scan them from head to foot. They submit calmly and with condescension to your lengthened scrutiny. Presently the low sun floods them with royal purple and gilds the topmost crags with refined gold. You glance up the valley. The little river comes like a stream of fire which the huge mountains seem crowding forward to trample out. Now look down. The same mountains seem spurning the glittering serpent away from their feet.

King’s Ravine is as well seen from this point, perhaps, as any. It is a huge natural niche excavated high up the mountain. You see everything—grizzled spruces, blackened shafts of stone, rifted walls, tawny crags—all in one glance. It is formidable and forbidding, though a way has been made through it by which to ascend Mount Adams. Now that there is a good path skirting the ravine and avoiding it, that look will usually suffice to deter sensible people from attempting to reach the summit by it. It is far better to descend into it and grope one’s way down through and underneath the bowlders. The same, and even greater, obstacles are encountered as in Tuckerman’s. In early spring the walls of the ravine are streaked with slowly-melting snows. These gulches, all converging toward the bottom, send a torrent roaring down with noise equal to surf on a hard sea-beach. This torrent is the principal source of the Moose.

Well do I remember my first venture here. I had walked from Gorham. Seeing a man chopping wood by the side of the road, I entered into conversation with him; but at the first suggestion I let fall of an intention to climb to the ravine he gaped open-mouthed. To ascend the brook to the ravine, the escarpment of the ravine to the high precipices, the precipices to the gate-way, was an exploit in those days. But this was long ago. A good climber now puts King’s Ravine down in his list of excursions with the same nonchalance that a belle of the ball-room enters an additional waltz on her card of engagements.[39]

One day I had fished along the Moose without success. Nothing could give a better idea of a mountain stream than this one, fed by snows and gushing from the breached side of Mount Adams. But either the water was too cold or the trout too wary. They persistently refused my fly. I tried red and brown hackle, then a white moth-miller; all to no purpose. Feeling downright hungry, I determined to seek a dinner elsewhere. Unjointing my rod, I returned, rather crestfallen, down the mountain into the road.

I knocked at the first house. Pretty soon the curtain of the first window at my left hand was partly drawn aside. I felt that I was under the fire of a pair of very black eyes. An instant after the door was half-opened by a woman past middle life, who examined me with a scared look while wiping her hands on a corner of her apron. Two or three white heads peeped out from the folds of her dress like young chickens from the old hen’s wing, and as many pairs of widely-opened eyes surveyed me with innocent surprise.

Perceiving her confusion, I was on the point of asking some indifferent question, about the distance, the road—I knew not what—but my stomach gave me a twinge of disdain, and I stood my ground. Hunger has no conscience: honor was at stake. In two words I made known my wants, I confess with confidence oozing away at my fingers’ ends.

Her confusion became still greater—so evident, indeed, that I took a backward step and stammered, quite humbly, “A hunch of bread-and-cheese or a cup of milk—” when the good-wife nailed me to the threshold.

Quoth she, “The men folks have all et their dinners, and there hain’t no more meat; but if you could put up with a few trout?”

Put up with trout! Did I hear aright? The word made my mouth water. I softly repeated it to myself—“Trout!”—would I put up with trout? Not to lower myself in this woman’s estimation, I replied that, seeing there was nothing else in the house, I would put up with trout. Let it suffice that I made a repast fit for a prince, and, like a prince, being served by a bashful maiden with cheeks like the arbutus, which everybody knows shows its most delicate pink only in the seclusion of its native woods.

My hours of leisure in Jefferson being numbered, having now made the circuit of the great range by all the avenues penetrating or environing it, the reader’s further indulgence is craved while his faithful guide points his well-worn alpenstock to the last stage of our mountain journeys.

Behold us at last, after many capricious wanderings, after calculated avoidance, approaching the inevitable end. We are en route for Fabyan’s by the road over Cherry Mountain. This road is twelve miles long. As we mount with it the side of Cherry Mountain the beautiful vistas continually detain us. We are now climbing the eastern wall of the valley, so long the prominent figure from the heights of Jefferson. We now look back upon the finely-traced slopes of Starr King, with the village luxuriously extended in the sun. For some time we are like two travellers going in opposite directions, but who turn again and again for a last adieu. Now the forest closes over us and we see each other no more.

Noonday found me descending that side of the mountain overlooking the Ammonoosuc Valley. Where the Cherry Mountain road joins the valley highway the White Mountain House, an old-time tavern, stands. The railway passes close to its door. A mile more over the level brings us to Fabyan’s, so called from one of the old mountain landlords, whose immortality is thus assured. Now that mammoth caravansary, which seems all eyes, is reached just as the doors opening upon the great hall disclose a long array of tables, while permitting a delicious odor to assail our nostrils.

To speak to the purpose, the Fabyan House really commands a superb front view of Mount Washington, from which it is not six miles in a bee-line. All the southern peaks, among which Mount Pleasant is undoubtedly the most conspicuous for its form and its mass, and for being thrown so boldly out from the rest, are before the admiring spectator; but the northern peaks, with the exception of Clay and Jefferson, are cut off partly by the slopes of Mount Deception, which rises directly before the hotel, partly by the trend of the great range itself to the north-east. The view is superior from the neighborhood of the Mount Pleasant House, half a mile beyond Fabyan’s, where Mount Jefferson is fully and finely brought into the picture.

MOUNT WASHINGTON, FROM FABYAN’S.

The railway is seen mounting a foot-hill, crossing a second and higher elevation, then dimly carved upon the massive flanks of Mount Washington itself, as far as the long ridge which ascends from the north in one unbroken slope. It is then lost. We see the houses upon the summit, and from the Mount Pleasant House the little cluster of roofs at the base. A long and well-defined gully, exactly dividing the mountain, is frequently taken to be the railway, which is really much farther to the left. The smoke of a train ascending or descending still further indicates the line of iron, which we admit to the category of established facts only under protest.

Sylvester Marsh, of Littleton, New Hampshire, was the man who dreamed of setting aside the laws of gravitation with a puff of steam. Like all really great inventions, his had to run the gauntlet of ridicule. When the charter for a railway to the summit of Mount Washington was before the Legislature a member moved that Mr. Marsh also have leave to build one to the moon. Had the motion prevailed, I am persuaded Mr. Marsh would have built it. Really, the project seemed only a little more audacious. But in three years from the time work was begun (April, 1866) the track was laid and the mountain in irons.[40] The summit which the superstitious Indian dared not approach, nor the most intrepid white hunter ascend, is now annually visited by thousands, without more fatigue than would follow any other excursion occupying the same time. The excitement of a first passage, the strain upon the nerves, is quite another thing.

In a little grass-grown enclosure, on the other side of the Ammonoosuc, is a headstone bearing the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF CAP ELIEZER ROSBROOK WHO DIED SEP. 25 1817 In the 70 Year Of His Age. When I lie buried deep in dust, My flesh shall be thy care These withering limbs to thee I trust To raise them strong and fair. WIDOW HANNAH ROSEBROOK Died May 4, 1829 Aged 84 Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. For they rest from their labors And their works do follow them.

So far as is known Rosebrook was the first white settler on this spot. One account[41] says he came here in 1788, another fixes his settlement in 1792.[42] His military title appears to have been derived from services rendered on the Canadian frontier during the Revolutionary War. Rosebrook was a true pioneer, restless, adventurous, and fearless. He was a man of large and athletic frame. From his home in Massachusetts he had first removed to what is now Colebrook, then to Guildhall, Vt., and lastly here, to Nash and Sawyer’s Location, exchanging the comforts which years of toil had surrounded him with, abandoning the rich and fertile meadow-lands of the Connecticut, for a log-cabin far from any human habitation, and with no other neighbors than the bears and wolves that prowled unharmed the shaggy wilderness at his door. With his axe this sturdy yeoman attacked the forest closely investing his lonely cabin. Year by year, foot by foot, he wrested from it a little land for tillage. With his gun he kept the beast of prey from his little enclosure, or provided venison or bear’s meat for the wife and little ones who anxiously awaited his return from the hunt. Hunger and they were no strangers. For years the strokes of Rosebrook’s axe, or the crack of his rifle, were the only sounds that disturbed the silences of ages. Little by little the circle was enlarged. One after another the giants of the forest fell beneath his blows. But years of resolute conflict with nature and with privation found him at last in the enjoyment of a dearly-earned prosperity. Travellers began to pass his doors. The Great White Mountain Notch soon became a thoroughfare, which could never have been safely travelled but for Rosebrook’s intrepidity and Rosebrook’s hospitality. In this way began the feeble tide of travel through these wilds. In this way the splendidly equipped hotel, with its thousands of guests the locomotive every hour brings to its door, traces its descent from the rude and humble cabin of Eleazer Rosebrook.