The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

Like ivy on storied and crumbling towers, so high up the cadaverous cliffs of Willey the hardy fir-tree feels its way, insinuating its long roots in every fissure where a little mould has crept, but mounting always like the most intrepid of climbers. Upon the other side, the massed and plumed forest advances boldly up the sharp declivity of Webster; but in mid-ascent is met and ploughed in long, thin lines by cataracts of stones, poured down upon it from the summit. Only a few straggling bushes succeed in mounting higher; and far up, upon the very edge of the crumbling parapet, one solitary cedar tottered. The thought of imminent destruction prevailed over every other. Indeed, it seemed as if one touch would precipitate the whole mass of earth, stones, and trees into the vale beneath.

Between these high, receding walls, which draw widely apart at the outlet of the pass, mountains rise, range upon range. Over the flattened Nancy summits, Chocorua lifts his crested head once more into view. We pass in review the summits massed between, which on this morning were of a deep blue-black, and stood vigorously forth from a sad and boding sky.

From the ledges of Mount Willard, Washington and the peaks between are visible in a clear day. This morning they were muffled in clouds, which a strong upper current of air began slowly to disperse. We, therefore, secured a good position, and waited patiently for the unveiling.

Little by little the clouds shook themselves free from the mountain, and began a slow, measured movement toward the Ammonoosuc Valley. As they were drawn out thinner and thinner, like fleeces, by invisible hands, we began to be conscious of some luminous object behind them, and all at once, through a rift, there burst upon the sight the grand mass of Washington, all resplendent in silvery whiteness. From moment to moment the trooping clouds, as if pausing to pay homage to the illustrious recluse, encompassed it about. Then moving on, the endless procession again and again disclosed the snowy crest, shining out in unshrouded effulgence. To look was to be wonder-struck – to be dumb.

As the clouds unrolled more and more their snowy billows, other and lower summits rose above, as on that memorable morn after the Deluge, where they appeared like islands of crystal floating in a sea of silvery vapor. We gazed for an hour upon this unearthly display, which derived unique splendor from fitful sun-rays shot through the folds of surrounding clouds, then drawing off, and again darting unawares upon the stainless white of the summits. It was a dream of the celestial spheres to see the great dome, one moment glittering like beaten silver, another shining with the dull lustre of a gigantic opal.

I have since made several journeys through the Notch by the railway. The effect of the scenery, joined with some sense of peril in the minds of the timid, is very marked. Old travellers find a new and veritable sensation of excitement; while new ones forget fatigue, drop the novels they have been reading, maintaining a state of breathless suspense and admiration until the train vanishes out at the rocky portal, after an ascent of nearly six hundred feet in two miles.

In effect, the road is a most striking expression of the maxim, “L’audace, et toujours de l’audace,” as applied to modern engineering skill. From Bemis’s to Crawford’s its way is literally carved out of the side of the mountain. But if the engineers have stolen a march upon it, the thought, how easily the mountain could shake off this puny, clinging thing, prevailing over every other, announces that the mountain is still the master.

There are no two experiences which the traveller retains so long or so vividly as this journey through the great Notch, and this survey from the ledges of Mount Willard, which is so admirably placed to command it. To my mind, the position of this mountain suggests the doubt whether nature did not make a mistake here. Was not the splitting of the mountains an after-thought?

X.
THE ASCENT FROM CRAWFORD’S

 
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds.
With a diadem of snow. —Manfred.
 

AT five in the morning I was aroused by a loud rap at the door. In an instant I had jumped out of bed, ran to the window, and peered out. It was still dark; but the heavens were bright with stars, so bright that there was light in the room. Now or never was our opportunity. Not a moment was to be lost.

I began a vigorous reveille upon the window-pane. George half opened one sleepy eye, and asked if the house was on fire. The colonel pretended not to have heard.

“Up, sluggards!” I exclaimed; “the mountain is ours!”

“Do you know who first tempted man to go up into a high mountain?” growled George.

“Satan!” whined a smothered voice from beneath the bedclothes.

The case evidently was one which demanded heroic treatment. In an instant I whipped off the bedclothes; in another I received two violent blows full in the chest, which compelled me to give ground. The pillows were followed by the bolster, which I parried with a chair, the bolster by a sortie of the garrison in puris naturalibus. For a few seconds the mélée was furious, the air thick with flying missiles. By a common instinct we drew apart, with the intention of renewing the combat, when we heard quick blows upon the partition at the left, and scared voices from the chamber at the right demanding what was the matter. George dropped his pillow, and articulated in a broken voice, “Malediction! I am awake.”

“Come, gentlemen,” I urged, “if you are sufficiently diverted, dress yourselves, and let us be off. At the present moment you remind me of the half-armed warriors on the pediment of the Parthenon.”

“I take it you mean the frieze,” said George, with chattering teeth.

The colonel was on all-fours, picking up the different articles of his wardrobe from the four corners of the chamber. “My stocking,” said he, groping among the furniture.

“What do you call this?” inquired George, fishing the dripping article from the water-pitcher.

“Eh! where the deuce is my watch?” redemanded the colonel, still seeking.

“Perhaps this is yours?” George again suggested, drawing it, with mock dexterity, as he had seen Hermann do, from a boot-leg.

We quickly threw on our clothes, but at the moment of starting George put his hand into his breast and made a frightful grimace.

“What is it?” we both asked in one breath. “What is the matter?”

“My pocket-book is gone.”

After five minutes’ ransacking in every hole and corner of the room, and after shaking the bedclothes carefully, all to no purpose, it was discovered that George and myself had exchanged coats. We then went down-stairs into the great hall, where a solitary jet of gas burnt blue, and a sleepy watchman dozed on a settee. The morning air was more than chilly: it was “a nipping and an eager air.” There were two or three futile attempts at pleasantry, but hunger, darkness, and the cold quickly silenced them. A man is never himself when roused at five in the morning. No matter how desirable the excursion may have looked the night before, turning out of a warm bed to hurry on your clothes by candle-light, and to take the road fasting, strips it of all glamour.

Day broke disclosing a clear sky, up which the rosy tints of sunrise were streaming. The last star trembled in the zone of dusky blue above the grand old hills, like a tear-drop on the eyelids of the night. The warm color flowed over the frosted heads of the pines, mantling their ghastly white with the warm glow of reviving life. Then the eye fell upon the lower forests, still wrapped in deep shadows, the tiny lake, the boats, and, lastly, the oval plain, or vestibule of the Notch, above which ascended the shaggy sides of Mount Willard, and the retreating outline of Mount Webster. The little plain was white with hoar-frost; the frozen fountain dripped slowly into its basin, like a penitent telling its beads.

After a hasty breakfast, despatched with mountain appetites, behold us at half-past six entering the forest in Indian file! My companions again found their accustomed gayety, and soon the solemn old woods echoed with mirth. Our hopes were as high as the mountain itself.

A détour as far as Gibbs’s Falls cost a good half-hour in recovering the bridle-path; but we were at length en route, myself at the head, George behind. The colonel carried the flask, and marched in the middle. He was considered the most incorruptible of the three; but this precaution was deemed an indispensable safeguard, should he, in a moment of forgetfulness, carry the flask to his lips.

The side of Mount Clinton, which we were now climbing, is very steep. The name of bridle-path, which they give the long gully we had entered, is a snare for pedestrians, but a greater delusion for cavaliers. The rains, the melting snows, have so channelled it as to leave little besides interlaced roots of old trees and loose bowlders in its bed. Higher up it is nothing but the bare course of a mountain torrent.

The long rain had thoroughly soaked the earth, rendering it miry and slippery to the feet; the heavy air, compounded of a thousand odors, hindered, rather than assisted, the free play of the lungs. Our progress was slow, our breathing quick and labored. Every leaf trembled with rain-drops, so that the flight of a startled bird overhead sprinkled us with fine spray. Finches chattered in the tree-tops, squirrels scolded us sharply from fallen logs.

Looking up was like looking through some glorious, illuminated window – the changed foliage seemed to have fixed the gorgeous hues of the sunset. Through its crimson and gold, violet and green, patches of blue sky greeted us with fair promise for the day. Looking ahead, the path zigzagged among ascending trees, plunged into the sombre depths above our heads, and was lost. One impression that I received may be, yet I doubt, common to others. On either side of me the forest seemed all in motion; the dusky trunks striding silently and stealthily by, moving when we moved, halting when we halted. The greenwood was as full of illusions as the human heart. I can never repress a certain fear in a forest, and to-day this seemed peopled with sprites, gnomes, and fauns. Once or twice a crow rose lazily from the top of a dead pine, and flew croaking away; but we thought not of omens or auguries, and pushed gayly on up the sharp ascent.

It was a wild woodland walk, with few glimpses out of the forest. For about a mile we steered toward the sun, climbing one of the long braces of the mountain. Stopping near here, at a spring deliciously pure and cold, we soon turned toward the north. As we advanced up the mountain the sun began to gild the tree-tops, and stray beams to play at hide-and-seek among the black trunks. We saw dells of Arcadian loveliness, and we heard the noise of rivulets, trickling in their depths, that we did not see.

Wh-r-r-r! rose a startled partridge, directly in our path, bringing us to a full stop. Another and another took flight.

“Gad!” muttered the colonel, wiping his forehead, “I was dreaming of old times; I declare I thought the mountain had got our range, and was shelling us.”

“Salmis of partridge; sauce aux champignons,” said George, licking his lips, and looking wistfully after the birds. You see, one spoke from the head, the other from the stomach.

Half an hour’s steady tramp brought us to an abandoned camp, where travellers formerly passed the night. A long stretch of corduroy road, and we were in the region of resinous trees. Here it was like going up rickety stairs, the mossed and sodden logs affording only a treacherous foothold. Evidence that we were nearing the summit was on all sides. Patches of snow covered the ground and were lodged among the branches. From these little runlets made their way into the path, as the most convenient channel. There were many dead pines, having their curiously distorted limbs hung with the long gray lichen called “old man’s beard.” Multitudes of great trees, prostrated by the wind, lay rotting along the ground, or had lodged in falling, constituting a woful picture of wreck and ruin. Here was not only the confusion and havoc of a primitive forest, untouched by the axe, but the battle-ground of ages, where frost, fire, and flood had steadily and pitilessly beaten the forest back in every desperate effort made to scale the summit. Prone upon the earth, stripped naked, or bursting their bark, the dead trees looked like fallen giants despoiled of their armor, and left festering upon the field. But we advanced to a scene still more weird.

The last mile gives occasional glimpses into the Ammonoosuc Valley, of Fabyan’s, of the hamlet at the base of Washington, and of the mountains between Fabyan’s and Jefferson. The last half-mile is a steady planting of one foot before another up the ledges. We left the forest for a scanty growth of firs, rooted among enormous rocks, and having their branches pinned down to their sides by snow and ice. The whole forest had been seized, pinioned, and cast into a death-like stupor. Each tree seemed to keep the attitude in which it was first overtaken; each silvered head to have dropped on its breast at the moment the spell overcame it. Perpetual imprisonment rewarded the temerity of the forest for thus invading the dominion of the Ice King. There it stood, all glittering in its crystal chains!

But as we threaded our way among these trees, still as statues, the sun came valiantly to the rescue. A warm breath fanned our cheeks and traversed the ice-locked forest. Instantly a thrill ran along the mountain. Quick, snapping noises filled the air. The trees burst their fetters in a trice. Myriad crystals fluttered overhead, or fell tinkling on the rocks at our feet. Another breath, and tree after tree lifted its bowed head gracefully erect. The forest was free.

George, who began by asking every few rods how much farther it was, now repeated the question for the fiftieth time; but we paid no attention.

We now entered a sort of liliputian forest, not higher than the knee, but which must have presented an almost insuperable barrier to early explorers of the mountain. In fact, as they could neither go through it nor around it, they must have walked over it, the thick-matted foliage rendering this the only alternative. No one could tell how long these trees had been growing, when a winter of unheard-of severity destroyed them all, leaving only their skeletons bleaching in the sun and weather. Wrenched, twisted, and made to grow the wrong way by the wind, the branches resembled the cast-off antlers of some extinct race of quadrupeds which had long ago resorted to the top of the mountain. The girdle of blasted trees below was piteous, but this was truly a strange spectacle. Indeed, the pallid forehead of the mountain seemed wearing a crown of thorns.

Getting clear of the dwarf-trees, or knee-wood, as it is called in the Alps, we ran quickly up the bare summit ledge. The transition from the gloom and desolation below into clear sunshine and free air was almost as great as from darkness to light. We lost all sense of fatigue; we felt only exultation and supreme content.

Here we were, we three, more than four thousand feet above the sea, confronted by an expanse so vast that no eye but an eagle’s might grasp it, so thronged with upstarting peaks as to confound and bewilder us out of all power of expression. One feeling was uppermost – our own insignificance. We were like flies on the gigantic forehead of an elephant.

However, we had climbed and were astride the ridge-pole of New England. The rains which beat upon it descend on one side to the Atlantic, on the other to Long Island Sound. The golden sands which are the glory of the New England coast have been borne, atom by atom, grain by grain, from this grand laboratory of Nature; and if you would know the source of her great industries, her wealth, her prosperity, seek it along the rivers which are born of these skies, cradled in these ravines, and nourished amid the tangled mazes of these impenetrable forests. How, like beautiful serpents, their sources lie knotted and coiled in the heart of these mountains! How lovingly they twine about the feet of the grand old hills! Too proud to bear its burdens, they create commerce, building cities, scattering wealth as they run on. No barriers can stay, no chains fetter their free course. They laugh and run on.

We stood facing the south. Far down beneath us, at our left, was the valley of Mount Washington River. A dark, serpentine rift in the unbroken forest indicated the course of the stream. Mechanically we turned to follow it up the long gorge through which it flows, to where it issues, in secret, from the side of Mount Washington itself. In front of us arose the great Notch Mountains; beyond, mountains were piled on mountains; higher still, like grander edifices of some imperial city, towered the pinnacles of Lafayette, Carrigain, Chocorua, Kearsarge, and the rest. Yes, there they were, pricking the keen air with their blunted spears, fretting the blue vault with the everlasting menace of a power to mount higher if it so willed, filling us with the daring aspiration to rise as high as they pointed. Here and there something flashed brightly upon the eye; but it was no easy thing to realize that those little pools we saw glistening among the mountains were some of the largest lakes in New England.

Leaving the massive Franconia group, the eye swept over the Ammonoosuc basin, over the green heights of Bethlehem and Littleton, overtopped by the distant Green Mountains; then along the range dividing the waters flowing from the western slopes of the great summits into separate streams; then Whitefield, Lancaster, Jefferson; and, lastly, rested upon the amazing apparition of Washington, rising two thousand feet above the crags on which we stood. Perched upon the cap-stone of this massive pile, like a dove-cot on the cupola of St. Peter’s, we distinctly saw the Summit House. Between us and our goal rose the brown heads of Pleasant, Franklin, and Monroe, over which our path lay. All these peaks and their connecting ridges were freely spattered with snow.

“By Jove!” ejaculated the colonel at last; “this beats Kentucky!”

It is necessary to say two words concerning a spectacle equally novel and startling to dwellers in more temperate regions, and which now held us in mingled astonishment and admiration. We could hardly believe our eyes. This bleak and desolate ridge, where only scattered tufts of coarse grass, stinted shrubs, or spongy moss gave evidence of life, which seemed never to have known the warmth of a sunbeam, was transformed into a garden of exquisite beauty by the frozen north wind.

We remarked the iced branches of dwarf firs inhabiting the upper zone of the mountain as we passed them; but here, on this summit, the surfaces of the rocks actually bristled with spikes, spear-heads, and lance-points, all of ice, all shooting in the direction of the north wind. The forms were as various as beautiful, but most commonly took that of a single spray, though sometimes they were moulded into perfect clusters of berries, branching coral, or pendulous crystals. Common shrubs were transformed to diamond aigrettes, coarse grasses into bird-of-paradise plumes, by the simple adhesion of frost-dust. The iron rocks attracted the flying particles as the loadstone attracts steel. Cellini never fashioned anything half so marvellous as this exquisite workmanship of a frozen mist. Yet, though it was all surpassingly beautiful, it was strangely suggestive of death. There was no life – no, not even the chirrup of an insect. No wonder our eyes sought the valley.

Hardly had we time to take in these unaccustomed sights, when, to our unspeakable dismay, ominous streakings of gray appeared in the southern and eastern horizons. The sun was already overclouded, and emitted only a dull glare. For a moment a premonition of defeat came over me; but another look at the summit removed all indecision, and, without mentioning my fears to my companions, we all three plunged into the bushy ravine that leads to Mount Pleasant.

Suddenly I felt the wind in my face, and the air was filled with whirling snow-flakes. We had not got over half the distance to the second mountain, before the ill-omened vapors had expanded into a storm-cloud that boded no good to any that might be abroad on the mountain. My idea was that we could gain the summit before it overtook us. I accordingly lengthened my steps, and we moved on at a pace which brought us quickly to the second mountain. But, rapidly as we had marched, the storm was before us.

Here began our first experience of the nature of the task in hand. The burly side of Mount Pleasant was safely turned, but beyond this snow had obliterated the path, which was only here and there indicated by little heaps of loose stones. It became difficult, and we frequently lost it altogether among the deep drifts. We called a halt, passed the flask, and attempted to derive some encouragement from the prospect.

The storm-cloud was now upon us in downright earnest. Already the flying scud drifted in our faces, and poured, like another Niagara, over the ridge one long, unbroken billow. The sun retreated farther and farther, until it looked like a farthing dip shining behind a blanket. Another furious blast, and it disappeared altogether. And now, to render our discomfiture complete, the gigantic dome of Washington, that had lured us on, disappeared, swallowed up in a vortex of whirling vapor; and presently we were all at once assailed by a blinding snow-squall. Henceforth there was neither luminary nor landmark to guide us. None of us had any knowledge of the route, and not one had thought of a guide. To render our situation more serious still, George now declared that he had sprained an ankle.

If I had never before realized how the most vigorous travellers had perished within a few paces of the summit, I understood it this day.

Bathed in perspiration, warned by the fresh snow that the path would soon be lost beyond recovery, we held a brief council upon the situation before and behind us. It was more than aggravating either way.

All three secretly favored a retreat. Without doubt it was not only the safest, but the wisest course to pursue; yet to turn back was to give in beaten, and defeat was not easy to accept. Even George, notwithstanding his ankle, was pluckily inclined to go on. There was no time to lose, so we emerged from the friendly shelter of a jutting ledge upon the trackless waste before us.

From this point, at the northern foot of Pleasant, progress was necessarily slow. We could not distinguish objects twenty paces through the flying scud and snow, and we knew vaguely that somewhere here the mountain ridge suddenly broke off, on both sides, into precipices thousands of feet down. George, being lame, kept the middle, while the colonel and I searched for stone-heaps at the right and left.

We were marching along thus, when I heard an exclamation, and saw the colonel’s hat driven past me through the air. The owner ran rapidly over to my side.

“Take care!” I shouted, throwing myself in his path; “take care!”

“But my hat!” cried he, pushing on past me. The wind almost drowned our voices.

“Are you mad?” I screamed, gripping his arm, and forcing him backward by main strength.

He gave me a dazed look, but seemed to comprehend nothing of my excitement. George halted, looking first at one, then at the other.

“Wait,” said I, loosening a piece of ice with my boot. On both sides of us rose a whirlpool of boiling clouds. I tossed the piece of ice in the direction the hat had taken – not a sound; a second after the first – the same silence; a third in the opposite direction. We listened intently, painfully, but could hear nothing except the loud beating of our own hearts. A dozen steps more would have precipitated our companion from the top to the bottom of the mountain.

I looked at the man whose arm I still tightly grasped. He was as pale as a corpse.

“This must be Oakes’s Gulf,” I ventured, in order to break the silence, after we had all taken a pull at the flask.

“This is Oakes’s Gulf – agreed; but where in perdition is my hat?” demanded the colonel, wiping the big drops from his forehead.

After he had tied a handkerchief around his head, we crossed this Devil’s Bridge, with the caution of men fully alive to the consequences of a false step, and with that tension of the nerves which announces the terrible or the unknown.⁹

We had not gone far when a tremendous gust sent us reeling toward the abyss. I dropped on my hands and knees, and my companions followed suit. We arose, shook off the snow, and slowly mounted the long, steep, and rocky side of Franklin. Upon gaining the summit, the walking was better. We were also protected by the slope of the mountain. The worst seemed over. But what fantastic objects were the big rocks, scattered, or rather lying in wait, along our route! What grotesque appearances continually started out of the clouds! Now it was an enormous bear squatted on his haunches; now a dark-browed sphinx; and more than once we could have sworn we saw human beings stealthily watching us from a distance. How easy to imagine these weird objects lost travellers, suddenly turned to stone for their presumptuous invasion of the domain of terrors! It really seemed as if we had but to stamp our feet to see a legion of demons start into life and bar our way.

Say what you will, we could not shake off the dread which these unearthly objects inspired; nor could we forbear, were it at the risk of being turned to stone, looking back, or peering furtively from side to side when some new apparition thrust its hideous suggestions before us. What would you have? Are we not all children who shrink from entering a haunted chamber, and shudder in the presence of death? Well, the mountain was haunted, and death seemed near. We forgot fatigue, forgot cold, to yield to this mysterious terror, which daunted us as no peril could do, and froze us with vague presentiment of the unknown.

Covered from head to foot with snow, bearded with icicles, tracking this solitude, which refused the echo of a foot-fall, like spectres, we seemed to have entered the debatable ground forever dedicated to spirits having neither home on earth nor hope in heaven, but doomed to wander up and down these livid crags for an eternity of woe. The mountain had already taken possession of our physical, now it seized upon our moral nature. Neither the one nor the other could resist the impressions which naked rock, furious tempest, and hidden danger stamped on every foot of the way.

In this way we reached Mount Monroe, last of the peaks in our route to the summit, where we were forced to pick our way among the rocks, struggling forward through drifts frequently waist deep.

It was here that, finding myself some distance in advance of the others – for poor George was lagging painfully – I halted for them to come up. I was choking with thirst, aggravated by eating the damp snow. As soon as the colonel was near enough – the wind only could be heard – I made a gesture of a man drinking. He did not seem to understand, though I impatiently repeated the pantomime. He came to where I stood.

“The flask!” I exclaimed.

He drew it slowly from his pocket, and handed it to me with a hang-dog look that I failed for the moment to interpret. I put it to my lips, shook it, turned it bottom up. Not a drop!

And, nevertheless, this was the man in whom I had trusted. Cæsar only succumbed to the dagger of Brutus; but I had not the courage to fall with dignity under this new misfortune, and so stood staring at the flask and the culprit alternately.

“Say that our cup is now full,” suggested the incorrigible George. “The paradox strikes me as ingenious and appropriate.”

It really was too bad. Snow and sleet had wet us to the skin, and clung to our frozen garments. Our hands and faces were swollen and inflamed; our eyes half closed and blood-shot. Even this short minute’s halt set our teeth chattering. George could only limp along, and it was evident could not hold out much longer. Just now my uneasiness was greater than my sympathy. He was an accessory before the fact; for, while I was diligently looking out the path, he had helped the colonel to finish the flask.

We were nearing the goal: so much was certain. But the violence of the gale, increasing with the greater altitude, warned us against delay. We therefore pushed on across the stony terraces extending beyond, and were at length rewarded by seeing before us the heaped-up pile of broken granite constituting the peak of Washington, and which we knew still rose a thousand feet above our heads. The sight of this towering mass, which seems formed of the débris of the Creation, is well calculated to stagger more adventurous spirits than the three weary and foot-sore men who stood watching the cloud-billows, silently rolling up, dash themselves unceasingly against its foundations. We looked first at the mountain, then in each other’s faces, then began the ascent.

For near an hour we toiled upward, sometimes up to the middle in snow, always carefully feeling our way among the treacherous pitfalls it concealed. Compelled to halt every few rods to recover breath, the distance traversed could not be great. Still, with dogged perseverance, we kept on, occasionally lending each other a helping hand out of a drift, or from rock to rock; but no words were exchanged, for the stock of gayety with which we set out was now exhausted. The gravity of the situation began to create uneasiness in the minds of my companions. All at once I heard my name called out. I turned. It was the colonel, whose halloo in midst of this stony silence startled me.

“You pretend,” he began, “that it’s only a thousand feet from the plateau to the top of this accursed mountain?”