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?"
"No more, no less. Professor Guyot assures us of the fact."
"Well, then, here we have been zigzagging about for a good hour, haven't
we?"
"An hour and twenty minutes," said I, consulting my watch.
"And not a sign of the houses or the railway, or any other creeping
thing. Do you want my opinion?"
"Charmed."