intervales, in an amphitheatre of hills, through which the Androscoggin
flows with a strong, steady tide. The left bank is appropriated by Mount
Hayes, the right by the village--a suspension bridge giving access from
one to the other. This mountain rises abruptly from the river to a broad
summit-plateau, from which a wide and brilliant prospect rewards the
climber. The central portion of Gorham is getting to be much too busy
for that rest and quietude which is so greatly desired by a large class
of travellers to the mountains, but, on the other hand, its position
with respect to the highest summits is more advantageous than that of
any other town lying on the skirts of the mountains, and accessible by
railway. In one hour the tourist can be at the Glen House, in three
on the summit of Mount Washington. Being at the very end of the great
chain, in the angle where its last elevation abuts on the Androscoggin,
the valley conducting around the northerly side of the great eminences,
through the settlements of Randolph and Jefferson, furnishes another and
a charming avenue of travel into the region watered by the Connecticut.
As the great tide of travel flows in from the west and south, Gorham
has profited little by the extension of railways furnishing more direct
communication with the heart of the mountains.
Mount Hayes is the guardian of the village, erecting its rocky rampart
over it, like the precipices of Cape Diamond over Quebec. The hill in
front is called Pine Mountain, though it is only a mountain by brevet.
The tip of the peak of Madison peers down into the village over this
hill. I plainly saw the snow up there from my window. To the left, and
over the low slope of Pine Mountain, rise the Carter summits, which here
make a remarkably imposing background to the picture, and in conjunction
with the great range form the basin of the Peabody. I saw this stream,
making its final exit from the mountains, throw itself exhausted with
its rapid course into the Androscoggin, half a mile below the hotel.
North-west of the village street, drawn up in line across the valley,
extend the Pilot peaks.
The Carter group is said to have been named after a hunter. According
to Farmer, the Pilot Mountains were so called from a dog. Willard, a
hunter, had been lost two or three days on these mountains, on the east
side of which his camp was situated. Every day he observed that Pilot,
his dog, regularly left him, as he supposed in search of game; but
toward nightfall would as regularly return to his master. This at length
excited the attention of the hunter, who, when nearly exhausted with
fatigue and hunger, decided to commit himself to the guidance of Pilot,
and in a short time was conducted by the intelligent animal in safety to
his camp.
My first morning at Gorham was a beautiful one, and I prepared to
improve it to the utmost by a walk around the northern base of Madison,
neither knowing nor caring whither it might lead me. Spring was in
her most enchanting mood. A few steps, and I was amid the marvels of
a new creation, the tasselled birches, the downy willows, the oaks in
gosling-gray. Even the gnarled and withered apple-trees gave promise of
blossoming, and the young ferns, pushing aside the dead leaves, came
forth with their tiny fists doubled for the battle of life. Why did not
Nature so order it that mankind might rest like the trees, or shall we,
like them, come forth at last strong, vigorous, beautiful, from that
long refreshing slumber?
Leaving the village, at the end of a mile and a half I took the road
turning to the left, where Moose River falls into the Androscoggin, at
the point where the latter, making a remarkable bend, turns sharply away
to the north. Moose River is a true mountain stream, clear and limpid,
foaming along a bed of sand and pebbles.
From this spot the whole extent of the Pilot range was unrolled at my
right, while at the left, majestic among the lower hills, Madison and
Adams were massed in one grand pyramid. The snows glistening on the
summits seemed trophies torn from winter.
About a mile from the turning, at Lary's, I found the best station for
viewing the statuesque proportions of Madison. The foreground a swift
mountain stream, white as the snows where it takes its rise. Beyond,
a strip of meadow land, covered with young birches and poplars, just
showing their tender, trembling foliage. Among these are scattered
large, dead trees, relics of the primeval forest; the middle ground
a young forest, showing in its dainty wicker-work of branchlets that
beady appearance which belongs to spring alone, and is so exquisitely
beautiful. Above this ascends, mile upon mile, the enormous bulk of
the mountain, ashen-gray at the summit, dusky olive-green below. Stark
precipices, hedged about with blasted pines, and seamed with snow,
capped the great pile. Over this a pale azure, deepening in intensity
toward the zenith, unrolled its magnificent drapery.
After the ascent of Mount Hayes, which Mr. King has fittingly described
as "the chair set by the Creator at the proper distance and angle to
appreciate and enjoy" the kingly prominence of Mount Washington, the
two things best worth seeing in the neighborhood are the falls of the
Androscoggin at Berlin, and the beautiful view of the loftiest of the
White Mountain peaks from what is called here the Lead Mine Bridge. To
get to the falls you must ascend the river, and to obtain the view you
must descend a few miles. I consecrated a day to this excursion.
With a head already filled with the noise of half a hundred mountain
torrents, water-falls, or cascades, I set out after breakfast for
Berlin Falls, feeling that the passage of a body of water such as the
Androscoggin is at Gorham, through a narrow gorge, must be something
different from the common.
A word about Berlin. Its situation is far more picturesque than that of
Gorham. There is the same environment of mountains, and, in addition to
the falls, a magnificent view of Madison, Adams, Jefferson, and of the
Carter range. The precipices of Mount Forist, which overhang railway and
village, are noticeable among a thousand. Here Dead River falls into the
Androscoggin, and here the Grand Trunk Railway, taking leave of this
river, turns to the north-west, crosses over to the Upper Ammonoosuc,
twists and twines along: with it among the northern mountains, and at
last emerges upon the level meadows of the Connecticut.
Berlin has another aspect. Lumber is its business; lumber its staple of
conversation; people go to bed to dream of lumber. In a word, lumber is
everywhere. The lumberman admires a tree in his way quite as much as you
or I. No eye like his to estimate its height, its girth, its thickness.
But as ships to Shylock, so trees to him are naught but boards--so many
feet. So that there is something almost ferocious in the lumberman's or
mill-owner's admiration for the forest; something almost startling in
the idea that this out-of-the-way corner is devouring the forests at the
rate of twenty car-loads a day. In plain language, this village cuts up
a good-sized grove every day, and rejoices over it with a new house or a
new barn.
At the risk of being classed with the sentimental and the unpractical,
every one who is alive to the consequences of converting our forests
into deserts, or worse than deserts, should raise a voice of warning
against this wholesale destruction. The consequences may be remote,
but they are certain. For the most part, the travelled routes have
long since been stripped of their valuable timber trees. Now the mills
are fast eating their way into the hitherto inaccessible regions,
leaving a track of desolation behind wherever they go, like that of a
destroying army. What cannot be carried away is burnt. Fires are seen
blazing by the side of every saw-mill, in which all the waste material
is carefully consumed. A trifle? Enough is consumed every year in this
way to furnish the great city of New York with its fuel. I speak with
moderation. Not a village but has its saw-mills; while at Whitefield,
Bethlehem, Livermore, Low, and Burbank's Grant, and many other
localities, the havoc is frightful. Forest fires, originating chiefly in
the logging-camps, annually desolate leagues of forest land. How long is
this to continue?
The mountain labors incessantly to re-create, but what can it do against
such fearful odds? and what shall we do when it can no longer furnish
pine to build our homes, or wood to warm them? Delve deeper and deeper
under the Alleghanies? In about two hundred and fifty years the noble
forests, which set the early discoverers wild with enthusiasm, have
been steadily driven farther and farther back into the interior, until
"the forest primeval" exists not nearer than a hundred miles inland.
Then the great northern wilderness began at the sea-coast. It is now
in the vicinity of Lake Umbagog. Still the warfare goes on. I do not
call occasional bunches of wood forests. All this means less and less
moisture; consequently, more and more drought. The tree draws the
cloud from heaven, and bestows it on the earth. The summer of 1880 was
one of almost unexampled dryness. Large rivers dwindled to pitiful
rivulets, brooks were dried up, and the beautiful cascades in many
instances wholly disappeared. The State is powerless to interfere. Not
so individuals, or combinations of individuals for the preservation of
such tracts of woodland as the noble Cathedral woods of North Conway. In
the West a man who plants a tree is a public benefactor; is he who saves
the life of one in the East less so? America, says Berthold Auerbach, is
no longer "the Promised Land for the Old World;" if she does not protect
her woods, she will become "waste and dry," like the Promised Land of
the ancients--Palestine itself. Look on this picture of Michelet:
"On the shores of the Caspian, for three or four hundred leagues,
one sees nothing, one encounters nothing, but midway an isolated and
solitary tree. It is the love and worship of every passing wayfarer.
Each one offers it something; and the very Tartar, in default of every
other gift, will snatch a hair from his beard or his horse's mane."
The season when the great movement of lumber from the northern
wilderness to the sea begins is one of great activity. The logs are
floated down the Androscoggin from Lake Umbagog with the spring
freshets, when those destined to go farther are "driven," as the
lumbermen's phrase is, over the falls and through the rapids here, to
be picked up below. It may well be believed that the passage of the
falls by a "drive" is a sight worth witnessing. Sometimes the logs
get so tightly jammed in the narrow gorge of the river that it seems
impossible to extricate them; but the dam they form causes the river
to rise behind it, when the accumulated and pent-up waters force their
way through the obstruction, tossing huge logs in the air as if they
were straws. A squad of lumbermen--tough, muscular, handy fellows they
are--accompanies each drive, just as _vaqueros_ do a Texan herd; and
the herd of logs, like the herd of cattle, is branded with the owner's
mark. After making the drive of the falls, the men move down below them,
where they find active and, so far as appearance goes, dangerous work in
disentangling the snarls of logs caught among the rocks of the rapids.
Against a current no ordinary boat could stem for a moment; they dart
hither and thither in their light bateaux, as the herdsman does on his
active little mustang. If a log grounds in the midst of the rapids, the
bateaux dashes toward it. One river-driver jumps upon it, and holds the
boat fast, while another grapples it with a powerful lever called a
cant-dog. In a moment the log rolls off the rocks with a loud splash,
and is hurried away by the rapid tide.
During the drive the lumberman is almost always wet to the skin, day
in and day out. When a raft of logs is first started in the spring the
men suffer from the exposure; but after a little time the work seems
to toughen and harden them, so that they do not in the least mind the
amphibious life they are forced to lead. Rain or shine, they get to
their work at five in the morning, leaving it only when it is too dark
to see longer. Each squad--for the whole force is divided into what may
be called skirmishers, advanced-guards, main body, and rear-guard, each
having its appointed work to perform--then repairs to its camp, which is
generally a tent pitched near the river, where the cook is waiting for
their arrival with a hot supper of fried doughnuts and baked beans--the
lumberman's diet of preference. They pass the evening playing euchre,
telling stories, or relating the experiences of the day, and are as
simple, hearty, happy-go-lucky fellows as can be found in the wide world.
To say that the Berlin Falls begin two miles below the village is no
more than the truth, since at this distance the river was sheeted in
foam from shore to shore. For these two miles its bed is so thickly sown
with rocks that it is like a river stretched on the rack. The whole
river, every drop of it, is hemmed in by enormous masses of granite,
forming a long, narrow, and rocky gorge, down which it bursts in one mad
plunge, tossing and roaring like the Maelstrom. What fury! What force!
The solid earth shakes, and the very air trembles. It is a saturnalia. A
whirlwind of passion, swift, uncontrollable, and terrible.
The best situation I could find was upon a jutting ledge below the
little foot-bridge thrown from rock to rock. Several turns in the long
course of the cataract prevent its whole extent being seen all at once;
but it starts up hither and thither among the rocks, boiling with rage
at being so continually hindered in its free course, until, at last,
madness seizes it, and, flying straight at the throat of the gorge,
it goes down in one long white wave, overwhelming everything in its
way. It reaches the foot of the rocks in fleeces, darts wildly hither
and thither, shakes off the grasp of concealed rocks, and, racing on,
stretches itself on its wide and shallow bed, uttering a tremulous wail.
From the village at the falls, and from Berlin Mills, are elevations
from which the great White Mountains are grandly conspicuous. The view
is similar to that much extolled one from Milan, the town next to
Berlin. Here the three great mountains, closed in mass, display a triple
crown of peaks, Washington being thrown back to the left, and behind
Madison, with Adams on his right. Best of all is the blended effect of
early morning, or of the afterglow, when a few light clouds sail along
the crimson sky, and their shadows play hide-and-seek on the mountain
sides.
In the afternoon, while walking down the road to Shelburne, I met an
apparently honest farmer, with whom I held some discourse. He was
curious about the great city he had known half a century before, when
it was in swaddling clothes; I about the mountains above and around us,
that had never known change since the world began. An amiable contest
ensued, in which each tried to lead the other to talk of the topic most
interesting to himself. The husbandman grew eloquent upon his native
State and its great man. "But what," I insisted, "do you think of your
greatest mountain there?" pointing to the splendid peak.
"Oh, drat the mountains! I never look at 'em. Ask the old woman."
Some enticing views may be had from the Shelburne intervales, embracing
Madison on the right, and Washington on the left. It is, therefore,
permitted to steal an occasional look back until we reach the Lead Mine
Bridge, and stand over the middle of the flashing Androscoggin.
The dimpled river, broad here, and showing tufts of foliage on its satin
surface, recedes between wooded banks to the middle distance, where it
disappears. Swaying to and fro, without noise, the lithe and slender
willows on the margin continually dipped their budding twigs in the
stream, as if to show its clear transparency, while letting fall, drop
by drop, its crystal globules. They gently nodded their green heads,
keeping time to the low music of the river.
[Illustration: THE ANDROSCOGGIN AT SHELBURNE.]
Beyond the river, over gently meeting slopes of the valley, two
magnificent shapes, Washington and Madison, rose grandly. Those truly
regal summits still wore their winter ermine. They were drawn so widely
apart as to show the familiar peaks of Mount Clay protruding between
them. It is hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful picture of
mountain scenery. Noble river, hoary summits, blanched precipices, over
whose haggard visages a little color was beginning to steal, eloquently
appealed to every perception of the beautiful and the sublime. Much as
the view from this point is extolled, it can hardly be over-praised.
True, it exhibits the same objects that we see from Berlin and Milan;
but the order of arrangement is not only reversed, but so altered as to
render any comparison impossible. In this connection it may be remarked
that a short removal usually changes the whole character of a mountain
landscape. No two are precisely alike.
The annals of Shelburne, which originally included Gorham within its
limits, are sufficiently meagre; but they furnish the same story
of struggle with hardship--often with danger--common to the early
settlements in this region. Shelburne was settled, just before the
breaking out of the Revolution, by a handful of adventurous pioneers,
who were attacked in 1781 by a prowling band of hostile Indians. This
incursion is memorable as one of the last recorded in the long series
going back into the first decade of the New England colonies. It was
one of the boldest. The histories place the number of Indians at only
six. After visiting Bethel, where they captured three white men, and
Gilead, where they killed another, they entered Shelburne. Here they
killed and scalped Peter Poor, and took a negro prisoner. Such was the
terror inspired by this audacious onset, that the inhabitants, making no
defence, fled, panic-struck, to Hark Hill, where they passed the night,
leaving the savages to plunder the village at their leisure. The next
day the refugees continued their flight, stopping only when they reached
Fryeburg, fifty-nine miles from the scene of disaster.
Before taking leave of the Androscoggin Valley, which is an opulent
picture-gallery, and where at every step one finds himself arrested
before some masterpiece of Nature, the traveller is strongly advised to
continue his journey to Bethel, the town next below Shelburne. Bethel
is one of the loveliest and dreamiest of mountain nooks. Its expanses
of rich verdure, its little steeple, emerging from groves of elm-trees,
its rustic bridge spanning the tireless river, its air of lethargy and
indolence, captivate eye and mind; and to eyes tired with the hardness
and glare of near mountains, the distant peaks become points of welcome
repose.
VII.
_ASCENT BY THE CARRIAGE-ROAD._
Where the huge mountain rears his brow sublime,
On which no neighboring height its shadow flings,
Led by desire intense the steep I climb.
PETRARCH.
The first days of May, 1877, found me again at the Glen House, prepared
to put in immediate execution the long-deferred purpose of ascending
Mount Washington in the balmy days of spring. Before separating for the
night, my young Jehu, who drove me from Gorham in an hour, said, with a
grin,
"So you are going where they cut their butter with a chisel, and their
meat with a hand-saw?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you will learn to-morrow."
"Till to-morrow, then."
"Good-night."
"Good-night."
At six in the morning, while the stars were yet twinkling, I stood in
the road in front of the Glen House. Everything announced a beautiful
day. The rising sun crimsoned, first, the dun wall of Tuckerman's
Ravine, then the high summits, and then flowed down their brawny
flanks--his first salutation being to the monarch. In ten minutes I was
alone in the forest with the squirrels, the partridges, the woodpeckers,
and my own thoughts.
As bears are not unfrequently seen at this season of the year, I kept my
eyes about me. One of the old drivers related to me that one morning,
while going up this road with a heavy load of passengers, his horses
suddenly stopped, showing most unmistakable signs of terror. The place
was a dangerous one, where the road had been wholly excavated from
the steep side of the mountain, so, keeping one eye upon his fractious
team, he threw quick glances right and left with the other; while the
passengers, alarmed by the sudden stop, the driver's shouts to his
animals, and the still more alarming backward movement of the coach,
thrust their heads out of the windows, and with white faces demanded
what was the matter.
"By thunder!" ejaculated Jehu, "there was my leaders all in a lather,
an' backin' almost atop of the fill-horses, and them passengers
a-shoutin' like lunatics let out on a picnic. 'Look! darn it all,'
sez I, a-pintin' with my whip. My hosses was all in a heap, I tell
ye, rarin' and charging, when a little Harvard student, with his head
sand-papered, sung out, 'All right, Cap, I've chucked your hind wheels;'
and then he made for the leaders' heads. Them college chaps ain't such
darned fools arter all, they ain't."
"What was it?"
"A big black bear, all huddled up in a bunch, a-takin' his morning
observation on the scenery from the top of a dead sycamore. You see the
side of the hill was so slantin' steep that he wa'n't more'n tew rod
from the road."
"What did you do?"
"Dew?" echoed the driver, laughing--"dew?" he repeated, "why, them crazy
passengers, when they found the bear couldn't get at _them_, just picked
up rocks and hove them at the old cuss. When one hit him a crack, Lord,
how he'd shake his head and growl! But, you see, he couldn't get at 'em,
so they banged away, until Mr. Bruin couldn't stan' it any longer, an'
slid right down the tree as slick as grease, and as mad as Old Nick. It
tickled me most to death to see him a-makin' tooth-picks fly from that
tree."
"Was that your only encounter with bears?" I asked, willing to draw him
out.
"Waal, no, not exactly," he replied, chuckling to himself, gleefully, at
some recollection the question revived. "There used to be a tame bear
over to the Alpine House. One night the critter got loose, and we all
cal'lated he'd took to the woods. Anyhow we hunted high and low; but
no bear. Waal, you see, one forenoon our hostler Mike--his real name
was Pat, but there was another Pat came afore him, so we called t'other
Mike--went up in the barn-chamber to pitch some hay down to the hosses."
Here he stopped and began to choke.
"Well, go on; what has that to do with the bear?"
"Just you hold your hosses a minnit, stranger. Mike hadn't no sooner
jabbed his pitchfork down, so as to git a big bunch, when it struck
something soft-like, and then, before he knew what ailed him, the
hay-mow riz rite up afore him, with the almightiest growl comin' out
on't was ever heerd in any maynagery this side of Noah's Ark."
Here the driver broke down utterly, gasping, "Oho! aha! oh Lord! ah!
ha! ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! Mike!" until his breath was quite gone, and the
big tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he heaved a deep sigh, attempted
to go on, but immediately went off in a second hysterical explosion. I
waited for his recovery.
"Waal," he at length resumed, "the long and short of it was this: that
air bear had buried himself under the hay-mow, and was a-snoozin' it
comfortable and innocent as you please, when Mike prodded him in the
ribs with the pitchfork. The fust any of us knew we saw Mike come
a-flyin' out of the barn-chamber window and the bear arter him. Mike led
him a length. Maybe that Irishman didn't streak it for the house! Bless
you, he never teched the ground arter he struck it! The boys couldn't
do anything for laughing, and Mick was so scart he forgot to yell. That
bear was so hoppin' wild we had to kill him; and if you wanted to make
Mike fightin' mad any time, all you had to do was to ask him to go up in
the barn-chamber and pitch down a bear."