reputation of being the hottest in summer and in winter the coldest of
the mountain villages. It _is_ hot. The houses are strung along the road
for a mile. People may or may not live in them: you see nobody. One
modest church-tower catches the eye for a moment, and then, as we enter
the heart of the village, a square barrack of a building, just across
the stream, is pointed out as the old furnace, which in times past gave
importance to this out-of-the-way corner. But the old furnace is now
deserted except by cows from the neighboring pastures, who come and go
through its open doors in search of shade. At present the river, which
brings its music and its freshness to the very doors of the villagers,
is the only busy thing in the place.
During the Rebellion the furnace was kept busy night and day, turning
out iron to be cast into cannon. The very hills were melted down for
the defence of the imperilled Union. In the adjoining town of Lisbon
the discovery of gold-bearing quartz turned the heads of the usually
steady-going population. The precious deposits were first found on the
Bailey farm, in 1865, and similar specimens were soon detected on the
farms adjoining. It is said the old people could scarcely be made to
credit these reports until they had seen and handled the precious metal;
for the country had been settled nearly a century, and the presence of
any but the baser ores was wholly unsuspected and disbelieved.
There is one peculiarity, common to all these mountain villages,
to which I must allude. A stranger is not known by any personal
peculiarity, but by his horse. If you ask for such or such a person,
the chances are ten to one you will immediately be asked in return if
he drove a bay horse, or a black colt, or a brown mare with one white
ear; so quick are these lazy-looking men, that loll on the door-steps or
spread themselves out over the shop-counters, to observe what interests
them most. The girls here know the points of a horse better than most
men, and are far more reckless drivers than men. To a man who, like
myself, has lived in a horse-stealing country, it does look queerly to
see the barn-doors standing open at night. But then every country has
its own customs.
One seeks in vain for any scraps of history or tradition that might
shed even a momentary lustre upon this village out of the past. Yet its
situation invites the belief that it is full of both. Disappointed in
this, we at least have an inexhaustible theme in the dark and tranquil
mountains bending over us.
Mount Lafayette presents toward Franconia two enormous green billows,
rolled apart, the deep hollow between being the great ravine dividing
the mountain from base to summit. Over this deep incision, which,
from the irregularity of one of its ridges, looks widest at the top,
presides, with matchless dignity, the bared and craggy peak whose dusky
brown gradually mingles with the scant verdure checked hundreds of feet
down. With what hauteur it seems to regard this effort of Nature to
place a garland on its bronzed and knotted forehead! One can never get
over his admiration for the savage grace with which the mountain, which
at first sight seems literally thrown together, develops a beauty, a
harmony, and an intelligence giving such absolute superiority to works
of Nature over those of man.
The side of Mount Cannon turned toward the village now elevates two
almost regular triangular masses, one rising behind the other, and
both surmounted by the rounded summit, which, except in its mass, has
little resemblance to a mountain. It is seen that on two-thirds of these
elevations a new forest has replaced the original growth. Twenty-five
years ago a destructive fire raged on this mountain, destroying all the
vegetation, as well as the thin soil down to the hard rock. Even that
was cracked and peeled like old parchment. This burning mountain was a
scene of startling magnificence during several nights, when the village
was as light as day, the sky overspread an angry glow, and the river
ran blood-red. The hump-backed ridges, connecting Cannon with Kinsman,
present nearly the same appearance from this as from the other side of
the Notch--or as remarked when approaching from Campton.
The superb picture seen from the upper end of the valley, combining, as
it does, the two great chains in a single glance of the eye, is extended
and improved by going a mile out of the village to the school-house on
the Sugar Hill road. It is a peerless landscape. I have gazed at it for
hours with that ineffable delight which baffles all power of expression.
It will have no partakers. One must go there alone and see the setting
sun paint those vast shapes with colors the heavens alone are capable of
producing.
Distinguished by the beautiful groves of maple that adorn its crest,
Sugar Hill is destined to grow more and more in the popular esteem. No
traveller should pass it by. It is so admirably placed as to command
in one magnificent sweep of the eye all the highest mountains; it is
also lifted into sun and air by an elevation sufficiently high to
reach the cooler upper currents. The days are not so breathless or
so stifling as they are down in the valley. You look deep into the
Franconia Notch, and watch the evening shadows creep up the great east
wall. Extending beyond these nearer mountains, the scarcely inferior
Twin summits pose themselves like gigantic athletes. Passing to the
other side of the valley, we see as far as the pale peaks of Vermont,
and those rising above the valley of Israel's River. But better than
all, grander than all, is that kingly coronet of great mountains set on
the lustrous green cushion of the valley. Nowhere, I venture to affirm,
will the felicity of the title, "Crown of New England,"[32] receive
more unanimous acceptance than from this favored spot. Especially when
a canopy of clouds overspreading permits the pointed peaks to reflect
the illuminated fires of sunset does the crown seem blazing with jewels
and precious stones. All the great summits are visible here, and all the
ravines, except those in Madison, are as clearly distinguished as if not
more than ten instead of twenty miles separated us.
The high crest of Sugar Hill unfolds an unrivalled panorama. This is but
faint praise. Yet I find myself instinctively preferring the landscape
from Goodenow's; for those great horizons, uncovered all at once, like
a magnificent banquet, are too much for one pair of eyes, however good,
or however unwearied with continued sight-seeing. As we cannot look
at all the pictures of a gallery at once, we naturally single out the
masterpieces. The effort to digest too much natural scenery is a species
of intellectual gluttony the overtaxed brain will be quick to revenge,
by an attack of indigestion or a loss of appetite.
I was very fond of walking, in the cool of the evening, either in this
direction or to the upper end of the village, on the Bethlehem road.
There is one point on this road, before it begins in earnest its ascent
of the heights, that became a favorite haunt of mine. Emerging from the
concealment of thick woods upon a sandy plain, covered here with a thick
carpet of verdure, and skirted by a regiment of pines seemingly awaiting
only the word of command to advance into the valley, a landscape second
to none that I have seen is before you. At the same time he would be
an audacious mortal who attempted to transfer it to page or canvas.
Nothing disturbs the exquisite harmony of the scene. To the left of
you are all the White Mountains, from Adams to Pleasant; in front, the
Franconia range, from Kinsman to the Great Haystack. Here is the deep
rent of the Notch from which we have but lately descended. Here, too,
overtopped and subjugated by the superb spire of Lafayette, the long
and curiously-distorted outline of Eagle Cliff pitches headlong down
into the half-open aperture of the pass. Nothing but an earthquake could
have made such a breach. How that tremendous, earth-swooping ridge seems
battered down by the blows of a huge mace! Unspeakably wild and stern,
the fractured mountains are to the valley what a raging tempest is to
the serenest of skies: one part of the heavens convulsed by the storm,
another all peace and calm. Thus from behind his impregnable outworks
Lafayette, stern and defiant, keeps eternal watch and ward over the
valley cowering at his feet.
From this spot, too, sacred as yet from all intrusion, the profound
ravine, descending nearly from the summit of Lafayette, is fully
exposed. It is a thing of cracks, crevices, and rents; of upward
curves in brilliant light; of black, mysterious hollows, which the eye
investigates inch by inch, to where the gorge is swallowed up by the
thick forests underneath. The whole side of the principal peak seems
torn away. Up there, among the snows, is the source of a flashing stream
which comes roaring down through the gorge. Storms swell it into an
ungovernable and raging torrent. Thus under the folds of his mantle the
lordly peak carries peace or war for the vale.
After the half-stifled feeling experienced among the great mountains,
it is indeed a rare pleasure to once more come forth into full
breathing-space, and to inspect at leisure from some friendly shade
the grandeur magnified by distance, yet divested of excitements that
set the brain whirling by the rapidity of their succession. If the
wayfarer chances to see, as I did, the whole noble array of high
summits presenting a long, snowy line of unsullied brilliance against
a background of pale azure, he will account it one of the crowning
enjoyments of his journey.
The Bridal Veil Falls, lying on the northern slope of Mount Kinsman,
will, when a good path shall enable tourists to visit them, prove one
of the most attractive features of Franconia. Truth compels me to say
that I did not once hear them spoken of during the fortnight passed in
the village, although fishermen were continually bringing in trout from
the Copper-mine Brook, on which these falls are situated. The height of
the fall is given at seventy-six feet, and its surroundings are said
to be of the most romantic and picturesque character. Its marvellous
transparency, which permits the ledges to be seen through the gauze-like
sheet falling over them, has given to it its name.
From Franconia I took the daily stage to Littleton, which lies on both
banks of the Ammonoosuc, and, turning my back upon the high mountains,
ran down the rail to Wells River, having the intention of cultivating a
more intimate acquaintance with that most noble and interesting entrance
formed by the meeting of the Ammonoosuc with the Connecticut.
V.
_THE CONNECTICUT OX-BOW._
Say, have the solid rocks
Into streams of silver been melted,
Flowing over the plains,
Spreading to lakes in the fields?
LONGFELLOW.
The Connecticut is justly named "the beautiful river," and its valley
"the garden of New England." Issuing from the heart of the northern
wilderness, it spreads boundless fertility throughout its stately march
to the sea. It is not a rapid river, but flows with an even and majestic
tide through its long avenue of mountains. Radiant envoy of the skies,
its mission is peace on earth and good-will toward men. As it advances
the confluent streams flock to it from their mountain homes. On one side
the Green Mountains of Vermont send their hundred tributaries to swell
its flood; on the other side the White Hills of New Hampshire pour their
impetuous torrents into its broad and placid bosom. Two States thus vie
with each other in contributing the wealth it lavishes with absolutely
impartial hand along the shores of each.
Unlike the storied Rhine, no crumbling ruins crown the lofty heights
of this beautiful river. Its verdant hill-sides everywhere display the
evidences of thrift and happiness; its only fortresses are the watchful
and everlasting peaks that catch the earliest beams of the New England
sun and flash the welcome signal from tower to tower. From time to time
the mountains, which seem crowding its banks to see it pass, draw back,
as if to give the noble river room. It rewards this benevolence with
a garden-spot. Sometimes the mountains press too closely upon it, and
the offended stream repays this temerity with a barrenness equal to the
beneficence it has just bestowed. Where it is permitted to expand the
amphitheatres thus created are the highest types of decorative nature.
Graciously touching first one shore and then the other, making the
loveliest windings imaginable, the river actually seems on the point of
retracing its steps; but, yielding to destiny, it again resumes its
slow march, loitering meanwhile in the cool shadows of the mountains, or
indolently stretching itself at full length upon the green carpet of the
level meadows. Every traveller who has passed here has seen the Happy
Valley of Rasselas.[33]
Such is the renowned Ox-Bow of Lower Coös. Tell me, you who have seen
it, if the sight has not caused a ripple of pleasurable excitement?
Here the Connecticut receives the waters of the Ammonoosuc, flowing from
the very summit of the White Hills, and, in its turn, made to guide
the railway to its own birthplace among the snows of Mount Washington.
Here the valley, graven in long lines by the ploughshare, heaped with
fruitful orchards and groves, extends for many miles up and down its
checkered and variegated floor. But it is most beautiful between the
villages of Newbury and Haverhill, or at the Great and Little Ox-Bow,
where the fat and fecund meadows, extending for two miles from side
to side of the valley, resemble an Eden upon earth, and the villages,
prettily arranged on terraces above them, half-hid in a thick fringe of
foliage, the mantel-ornaments of their own best rooms. Only moderate
elevations rise on the Vermont side; but the New Hampshire shore is
upheaved into the finely accentuated Benton peaks, behind which,
like a citadel within its outworks, is uplifted the gigantic bulk of
Moosehillock--the greatest mountain of all this valley, and its natural
landmark--keeping strict watch over it as far as the Canadian frontiers.
The traveller approaching by the Connecticut Valley holds this exquisite
landscape in view from the Vermont side of the river. The tourist
who approaches by the valley of the Merrimac enjoys it from the New
Hampshire shore.
The large village of Newbury, usually known as the "Street," is built
along a plateau, rising well above the intervale, and joined to the
foothills of the Green Mountains. The Passumpsic Railway coasts the
intervale, just touching the northern skirt of the village. The
village of Haverhill is similarly situated with respect to the skirt
of the White Mountains; but its surface is much more uneven, and it
is elevated higher above the valley than its opposite neighbor. The
Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railway, having crossed the divide between
the waters of the Merrimac and the Connecticut, now follows the high
level, after a swift descent from Warren Summit. These plateaus, or
terraces, forming broken shelves, first upon one side of the valley,
then upon the other, strongly resemble the remains of the ancient bed of
a river of tenfold the magnitude of the stream as we see it to-day. They
give rise at once to all those interesting conjectures, or theories,
which are considered the special field of the geologist, but are also
equally attractive to every intelligent observer of Nature and her
wondrous works.
Of these two villages, which are really subdivided into half a dozen,
and which so beautifully decorate the mountain walls of this valley,
it is no treason to the Granite State to say that Newbury enjoys a
preference few will be found to dispute. It has the grandest mountain
landscape. Moosehillock is lifted high above the Benton range, which
occupies the foreground. The whole background is filled with high
summits--Lafayette feeling his way up among the clouds, Moosehillock
roughly pushing his out of the throng. Meadows of emerald, river
of burnished steel, hill-sides in green and buff, and etched with
glittering hamlets, gray mountains, bending darkly over, cloud-detaining
peaks, vanishing in the far east--surely fairer landscape never brought
a glow of pleasure to the cheek, or kindled the eye of a traveller,
already sated with a panorama reaching from these mountains to the Sound.
We are now, I imagine, sufficiently instructed in the general
characteristics of the famed Ox-Bow to pass from its picturesque and
topographical features into the domain of history, and to summon from
the past the details of a tragedy in war, which, had it occurred in
the days of Homer, would have been embalmed in an epic. Our history
begins at a period before any white settlement existed in the region
immediately about us. No wonder the red man relinquished it only at the
point of the bayonet. It was a country worth fighting for to the bitter
end.
VI.
_THE SACK OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES._
"L'histoire à sa vérité; la legende a la sienne."
In the month of September, 1759, the army of Sir Jeffrey Amherst
was in cantonments at Crown Point. A picked corps of American
rangers, commanded by Robert Rogers, was attached to this army. One
day an aide-de-camp brought Rogers an order to repair forthwith to
head-quarters, and in a few moments the ranger entered the general's
marquee.
"At your orders, general," said the ranger, making his salute.
"About that accursed hornet's-nest of St. Francis?" said the general,
frowning.
"When I was a lad, your excellency, we used to burn a hornet's-nest, if
it became troublesome," observed Rogers, significantly.
"And how many do you imagine, major, this one has stung to death in the
last six years?" inquired General Amherst, fumbling among his papers.
"I don't know; a great many, your excellency."
"Six hundred men, women, and children."
The two men looked at each other a moment without speaking.
"At this rate," continued the general, "his Majesty's New England
provinces will soon be depopulated."
"For God's sake, general, put a stop to this butchery!" ejaculated the
exasperated ranger.
"That's exactly what I have sent for you to do. Here are your orders.
You are commanded, and I expect you to destroy that nest of vipers,
root and branch. Remember the atrocities committed by these Indian
scoundrels, and take your revenge; but remember, also, that I forbid the
killing of women and children. Exterminate the fighting-men, but spare
the non-combatants. That is war. Now make an end of St. Francis once and
for all."
[Illustration: ROBERT ROGERS.]
Nearly a hundred leagues separated the Abenaqui village from the
English; and we should add that once there, in the heart of the enemy's
country, all idea of help from the army must be abandoned, and the
rangers, depending wholly upon themselves, be deprived of every resource
except to cut their way through all obstacles. But this was exactly the
kind of service for which this distinctive body of American soldiers was
formed.
Sir Jeffrey Amherst had said to Rogers, "Go and wipe out St. Francis for
me," precisely as he would have said to his orderly, "Go and saddle my
horse."
But this illustrates the high degree of confidence which the army
reposed in the chief of the rangers. The general knew that this
expedition demanded, at every stage, the highest qualities in a leader.
Rogers had already proved himself possessed of these qualities in a
hundred perilous encounters.
That night, without noise or display, the two hundred men detailed for
the expedition left their encampment, which was habitually in the van of
the army. On the evening of the twenty-second day since leaving Crown
Point a halt was ordered. The rangers were near their destination. From
the top of a tree the doomed village was discovered three miles distant.
Not the least sign that the presence of an enemy was suspected could
be seen or heard. The village wore its ordinary aspect of profound
security. Rogers therefore commanded his men to rest, and prepare
themselves for the work in hand.
At eight in the evening, having first disguised himself, Rogers took
Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery, and with them reconnoitred the
Indian town. He found it the scene of high festivity, and for an
hour watched unseen the unsuspecting inhabitants celebrating with
dancing and barbaric music the nuptials of one of the tribe. All this
marvellously favored his plans. Not dreaming of an enemy, the savages
abandoned themselves to unrestrained enjoyment and hilarity. The fête
was protracted until a late hour under the very eyes of the spies, who,
finding themselves unnoticed, crept boldly into the village, where they
examined the ground and concerted the plan of attack.
At length all was hushed. The last notes of revelry faded on the still
night air. One by one the drowsy merry-makers retired to their lodges,
and soon the village was wrapped in profound slumber--the slumber of
death. This was the moment so anxiously awaited by Rogers. Time was
precious. He quickly made his way back to the spot where the rangers
were lying on their arms. One by one the men were aroused and fell into
their places. It was two in the morning when he left the village. At
three the whole body moved stealthily up to within five hundred yards
of the village, where the men halted, threw off their packs, and were
formed for the assault in three divisions. The village continued silent
as the grave.
St. Francis was a village of about forty or fifty wigwams, thrown
together in a disorderly clump. In the midst was a chapel, to which the
inhabitants were daily summoned by matin and vesper bell to hear the
holy father, whose spiritual charge they were, celebrate the mass. The
place was enriched with the spoil torn from the English and the ransom
of many miserable captives. We have said that these Indians had slain
and taken, in six years, six hundred English: that is equivalent to one
hundred every year.
The knowledge of numberless atrocities nerved the arms and steeled the
hearts of the avengers. When the sun began to brighten the east the
three bands of rangers, waiting eagerly for the signal, rushed upon the
village.
A deplorable and sickening scene of carnage ensued. The surprise was
complete. The first and only warning the amazed savages had were the
volleys that mowed them down by scores and fifties. Eyes heavy with the
carousal of the previous night opened to encounter an appalling carnival
of butchery and horror. Two of the stoutest of the rangers--Farrington
and Bradley--led one of the attacking columns to the door where the
wedding had taken place. Finding it barred, they threw themselves so
violently against it that the fastenings gave way, precipitating Bradley
headlong among the Indians who were asleep on their mats. All these were
slain before they could make the least resistance.