the wildest forms of mountain beauty. At first our progress through
primitive groves of pine, hemlock, and birch was impeded by nothing more
remarkable than the giant trees stretching interminably, rank upon rank,
tier upon tier. But these woods, these countless gray and black and
white trunks, and outspread framework of branches, supported a canopy
of thick foliage, filled with voices innumerable. Something stirred in
the top of a lofty pine; and then, like an alguazil on a watch-tower, a
crow, apparent sentinel of all the feathered colony, rose clumsily on
his talons, flapped two sable wings, and thrice hoarsely challenged,
"Caw! caw! caw!" What clamor, what a liliputian Babel ensued! Our ears
fairly tingled with the calls, outcries, and objurgations apparently
flung down at us by the multitudinous population overhead. Hark to the
woodpecker's rat-tat-tat, the partridge's muffled drum! List to the
bugle of the wood-thrush, sweet and clear! Now sounds the cat-bird's
shrill alarm, the owl's hoot of indignant surprise. Then the squirrels,
those little monkeys of our northern woods, grated their teeth sharply
at us, and let fall nuts on our heads as we passed underneath. Never
were visitors more unwelcome.
Before long we came to a brook, then to another. Their foaming waters
shot past like a herd of wild horses. These we crossed. We now began to
thread a region where the forest was more open. The moss we trampled
underfoot, and which here replaces the grass of the valleys, was beating
the tallest trees in the race for the mountain-top. It was the old story
of the tortoise and the hare over again. But this moss: have you ever
looked at it before your heel bruised the perfumed flowers springing
from its velvet? Here are tufts exquisitely decorated with coral
lichens; here the violet and anemone nestle lovingly together; here it
creeps up the gray trunks, or hides the bare roots of old trees. Tread
softly! This is the abode of elves and fairies. Step lightly! you expect
to hear the crushed flowers cry out with pain.
These enchanting spots, where stones are couches and trees canopies,
tempted us to sit down on a cushioned bowlder, or throw ourselves
upon the thick carpet into which we sunk ankle-deep at every step.
Even the bald, gray rocks were tapestried with mosses, lichens, and
vines. All around, under the thick shade, hundreds of enormous trees
lay rotting; yet exquisitely the prostrate trunks were overspread with
robes of softest green, effectually concealing the repulsiveness, the
suggestions of decay. Now and then the dead tree rose into new life
through the sturdy roots of a young fir, or luxuriant, plumed ferns
growing in its bark. This inexpressible fecundity, in the midst of
inexpressible wastefulness, declared that for Nature there is no such
thing as death. And they tell us the day of miracles has passed! Upon
this dream of elf-land the cool morning light fell in oblique streams
through the tree-trunks, as through grated windows, filling all the wood
with a subdued twilight glimmer, leaving a portion of its own gleams
on the moss-grown rocks, while the trees stretched their black shadows
luxuriously along the thick-piled sward, like weary soldiers in a
bivouac.
We proceeded thus from chamber to chamber, and from cloister to
cloister, at times descending some spur of the mountain into a
deep-shaded dell, and again climbing a swift and miry slope to better
ground, until we crossed the stream coming from the high spur spoken of.
From here the ground rapidly rose for half a mile more, when we suddenly
came out of the low firs full upon the Lion's Head crag, rising above
Hermit Lake, and visible from the vicinity of the Glen House. To be thus
unexpectedly confronted by this wall of imperishable rock stirs one very
deeply. For the moment it dominates _us_, even as it does the little
tarn so unconsciously slumbering at its feet. It is horribly mutilated
and defaced. Its sides are thickly sowed with stunted trees, that bury
their roots in its cracks and rents with a gripe of iron. In effect it
is the barbican of the great ravine. Crouched underneath, by the shore
of the lake, is a matted forest of firs and spruces, dwindled to half
their usual size, grizzled with long lichens, and occupying, as if by
stealth, the debatable ground between life and death. It is, in fact,
more dead than alive. Deeply sunk beneath is the lake.
Hermit Lake--a little pool nestling underneath a precipice--demands a
word. Its solitary state, its waters green and profound, and the thick
shades by which it was covered, seemed strangely at variance with the
intense activity of the foaming torrents we had seen, and could still
hear rushing down the mountain. It was too small for a lake, or else it
was dwarfed by the immense mass of overshadowing rock towering above it,
whose reflected light streamed across its still and glossy surface. Here
we bid farewell to the forest.
We had now gained a commanding post of observation, though there was
yet rough work to do. We saw the whole magnificent sweep of the ravine,
to where it terminates in a semicircle of stupendous cliffs that seem
hewn perpendicularly a thousand feet down. Lying against the western
wall we distinguished patches of snow; but they appeared of trifling
extent. Great wooded mountain slopes stretched away from the depths
of the gorge on either side, making the iron lineaments of the giant
cliffs seem harder by their own softness and delicacy. Here and there
these exquisite draperies were torn in long rents by land-slips. In the
west arose the shattered peak of Monroe--a mass of splintered granite,
conspicuous at every point for its irreclaimable deformity. It seemed
as if the huge open maw of the ravine might swallow up this peak with
ease. There was a Dantesque grandeur and solemnity everywhere. With our
backs against the trees, we watched the bellying sails of a stray cloud
which intercepted in its aerial voyage our view of the great summit;
but it soon floated away, discovering the whitish-gray ledges to the
very capstone of the dome itself. Looking down and over the thick woods
beyond, we met again the burly Carter Mountains, pushed backward from
the Pinkham Notch, and kept back by an invisible yet colossal strength.
[Illustration: HERMIT LAKE.]
From Hermit Lake the only practicable way was by clambering up the bed
of the mountain brook that falls through the ravine. The whole expanse
that stretched on either side was a chaos of shattered granite, pitched
about in awful confusion. Path there was none. No matter what way we
turned, "no thoroughfare" was carved in stolid stone. We tried to force
a passage through the stunted cedars that are mistaken at a mile for
greensward, but were beaten back, torn and bleeding, to the brook. We
then turned to the great bowlders, to be equally buffeted and abused,
and finally repulsed upon the brook, which seemed all the while mocking
our efforts. Once, while forcing a route, inch by inch, through the
scrub, I was held suspended over a deep crevice, by my belt, until
extricated by my comrade. At another time he disappeared to the armpits
in a hole, from which I drew him like a blade from a scabbard. At this
moment we found ourselves unable either to advance or retreat. The dwarf
trees squeezed us like a vise. Who would have thought there was so much
life in them? At our wits' end, we looked at our bleeding hands, then at
each other. The brook was the only clew to such a labyrinth, and to it,
as from Scylla to Charybdis, we turned as soon as we recovered breath.
But to reach it was no easy matter; we had literally to cut our way out
of the jungle.
When we were there, and had rested awhile from the previous severe
exertions, my companion, alternately mopping his forehead and feeling
his bruises, looked up with a quizzical expression, and ejaculated,
"Faith, I am almost as glad to get out of this wilderness as the other!
In any case," he gayly added, "I have lost the most blood here; while in
Virginia I did not receive a scratch."
After this rude initiation into the mysteries of the ravine, we advanced
directly up the bed of the brook. But the brook is for half a mile
nothing but a succession of leaps and plunges, its course choked with
bowlders. We however toiled on, from rock to rock, first boosting, then
hoisting each other up; one moment splashing in a pool, the next halting
in dismay under a cascade, which we must either mount like a chamois or
ascend like a trout. The climber here tastes the full enjoyment of an
encounter with untamed nature, which calls every thew and sinew into
action. At length the stream grew narrower, suddenly divided, and we
stood at the mouth of the Snow Arch, confronted by the vertical upper
wall of the ravine.
We stood in an arena "more majestic than the circus of a Titus or a
Vespasian." The scene was one of awful desolation. A little way below
us the gorge was heaped with the ruins of some unrecorded convulsion,
by which the precipice had been cloven from base to summit, and the
enormous fragments heaved into the chasm with a force the imagination
is powerless to conceive. In the interstices among these blocks
rose thickets of dwarf cedars, as stiff and unyielding as the livid
rock itself. It was truly an arena which might have witnessed the
gladiatorial combats of immortals.
We did not at first look at the Snow Arch. The eye was irresistibly
fascinated by the tremendous mass of the precipice above. From top to
bottom its tawny front was covered with countless little streams, that
clung to its polished wall without once quitting their hold. They twined
and twisted in their downward course, like a brood of young serpents
escaping from their lair; nor could I banish the idea of the ghastly
head of a Gorgon clothed with tresses of serpents. A poetic imagination
has named this tangled knot of mountain rills, "The fall of a thousand
streams." At the foot of the cliff the scattered waters unite, before
entering the Snow Arch, in a single stream. Turning now to the right,
the narrowing gorge, ascending by a steep slope as high as the upper
edge of the precipice, points out the only practicable way to the summit
of Mount Washington in this direction. But we have had enough of such
climbing, for one day, at least.
Partial recovery from the stupefaction which seizes and holds one fast
is doubtless signalized in every case by an effort to account for the
overwhelming disaster of which these ruins are the mute yet speaking
evidence. We need go no farther in the search than the innocent-looking
little rills, first dripping from the Alpine mosses, then percolating
through the rocks of the high plateau, and falling over its edge in a
thousand streams. Puny as they look, before their inroads the plateau
line has doubtless receded, like the great wall of rock over which
Niagara pours the waters of four seas. With their combined forces--how
long ago cannot be guessed; and what, indeed, does it signify?--knitted
together by frost into Herculean strength, they assailed the granite
cliffs that were older than the sun, older than the moon or the stars,
mined and countermined year by year, inch by inch, drop by drop,
until--honey-combed, riddled, and pierced to its centre, and all was
ready for its final overthrow--winter gave the signal. In a twinkling,
yielding to the stroke, and shattered into a thousand fragments,
the cliffs laid their haughty heads low in the dust. Afterward the
accumulated waters tranquilly continued the process of demolition, and
of removing the soil from the deep excavation they had made, until
the floor of the ravine had sunk to its present level. In California
a man with a hose washes away mountains to get at the gold deposits.
This principle of hydraulic force is borrowed, pure and simple, from a
mountain cataract.
[Illustration: SNOW ARCH, TUCKERMAN'S RAVINE.]
Osgood, the experienced guide, who had visited the ravine oftener
than anybody else, assured me that never within his remembrance had
this forgotten forgement of winter, the Snow Arch, been seen to such
advantage. We estimated its width at above two hundred feet, where it
threw a solid bridge of ice over the stream, and not far from three
hundred in its greatest length, where it lay along the slope of the
gorge. Summer and winter met on this neutral ground. Entering the Arch
was joining January and July with a step. Flowers blossomed at the
threshold. We caught water, as it dripped ice-cold from the roof, and
pledged Old Winter in his own cellarage. The brook foamed at our feet.
Looking up, there was a pretty picture of a tiny water-fall pouring in
at the upper end and out at the ragged portal of the grotto. But I think
we were most charmed with the remarkable sculpture of the roof, which
was a groined arch fashioned as featly as was ever done by human hands.
What the stream had begun in secret the warm vapors had chiselled with
a bolder hand, but not altered. As it was formed, so it remained--a
veritable chapel of the hills, the brook droning its low, monotonous
chant, and the dripping roof tinkling its refrain unceasingly. If the
interior of the great ravine impressed us as the hidden receptacle of
all waste matter, this lustrous heap of snow, so insignificant in its
relation to the immensity of the chasm that we scarcely looked at it at
first, now chased away the feeling of mingled terror and aversion--of
having stolen unawares into the one forbidden chamber--and possessed us
with a sense of the beautiful, which remained long after its glittering
particles had melted into the stream that flowed beneath. So under a
cold exterior is nourished the principle of undying love, which the aged
mountain gives that earth may forever renew her fairest youth.
The presence of this miniature glacier is a very simple matter. The
fierce winds of winter which sweep over the plateau whirl the snows
before them, over its crest, into the ravine, where they are lodged at
the foot of the precipice, and accumulate to a great depth. As soon as
released by spring, the little streams, falling down this wall, seek
their old channels, and, being warmer, succeed in forcing a passage
through the ice. By the end of August the ice usually disappears, though
it sometimes remains even later.
After picking up some fine specimens of quartz, sparkling with mica, and
uttering a parting malediction on the black flies that tormented us, we
took our way down and out of the ravine, following the general course of
the stream along its steep valley, and, after an uneventful march of two
hours, reached the upper waters of the Crystal Cascade.
VI.
_IN AND ABOUT GORHAM._
That lonely dwelling stood among the hills
By a gray mountain stream.
--SOUTHEY.
After the events described in the last chapter, I continued, like the
navigator of unknown coasts, my tour of the great range. Half a mile
below the Glen House, the Great Gulf discharges from its black throat
the little river rising on the plateau at its head. The head of this
stupendous abyss is a mountain, and mountains wall it in. Its depths
remain unexplored except by an occasional angler or trapper.
Two and a half miles farther on a road diverges to the left, crosses the
Peabody by a bridge, and stretches on over a depression of the range
to Randolph, where it intersects the great route from Lancaster and
Jefferson to Gorham. Over the river, snugly ensconced at the foot of
Mount Madison, is the old Copp place. Commanding, as it does, a noble
prospect up and down the valley, and of all the great peaks except
Washington, its situation is most inviting; more than this, the picture
of the weather-stained farm-house nestling among these sleeping giants
revives in fullest vigor our preconceived idea of life in the mountains,
already shaken by the balls, routs, and grand toilets of the hotels.
The house, as we see by Mistress Dolly Copp's register, has been known
to many generations of tourists. The Copps have lived here about half a
century.
Travellers going up or down, between the Glen House and Gorham, usually
make a détour as far as Copp's, in order to view the Imp to better
advantage than can be done from the road. Among these travellers some
have now and then knocked at the door and demanded to see the Imp. The
hired girl invariably requests them to wait until she can call the
mistress.
[Illustration: THE IMP.]
Directly opposite the farm-house the inclined ridge of Imp Mountain
is broken down perpendicularly some two hundred feet, leaving a
jagged cliff, resembling an immense step, facing up the valley. This
is a mountain of the Carter chain, sloping gradually toward the Glen
House. Upon this cliff, or this step, is the distorted human profile
which gives the mountain its name. A strong, clear light behind it
is necessary to bring out all the features, the mouth especially, in
bold relief against the sky, when the expression is certainly almost
diabolical. One imagines that some goblin, imprisoned for ages within
the mountain, and suddenly liberated by an earthquake, exhibits its
hideous countenance, still wearing the same look it wore at the moment
it was entombed in its mask of granite. The forenoon is the best time,
and the road, a few rods back from the house, the best point from which
to see it. The coal-black face is then in shadow.
The Copp farm-house has a tale of its own, illustrating in a remarkable
manner the amount of physical hardship that long training, and
familiarity with rough out-of-door life, will occasionally enable
men to endure. Seeing two men in the door-yard, I sat down on the
chopping-block, and entered into conversation with them.
By the time I had taken out my note-book I had all the members of the
household and all the inmates of the barn-yard around me. I might
add that all were talking at once. The matron stood in the door-way,
which her ample figure quite filled, trifling with the beads of a gold
necklace. A younger face stared out over her shoulder; while an old man,
whose countenance had hardened into a vacant smile, and one of forty
or thereabouts, alternately passed my glass one to the other, with an
astonishment similar to that displayed by Friday when he first looked
through Crusoe's telescope.
"Which of you is named Nathaniel Copp?" I asked, after they had
satisfied their curiosity.
"That is my name," the younger very deliberately responded. "Really,"
thought I, "there is little enough of the conventional hero in that
face;" therefore I again asked, "Are you the same Nathaniel Copp who was
lost while hunting in the mountains, let me see, about twenty-five years
ago?"
"Yes; but I wasn't lost after I got down to Wild River," he hastily
rejoined, like a man who has a reputation to defend.
"Tell me about it, will you?"
I take from my note-book the following relation of the exploit of this
mountain Nimrod, as I received it on the spot. But I had literally to
draw it out of him, a syllable at a time.
On the last day of January, 1855, Nathaniel Copp, son of Hayes D. Copp,
of Pinkham's Grant, near the Glen House, set out from home on a deer
hunt, and was out four successive days. On the fifth day he again left
to look for a deer killed the previous day, about eight miles from home.
Having found it, he dragged the carcass (weighing two hundred and thirty
pounds) home through the snow, and at one o'clock P.M. started
for another he had tracked near the place where the former was killed,
which he followed until he lost the track, at dark. He then found that
he had lost his own way, and should, in all probability, be obliged to
spend the night in the woods, with the temperature ranging from 32° to
35° below zero.
Knowing that to remain quiet was certain death, and having nothing with
which to light a fire, the hunter began walking for his life. The moon
shone out bright and clear, making the cold seem even more intense.
While revolving in his mind his unpleasant predicament he heard a deer
bleat. He gave chase, and easily overtook it. The snow was too deep for
the animal to escape from a hunter on snow-shoes. Copp leaped upon his
back, and despatched him with his hunting-knife. He then dressed him,
and, taking out the heart, put it in his pocket, not for a trophy, but,
as he told me, to keep starvation at arm's-length. The excitement of the
chase made him forget cold until he perceived himself growing benumbed.
Rousing himself, he again pushed on, whither he knew not, but spurred
by the instinct of self-preservation. Daylight found him still striding
on, with no clew to a way out of the thick woods, which imprisoned him
on every side. At length, at ten in the morning, he came out at or near
Wild River, in Gilead, forty miles from home, having walked twenty one
consecutive hours without rest or food, the greater part of the time
through a tangled growth of underbrush.
His friends at home becoming alarmed at his prolonged absence during
such freezing weather, three of them, Hayes D. Copp, his father, John
Goulding, and Thomas Culhane, started in search of him. They followed
his track until it was lost in the darkness, and, by the aid of their
dog, found the deer which young Copp had killed and dressed. They again
started on the trail, but with the faintest hope of ever finding the
lost man alive, and, after being out twenty-six hours in the extreme
cold, found the object of their search.
No words can do justice to the heroic self-denial and fortitude with
which these men continued an almost hopeless search, when every moment
expecting to find the stiffened corpse of their friend. Goulding froze
both feet; the others their ears.
When found, young Copp did not seem to realize in the least the great
danger through which he had passed, and talked with perfect unconcern
of hunts that he had planned for the next week. One of his feet was so
badly frozen, from the effect of too tightly lacing his snow-shoe, that
the toes had to be amputated.
Until reaching the bridge, within two miles of Gorham, I saw no one,
heard nothing except the strokes of an axe, borne on the still air from
some logging-camp, twittering birds, or chattering river. Ascending the
hill above the bridge, I took my last look back at Mount Washington,
over whose head rose-tinted clouds hung in graceful folds. The summit
was beautifully distinct. The bases of all the mountains were floating
in that delicious blue haze, enrapturing to the artist, exasperating
to the climber. Turning to my route, I had before me the village of
Gorham, with the long slopes of Mount Hayes meeting in a regular pyramid
behind it. Against the dusky wall of the mountain one white spire stood
out clean and sharp. At my right, along the river, was a cluster of
saw-mills, sheds, and shanties; beyond, an irregular line of forest
concealing the town--all except the steeple; beyond that the mountain.
As I entered the village, the shrill scream of a locomotive pierced the
still air, and, like the horn of Ernani, broke my dream of forgetfulness
with its fatal blast. Adieu, dreams of delusion! we are once more
manacled with the city.
I loitered along the river road, hoping, as the sky was clear, to see
the sun go down on the great summits. Nor was I disappointed. As I
walked on, Madison, the superb, gradually drew out of the Peabody Glen,
and soon Washington came into line over the ridge of Moriah, whose
highest precipices were kindled with a ruddy glow, while a wonderful
white light rested, like a halo, on the brow of the monarch. Of a
sudden, the crest of Moriah paled, then grew dark; night rose from the
black glen, twilight descended from the dusky heavens. For an instant
the humps of Clay reddened in the afterglow. Then the light went out,
and I saw only the towering forms of the giant mountains dimly traced
upon the sky. A star fell. At this signal the great dome sparkled with
myriad lights. Night had ascended her mountain throne.
Gorham is situated on the Grand Trunk Railway, between Paris and Berlin,
with Milan just beyond--names a trifle ambitious for villages with
the bark on, but conferring distinction upon half a hundred otherwise
obscure villages scattered from Maine to California.