The southern verge of the White Mountains has many lower peaks and
ridges, including the Ossipee and Sandwich ranges, and finally they
all run off into the serrated shores of the extensive and beautiful
Lake Winnepesaukee, cut by long, sloping promontories and abounding in
islands. Thirteen miles southward from North Conway, near Madison, is
the largest erratic boulder of granite known to exist, which was
brought down and dropped there by the great glacier and is estimated
to weigh eight thousand tons. It is seventy-five feet long, forty
wide, and from thirty to thirty-seven feet high. Lake Winnepesaukee
washes all the southeastern flanks of the mountain region, and has
many peaks in grand array around its northern borders. The Indians
were so impressed with the attractive scenery of the lake that they
gave it the poetical name, meaning "the Smile of the Great Spirit."
The Sandwich Mountains are spread across its northern horizon,
showing the rocky summit of Mount Tecumseh, rising over four thousand
feet; Tripyramid and its great "Slide," marked along its face, where a
vast mass of rocks and forest went down the slope in the rainy season
of 1869, moving over a distance of two miles and falling twenty-one
hundred feet; the broad, rounded summit of the Sandwich "Dome;" the
sharp peak of Whiteface, also scratched by a wide landslide on its
southern slope; the lofty top of Passaconaway, rising forty-two
hundred feet; and the proud apex of Chocorua, regarded as the most
picturesque of all these mountains. Its much-admired peaks do not rise
as high as some of the others, thirty-five hundred feet, but are built
of a brilliant crystalline labradorite, called Chocorua granite,
presenting a striking appearance, and being entirely denuded of trees.
Chocorua was an Indian prophet of the Pequawkets, whose family was
slain by the whites, and he took a terrible revenge. A reward was
offered for his scalp, and his pursuers followed him to the mountain
top and shot him down. When dying, he invoked the curses of the Great
Spirit upon them, and the mountain now bears his sonorous name. For
years afterwards the curses came true; pestilence raged in the
adjacent valleys, cattle could not be kept, for they all died, and the
people submitted humbly to the affliction, believing it to be the
realization of the Indian's imprecation. But one day a scientific
fellow wandered that way, and being of an investigating turn, he soon
found the sickness was due to muriate of lime in the water. After that
discovery the Indian's curse went for naught. Now the whole country
roundabout is healthy, and filled with the balsamic atmosphere which
invigorates the admiring thousands who come to see the noble mountain.
Thus sings Whittier of it in _Among the Hills_, after a storm:
"Through Sandwich Notch the west wind sang
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
Of shadow pierced the water.
"Above his broad Lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
"For health comes sparkling in the streams
From cool Chocorua stealing:
There's iron in our northern winds;
Our pines are trees of healing."
Lake Winnepesaukee, thus magnificently outstretched in front of these
lofty hills, is twenty-five miles long and in the centre about seven
miles wide, covering a surface, exclusive of its many islands, of
seventy square miles. It has wonderfully transparent water, being fed
by springs, and its outline is very irregular, pierced by deep,
elongated bays, and having broad peninsulas or necks of land
stretching far out from the mainland. The shores are composed mostly
of rocks, myriads of boulders being piled up along the water's edge as
if for a wall, making an attractive rocky border with the foliage
growing out of it. An archipelago of islands of all sizes and
characters is dotted over the lake, there being two hundred and
seventy-four of them, several having inhabitants. These are what Starr
King calls "the fleet of islands that ride at anchor on its
bosom--from little shallops to grand three-deckers." This attractive
lake is the storage-reservoir for the many mills on the Merrimack,
keeping their water-supply equable throughout the year by a dam at the
Weirs, the western outlet, raising the surface six feet and making its
level about five hundred feet above the sea. The railroads approach
the lake both at the Weirs and at Wolfboro' on the eastern verge, and
steamboats take the people over the lake to the various settlements on
its shores. Wolfboro' was named after the British General Wolfe who
fell on the Plains of Abraham, and is the largest town on the lake,
having three thousand people. It has a beautiful outlook over the
water from the adjacent high hills of Copple Crown and Tumble-Down
Dick, the latter getting its name from an unfortunate blind horse
"Dick," who once fell over a cliff on its side.
The steamboat journey upon the lake discloses its beauties, the gentle
tree-clad shores with higher hills and mountains behind them, the many
pleasant cottages, and the wonderfully clear green waters. It is a
curious place, all arms and bays and great protruding necks of land,
the open spaces dotted with islands, so that everywhere there are long
vista views across the water and far up into the inlets of the shores,
while the large double peak of Mount Belknap stands up massive and
impressive at the southwestern border, and opposite in the northeast
is the proud white summit of Chocorua. Edward Everett, speaking of his
extensive travels in Europe, says, "My eye has yet to rest on a
lovelier scene than that which smiles around you as you sail from
Weirs Landing to Centre Harbor." The Weirs Landing is at the head of a
deep bay made by the outlet stream, and is a popular summer
camping-ground, the edge of the water fringed with cottages and the
adjacent groves used by the camps. Many fish ascended the outlet
stream in the early times seeking the clear waters, and the shallows
at the outlet were availed of by the Indians to set their nets, so
that it naturally got the name of the Weirs. Here, adjoining the
shore, is the ancient "Endicott Rock," which was marked by the first
surveyors sent up by Governor Endicott of Massachusetts to find the
source of the Merrimack. The outlet stream goes through a region of
many ponds and lakes bordered by large icehouses, the chief of these
waters being Lake Winnisquam, and all these extensive reservoirs help
to supply the great river of mill-wheels. The longest fiord indented
in the southern shore of Winnepesaukee is narrow and five miles long,
called Alton Bay, and it has a most attractive environment, with Mount
Belknap rising to the westward twenty-four hundred feet high.
Upon the northern shore, grandly encircled by the Sandwich Mountains,
the most extensive bay running up into the land is Centre Harbor, and
here is a popular place of summer sojourn. Its background is a grand
mountain amphitheatre from Red Hill to the westward around to the dark
Ossipee range to the east, while in front, over the lake, is one of
the most charming views in nature, with its many islands, long arms,
deep bays, and strangely protruding elongated necks of wooded land.
Thus the delicious water scene stretches for over twenty miles away,
having in the distance the twin peaks of Belknap and the long and wavy
summits of the attendant ridges nestling low and blue at the southern
horizon. Climbing to the top of Red Hill, rising over two thousand
feet, this magnificent view is got in a way which one charmed observer
says "defies competition, as it transcends description; it is the
perfection of earthly prospects." Whittier, who was passionately fond
of this whole region, after admiring it from Red Hill, wrote the noble
invocation:
"O, watched by silence and the night,
And folded in the strong embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face--
"Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while above
Thy silent mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of God's love."
Far over to the westward can be traced the outlet stream, flowing past
many lakes and seeking the great river where these pellucid waters do
such useful work. Thus has Whittier, from this mountain outlook, sung
of the Merrimack:
"O child of that white-crested mountain whose springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy cold waters shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine.
"From that cloud-curtained cradle, so cold and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea."