upon the water, until a loud and resonant peal, followed by large, warm
drops, admonished me to seek the nearest shelter. And what thunder!
The hills rocked. What echoes! The mountains seemed knocking their
stony heads together. What lightning! The very heavens cracked with the
flashes.
"Far along
From peak to peak the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!"
III.
_THE KING OF FRANCONIA._
Hills draw like heaven
And stronger, sometimes, holding out their hands
To pull you from the vile flats up to them.
E. B. BROWNING.
At noon we reached the spacious and inviting Profile House, which is
hid away in a deep and narrow glen, nearly two thousand feet above
the sea. No situation could be more sequestered or more charming. The
place seems stolen from the unkempt wilderness that shuts it in. An
oval, grassy plain, not extensive, but bright and smiling, spreads its
green between a grisly precipice and a shaggy mountain. And there, if
you-will believe me, in front of the long, white-columned hotel, like a
Turkish rug on a carpet, was a pretty flower-garden. Like those flowers
on the lawn were beauties sauntering up and down in exquisite morning
toilets, coquetting with their bright-colored parasols, and now and then
glancing up at the grim old mountains with that air of elegant disdain
which is so redoubtable a weapon--even in the mountains. Little children
fluttered about the grass like beautiful butterflies, and as unmindful
of the terrors that hovered over them so threateningly. Nurses in their
stiff grenadier caps and white aprons, lackeys in livery, cadets in
uniform, elegant equipages, blooded horses, dainty shapes on horseback,
cavaliers, and last, but not least, the resolute pedestrian, or the
gentlemen strollers up and down the shaded avenues, made up a scene as
animated as attractive. There is tonic in the air: there is healing in
the balm of these groves. Even the horses step out more briskly. Peals
of laughter startle the solemn old woods. You hear them high up the
mountain side. There go a pair of lovers, the gentleman with his book,
whose most telling passages he has carefully conned, the lady with her
embroidery, over which she bends lower as he reads on. Ah, happy days!
What is this youth, which, having it, we are so eager to escape, and,
when it is gone, we look back upon with such longing?
[Illustration: EAGLE CLIFF AND THE ECHO HOUSE.]
The lofty crag opposite the hotel is Eagle Cliff, a name at once
legitimate and satisfying, although it is now untenanted by the eagles
which formerly made their home in the security of its precipitous
rocks. The cliff is also seen to great advantage from Echo Lake, half a
mile farther on, of which it constitutes a striking feature. In simple
parlance it is an advanced spur of Mount Lafayette. The high and curving
wall of this cliff encloses on one side the Profile Glen, while Mount
Cannon forms the other. The precipices tower so far above the glen that
large trees look like shrubs. Behind Eagle Cliff, almost isolating it
from the mountain, of which it is the barbacan, a hideous ravine yawns
upon the pass. Here and there, among the thick-set evergreen trees,
beech and birch and maple, spread masses of rich green, and mottle it
with softness. The purple rock bulges daringly out, forming a parapet of
adamant.
The turf underneath the cliff was most beautifully and profusely
spangled with the delicate pink anemone, the _fleur des fées_, that
pale darling of our New England woods, to which the arbutus resigns the
sceptre of spring. It is a moving sight to see these little drooping
flowers, so shy and modest, yet so meek and trustful, growing at the
foot of a bare and sterile rock. The face hardened looking up; grew
soft looking down. "Don't tread on us!" "May not a flower look up at a
mountain?" they seem to plead. Lightly fall the dews upon your upturned
faces, dear little flowers! Soft be the sunshine and gentle the winds
that kiss those sky-tinted cheeks! In thy sweet purity and innocence
I see faces that are beneath the sod, flowers that have blossomed in
Paradise.
We see also, from the hotel, the singular rock that occasioned the
change of name from Profile to Cannon Mountain. It nearly resembles a
piece of heavy ordnance protruding, threateningly, from the parapet of a
fortress.
Taking one of the well-worn paths conducting to the water-side, a few
minutes' walk brings us to the shore of Echo Lake, with Eagle Cliff now
rising grandly on our right. Nowhere among the White Hills is there a
fuller realization of a mountain lake than this. Light flaws frost it
with silver. Sharp keels cut it as diamonds cut glass. The water is so
transparent that you see fishes swimming or floating indolently about.
[Illustration: ECHO LAKE.]
Echo Lake is somewhat larger than Profile Lake, and is only a step
from the road. Its sources are in the hundred streams that descend the
surrounding mountains, and its waters are discharged by the valley,
lying between us and the heights of Bethlehem, into the Ammonoosuc.
Therefore, in coming from one lake to the other we have crossed the
summit of the pass. On one side the waters flow to the Merrimac, on the
other to the Connecticut. An idle fancy tempted me to bring a cup of
water from Profile and cast it into Echo Lake, forgetting that, although
divided in their lives, the twin lakes had yet a common destiny in the
abyss of the ocean. I found the outlook from the boat-house on the whole
the most satisfying, because one looks back directly through the deep
chasm of the Notch.
In this beautiful little mountain-tarn the true artist finds his ideal.
The snowy peak of Lafayette looked down into it with a freezing stare.
Cannon Mountain now showed his retreating wall on the right. The huge,
castellated rampart of Eagle Cliff lifted on its borders precipices
dripping with moisture, and glistening in the sun like casements.
Except for the lake, the whole aspect would be irredeemably savage
and forbidding--a blind landscape; but when the sun sinks behind the
long ridge of Mount Cannon, purpling all these grisly crags, and the
cloaked shadows, groping their way foot by foot up the ravines, seem
spectres risen from the depths of the lake, you see, underneath the
cliffs, long and slender spears of golden light thrust deep into its
black and glossy tide, crimsoning it as with its own life-blood. Then,
too, is the proper moment for surprising these vain old mountains
viewing themselves in their mountain mirror, in which the bald, the
wrinkled, and the decrepit appear young, vigorous, and gloriously fair;
to see them gloating over their swarthy features like the bandit in
"Fra Diavolo." Their ragged mantles are changed to gaudy cashmeres,
picturesquely twisted about their brawny shoulders, their snows to
laces. Oh the pomp, the majesty of these sunsets, which so glorify
the upturned faces of the haggard cliffs; which transmute, as in the
miracle, water into wine; which instantly transform these rugged
mountain walls into gates of jasper, and ruby, and onyx--glowing,
effulgent, enrapturing! And then, after the sun drops wearily down the
west, that gauze-like vapor, spun from the breath of evening, rising
like incense from the surface of the lake, which the mountains put on
for the masque of night; and, finally, the inquisitive stars piercing
the lake with ice-cold gleams, or the full-moon breaking in one great
burst of splendor on its level surface!
The echo adds its feats of ventriloquism. The marvel of the phonograph
is but a mimicry of Nature, the universal teacher. Now the man blows
a strong, clear blast upon a long Alpine horn, and, like a bugle-call
flying from camp to camp, the martial signal is repeated, not once, but
again and again, in waves of bewitching sweetness and with the exquisite
modulations of the wood-thrush's note. From covert to covert, now here,
now there, it chants its rapturous melody. Once again it glides upon
the entranced ear, and still we lean in breathless eagerness to catch
the last faint cadence sighing itself away upon the palpitating air. A
cannon was then fired. The report and echo came with the flash. In a
moment more a deep and hollow rumbling sound, as if the mountains were
splitting their huge sides with suppressed laughter, startled us.
The ascent of Mount Lafayette fittingly crowns the series of excursions
through which we have passed since leaving Plymouth. This mountain
dominates the valleys north and south with undisputed sway. It is the
King of Franconia.
At seven in the morning I crossed the little clearing, and, turning into
the path leading to the summit, found myself at the beginning of a steep
ascent. It was one of the last and fairest days of that bright season
which made the poet exclaim,
"And what is so fair as a day in June?"
The thunder-storm of the previous afternoon, which continued its furious
cannonade at intervals throughout the night, had purified the air and
given promise of a day favorable for the ascension. No clouds were upon
the mountains. Everything betokened a pacific disposition.
[Illustration: MOUNT CANNON, FROM THE BRIDLE-PATH, LAFAYETTE.]
The path at once attacks the south side of Eagle Cliff. A short way up,
openings afford fine views of Mount Cannon and its weird profile, of the
valley below, and of the glen we have just left. The stupendous mass of
Eagle Cliff, suspended a thousand feet over your head, accelerates the
pace.
After an hour of steady, but not rapid, climbing, the path turned
abruptly under the shattered, but still formidable, precipices of the
cliff, which rose some distance higher, skirted it awhile, and then
began to zigzag among huge rocks along the narrow ridge uniting the
cliff with the mass of the mountain. Two deep ravines fall away on
either side. For two or three hundred yards, from the time the shoulder
of the cliff is turned until the mountain itself is reached, the walk
is as romantic an episode of mountain climbing as any I can recall,
except the narrow gully of Chocorua. But this passage presents no such
difficulties as must be overcome there. Although heaped with rocks, the
way is easy, and is quite level. In one place, where it glides between
two prodigious masses of rock dislodged from the cliff, it is so narrow
as to admit only a single person at a time. When I turned to look back
down the black ravine, cutting into the south side of the mountain, my
eye met nothing but immense rocks stopped in their descent on the very
edge of the gulf. It is among these that a way has been found for the
path, which was to me a reminiscence of the high defiles of the Isthmus
of Darien; to complete the illusion, nothing was now wanting except the
tinkling bells of the mules and the song of the muleteer. I climbed upon
one of the high rocks, and gazed to my full content upon the granite
parapet of Mount Cannon.
In a few rods more the path encountered the great ravine opening into
the valley of Gale River. Through its wide trough brilliant strips of
this valley gleamed out far below. The village of Franconia and the
heights of Lisbon and Bethlehem now appeared on this side.
I think that the perception of a distance climbed is greater to one who
is looking down from a great height than to one looking up. Doubtless
the imagination, which associates the plunging lines of a deep gorge
with the horror of a fall, has much to do with this impression. Upon
crossing a bridge of logs, the peak of Lafayette leaped up; yet so
distant as to promise no easy conquest. Somewhere down the gorge I heard
the roar of a brook; then the report of the cannon at Echo Lake; but up
here there was no echo.
The usual indications now assured me that I was nearing the top. In
three-quarters of an hour from the time of leaving the natural bridge,
joining Eagle Cliff with the mountain, I stood upon the first of the
great billows which, rolling in to a common centre, appear to have
forced the true summit a thousand feet higher.
The first, perhaps the most curious, thing that I noticed--for one
hardly suspects the existence of considerable bodies of water in these
high regions, and, therefore, never comes upon them except unawares--was
two little lakelets, nestling in the hollow between me and the main
peak. Reposing amid the sterility of the high peaks, these lakes
surround themselves with such plants as have survived the ascent from
below, or, nourished by the snows of the summit, those that never do
descend into temperate climates. Thus an appearance of fertility--one
of those deceptions that we welcome, knowing it to be such--greets us
unexpectedly. But its appearance is weird and forbidding. Here the
extremes of arctic and temperate vegetation meet and embrace; here the
flowers of the valley annually visit their pale sisters, banished by
Nature to these Siberian solitudes; and here the rough, strong Alpine
grass, striking its roots deep among the atoms of sand, granite, or
flint, lives almost in defiance of Nature herself; and when the snows
come and the freezing north winds blow, and it can no longer stand
erect, throws itself upon the tender plants, like a brave soldier
expiring on the body of his helpless comrade, saved by his own devotion.
But these Alpine lakes always provoke a smile. When some distance
beyond the Eagle Lakes, as they are called, and higher, I caught,
underneath a wooded ridge of Cannon, the sparkle of one hidden among
the summits on the opposite side of the Notch. The immense, solitary
Kinsman Mountain overtops Cannon as easily as Cannon does Eagle Cliff.
In its dark setting of the thickest and blackest forests this lake
blazed like one of the enormous diamonds which our forefathers so firmly
believed existed among these mountains. They call this water--only to
be discovered by getting above it--Lonesome Lake, and in summer it is
the chosen retreat of one well known to American literature, whom the
mountains know, and who knows them.
I descended the slope to the plateau on which the lakes lie, soon
gaining the rush-grown shore of the nearest. Its water was hardly
drinkable, but your thirsty climber is not apt to be too fastidious.
These lakes are prettier from a distance; the spongy and yielding moss,
the sickly yellow sedge surrounding them, and the rusty brown of the
brackish water, do not invite us to tarry long.
[Illustration: CLOUD EFFECTS ON MOUNT LAFAYETTE.]
The ascent of the pinnacle now began. It is too much a repetition,
though by no means as toilsome, of the Mount Washington climb to merit
particular description. This peak, too, seems disinherited by Nature.
The last trees encountered are the stunted firs with distorted little
trunks, which it may have required half a century to grow as thick as
the wrist. I left the region of Alpine trees to enter that of gray
rocks, constantly increasing in size toward the summit, where they were
confusedly piled in ragged ridges, one upon another, looming large and
threateningly in the distance. But as often as I stopped to breathe
I scanned "the landscape o'er" with all the delight of a wholly new
experience. The fascination of being on a mountain-top has yet to be
explained. Perhaps, after all, it is not susceptible of analysis.
After gaining the highest visible point, to find the real summit
still beyond, I stopped to drink at a delicious spring trickling from
underneath a large rock, around which the track wound. I was now among
the ruin and demolition of the summit, standing in the midst of a vast
atmospheric ocean.
Had I staked all my hopes upon the distant view, no choice but
disappointment was mine to accept. Steeped in the softest, dreamiest
azure that ever dull earth borrowed from bright heaven, a hundred peaks
lifted their airy turrets on high. These castles of the air--for I will
maintain that they were nothing else--loomed with enchanting grace,
the nearest like battlements of turquoise and amethyst, or, receding
through infinite gradations to the merest shadows, seemed but the dusky
reflection of those less remote. The air was full of illusions. There
was bright sunshine, yet only a deluge of semi-opaque golden vapor.
There were forms without substance. See those iron-ribbed, deep-chested
mountains! I declare it seemed as if a swallow might fly through them
with ease! Over the great Twin chain were traced, apparently on the air
itself, some humid outlines of surpassing grace which I recognized for
the great White Mountains. It was a dream of the great poetic past: of
the golden age of Milton and of Dante. The mountains seemed dissolving
and floating away before my eyes.
Stretched beneath the huge land-billows, the valleys--north, south, or
west--reflected the fervid sunshine with softened brilliance, and all
those white farms and hamlets spotting them looked like flakes of foam
in the hollows of an immense ocean.
Heaven forbid that I should profane such a scene with the dry recital
of this view or that! I did not even think of it. A study of one of
Nature's most capricious moods interested me far more than a study of
topography. How should I know that what I saw were mountains, when the
earth itself was not clearly distinguishable? Alone, surrounded by all
these delusions, I had, indeed, a support for my feet, but none whatever
for the bewildered senses.
I found the mountain-top untenanted except by horse-flies, black gnats,
and active little black spiders. These swarmed upon the rocks. I also
found buttercups, the mountain-cranberry, and a heath, bearing a little
white flower, blossoming near the summit. There were the four walls of a
ruined building, a cairn, and a signal-staff to show that some one had
been before me. This staff is 5259 feet above the ocean, or 3245 feet
above the summit of the Franconia Pass.
The ascent required about three, and the descent about two hours. The
distance is not much less than four miles; but, these miles being a
nearly uninterrupted climb from the base to the summit of the mountain,
haste is out of the question, if going up, and imprudent, if coming
down. There are no breakneck or dangerous places on the route; nor any
where the traveller is liable to lose his way, even in a fog, except
on the first summit, where the new and old paths meet, and where a
guide-board should be erected.
IV.
_FRANCONIA, AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD._
Believe if thou wilt that mountains change their places, but
believe not that men change their dispositions.--_Oriental Proverb_.
Although one may make the journey from the Profile House to Bethlehem
with greater ease and rapidity by the railway recently constructed along
the side of the Franconia range, preference will unquestionably be given
to the old way by all who would not lose some of the most striking views
the neighborhood affords. Beginning near the hotel, the railway skirts
the shore of Echo Lake, and then plunges into a forest it was the first
to invade. By a descent of one hundred feet to the mile, for nine and
a half miles, it reaches the Ammonoosuc at Bethlehem station. I have
nothing to say against the locomotive, but then I should not like to go
through the gallery of the Louvre behind one.
[Illustration: FRANCONIA IRON WORKS AND NOTCH.]
From Echo Lake the high-road to Franconia, Littleton, and Bethlehem
winds down the steep mountain side into the valley of Gale River. To
the left, in the middle distance, appear the little church-tower and
white buildings constituting the village of Franconia Iron Works. This
village is charmingly placed for effectively commanding a survey of the
amphitheatre of mountains which isolates it from the neighboring towns
and settlements.
As we come down the three-mile descent, from the summit of the pass
to the level of the deep valley, and to the northern base of the
notch-mountains, an eminence rises to the left. Half-way up, occupying
a well-chosen site, there is a hotel, and on the high ridge another
commands not only this valley, but also those lying to the west of it.
On the opposite side to us rise the green heights of Bethlehem, Mount
Agassiz being conspicuous by the observatory on its summit. Those
farm-houses dotting the hill-side show how the road crooks and turns to
get to the top. Following these heights westward, a deep rift indicates
the course of the stream dividing the valley, and of the highway to
Littleton. Between these walls the long ellipse of fertile land beckons
us to descend.
I am always most partial to those grassy lanes and by-ways going no one
knows where, especially if they have well-sweeps and elm-trees in them;
but here also is the old red farm-house, with its antiquated sweep,
its colony of arching elms, its wild-rose clustering above the porch,
its embodiment of those magical words, "Home, sweet home." It fits the
rugged landscape as no other habitation can. It fits it to a T, as
we say in New England. More than this, it unites us with another and
different generation. What a story of toil, privation, endurance these
old walls could tell! How genuine the surprise with which they look down
upon the more modern houses of the village! Here, too, is the Virginia
fence, on which the king of the barn-yard defiantly perches. There is
the field behind it, and the men scattering seed in the fallow earth.
Yonder, in the mowing-ground, a laborer is sharpening his scythe, the
steel ringing musically under the quick strokes of his "rifle."
Over there, to the left, is the rustic bridge, and hard by a clump of
peeled birches throw their grateful shade over the hot road. Many stop
here, for the white-columned trunks are carved with initials, some
freshly cut, some mere scars. But why mutilate the tree? What signify
those letters, that every idler should gratify his little vanity by
giving it a stab? Do you know that the birch does not renew its bark,
and that the tree thus stripped of its natural protection is doomed?
Cease, then, I pray you, this senseless mutilation; nor call down the
just malediction of the future traveller for destroying his shade.
Unable to escape its fate, the poor tree, like a victim at the stake,
stoically receives your barbarous strokes and gashes. Refrain, then,
traveller, for pity's sake! Have a little mercy! Know that the ancients
believed the tree possessed of a soul. Remember the touching story
of Adonis, barbarously wounded, surviving in a pine, where he weeps
eternally. Consider how often is the figure of "The Tree" used in the
Scriptures as emblematic of the life eternal! Who would wish to inhabit
a treeless heaven?
The stream--which does not allow us to forget that it is here--is a
vociferous mountain brook. Hardly less forward is the roadside fountain
gushing into a water-trough its refreshing abundance for the tired and
dusty wayfarer. It makes no difference in the world whether he goes
on two legs or on four. "Drink and be filled" is the invitation thus
generously held out to all alike. With what a sigh of pleasure your
steaming beast lifts his reluctant and dripping muzzle from the cool
wave, and after satisfying again and again his thirst, luxuriously
immersing his nose for the third and fourth time, still pretends to
drink! How deliciously light and limpid and sparkling is the water, and
how sweet! How it cools the hot blood! You quaff nectar. You sip it as
you would champagne. It tastes far better, you think, pouring from this
half-decayed, moss-crusted spout than from iron, or bronze, or marble.
Come, fellow-traveller, a bumper! Fill high! God bless the man who
first invented the roadside fountain! He was a true benefactor of his
fellow-man.
[Illustration: THE ROADSIDE SPRING.]
Turn once more to the house. A little girl tosses corn, kernel by
kernel, to her pet chickens. There go a flight of pigeons: they curvet
and wheel, and settle on the ridge-pole, where they begin to flirt, and
strut, and coo. The men in the field look up at the top of the mountain,
to see if it is not yet noon. And now a woman, with plump bare arms,
coming briskly to the open door, puts the dinner-horn to her lips with
one hand while placing the other lightly upon her hip. She does not know
that act and attitude are alike inviting. How should she?