The Indians always held the White Mountains in reverent awe. They were
the religious shrine of the Pennacooks, who roamed over the region
between the mountains and the sea. The early historian Josselyn in the
seventeenth century recorded, of these Indians: "Ask them whither they
go when they dye; they will tell you, pointing with their finger, to
Heaven, beyond the White Mountains." Passaconaway, the great
wizard-chief of the Pennacooks, who was finally converted to
Christianity by the Apostle Eliot, is said to have lived to the great
age of one hundred and twenty years, and then to have been translated.
The Pennacook tradition was that in the cold of mid-winter he was
carried away from them in a weird sleigh drawn by wolves, that took
him to the summit of Mount Washington, whence he was straightway
received into Heaven:
"Far o'er Winnepiseogee's ice,
With brindled wolves all harnessed then and there,
High seated on a sledge made in a trice
On Mount Agiochook of hickory,
He lashed and reeled and sang right jollily,
And once upon a car of flaming fire,
The dreadful Indian shook with fear to see
The King of Pennacook, his chief, his sire,
Ride flaming up to Heaven, than any mountain higher."
The first house on the mountain, built by Ethan Allen Crawford in
1821, was a small stone cabin having the floor covered with moss for
bedding, the only furniture being a chest to contain blankets, and a
stove; a roll of sheet-lead serving as the "register," on which the
guests scratched their names and the date of visit. This cabin was
swept away by a terrific storm in August, 1826. Some time later an
eccentric individual took possession of the summit, naming it "Trinity
Height," and called himself the modern "Israel of Jerusalem,"
proposing to inaugurate in this exalted place a new Order, styled "The
Christian or Purple and Royal Democracy." With an eye to business, he
put toll-gates on the bridlepaths and taxed each visitor a dollar.
There were bitter quarrels about the ownership for years afterwards,
and the first winter ascent was made by a sheriff, who went up to
serve a writ in 1858, and found frost over a foot thick enveloping
everything. The lawsuits, however, were ultimately fought out and
settled, and the present owners have been undisturbed for years.
The view from the summit is widespread. The most distant objects that
have been recognized are Mount Beloeil, northwest in Canada, and
Mount Ebeeme, northeast beyond the Moosehead Lake in Maine, each one
hundred and thirty-five miles away. These distant mountain tops are
said to be brought into view only by the aid of atmospheric
refraction, in raising them, as they are actually below the horizon.
Also northeast is Mount Abraham, sixty-eight miles away; and were it
not for this, Maine's greatest mountain, Katahdin, in the wilderness
of the upper Penobscot, might be seen, but Abraham obstructs the view.
Katahdin, rising nearly fifty-four hundred feet, is one hundred and
sixty-five miles northeast. Saddleback, at the head of the Rangeley
Lakes, is seen sixty miles away, and Bald Mountain, to the right, one
hundred miles off in Maine. To the eastward is seen Mount Megunticook,
in the Camden range, on Penobscot Bay, one hundred and fifteen miles
off. To the east and southeast for many miles is the ocean between
Casco Bay and Cape Ann. The sea, however, is never well viewed from
Mount Washington, because it is so nearly the color of the sky at the
horizon as to be difficult of acute discernment. The moving vessels,
however, can be readily seen by the aid of a glass. The bright waters
of Sebago Lake are to the southeast, and beyond are the shores of
Casco Bay and the city of Portland, sixty-seven miles off. The low
round swell of Mount Agamenticus shows faintly above the horizon,
seventy-nine miles south-southeast, and to the right there is also a
faint trace of the Isles of Shoals, ninety-six miles off. To the
southeast, twenty-two miles, is the sharpest and noblest peak of all
in the galaxy of view, the high, white, pyramidal top of Chocorua,
having the broad island-studded Lake Winnepesaukee to the right, with
the distant double peak of Mount Belknap seen over its clear waters.
Just to the west of south, and one hundred and four miles distant, is
the faint rounded summit of Mount Monadnock, near the southwest corner
of New Hampshire, and nearer is Mount Kearsarge, seventy miles off,
and appearing much similar. The Nelson Pinnacle, farther away, is to
the right of Kearsarge. The most distant mountain discernible in that
direction is Mount Wachusett, one hundred and twenty-six miles off. To
the southwest are seen Ascutney and the twin Killington Peaks, near
Rutland, Vermont, eighty-eight miles away. To the west are seen
plainly the two Green Mountain peaks of Mansfield and the Camel's
Hump, seventy-eight miles off, and over the northern slope of the
latter can be faintly detected the great Adirondack Mount Whiteface,
one hundred and thirty miles distant. Such is the splendid circuit of
mountains forming the horizon for Mount Washington. Among the striking
objects in the view are the deep river valleys as they go out from the
Presidential range. The Peabody flows through the Glen north to the
Androscoggin, which can be traced far northeast. The Ellis flows south
to the Saco, which goes out through the Notch and away southeast. The
valley of the Ammonoosuc runs off westward, where along the horizon is
the great trough of the Connecticut Valley stretching all across the
scene. Lakes and ponds are studded among the dark summits, and at the
observer's feet are the springs feeding many great rivers of New
England, the Merrimack, to the southward, also having its sources in
this great wilderness of mountains, which on all sides sends out
babbling brooks and silvery cataracts to bear their waters down to old
ocean.