harvest. Those panic-stricken, half-dazed wretches who rushed pell-mell
into the streets either ran stupidly upon the uplifted weapons of the
rangers or were shot down by squads advantageously posted to receive
them. A few who ran this terrible gauntlet plunged into the river
flowing before the village, and struck boldly out for the opposite
shore; but the avengers had closed every avenue of escape, and the
fugitives were picked off from the banks. The same fate overtook those
who tumbled into their canoes and pushed out into the stream. The frail
barks were riddled with shot, leaving their occupants an easy target for
a score of rifles. The incessant flashes, the explosions of musketry,
the shouts of the assailants, and the yells of their victims were all
mingled in one horrible uproar. For two hours this massacre continued.
Combat it cannot be called. Rendered furious by the sight of hundreds of
scalps waving mournfully in the night-wind in front of the lodges, the
pitiless assailants hunted the doomed savages down like blood-hounds.
Every shot was followed by a death-whoop, every stroke by a howl of
agony. For two horrible hours the village shook with explosions and
echoed with frantic outcries. It was then given up to pillage, and then
to the torch, and all those who from fear had hid themselves perished
miserably in the flames. At seven o'clock in the morning all was over.
Silence once more enveloped the hideous scene of conflagration and
slaughter. The village of St. Francis was the funeral pyre of two
hundred warriors. Rogers had indeed taken the fullest revenge enjoined
by Sir Jeffrey Amherst's orders.
From this point our true history passes into the legendary.
While the sack of St. Francis was going on a number of the Abenaquis
took refuge in the little chapel. Their retreat was discovered. A few
of their assailants having collected in the neighborhood precipitated
themselves toward it, with loud cries. Others ran up. Two or three blows
with the butt of a musket forced open the door, when the building was
instantly filled with armed men.
An unforeseen reception awaited them. Lighted candles burnt on the high
altar, shedding a mild radiance throughout the interior, and casting
a dull glow upon the holy vessels of gold and silver upon the altar.
At the altar's foot, clad in the sacred vestments of his office, stood
the missionary, a middle-aged, vigorous-looking man, his arms crossed
upon his breast, his face lighted up with the exaltation of a martyr.
Face and figure denoted the high resolve to meet fate half-way. Behind
him crouched the knot of half-crazed savages, who had fled to the
sanctuary for its protection, and who, on seeing their mortal enemies,
instinctively took a posture of defence. The priest, at two or three
paces in advance of them, seemed to offer his body as their rampart. The
scene was worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt.
At this sight the intruders halted, the foremost even falling back a
step, but the vessels of gold and silver inflamed their cupidity to
the highest pitch; while the hostile attitude of the warriors was a
menace men already steeped in bloodshed regarded a moment in still more
threatening silence, and then by a common impulse recognized by covering
the forlorn group with their rifles.
Believing the critical moment come, the priest threw up his hands in
an attitude of supplication, arresting the fatal volley as much by
the dignity of the gesture itself, as by the resonant voice which
exclaimed, in French, "Madmen, for pity's sake, for the sake of Him on
the Cross, stay your hands! This violence! What is your will? What seek
ye in the house of God?"
A gunshot outside, followed by a mournful howl, was his sole response.
The priest shuddered, and his crisped lips murmured an _ave_. He
comprehended that another soul had been sent, unshriven, to its final
account.
"Hear him!" said a ranger, in a mocking undertone; "his gabble minds me
of a flock of wild geese."
A burst of derisive laughter followed this coarse sally.
In fact, they had not too much respect for the Church of Rome, these
wild woodsmen, but were filled with ineradicable hatred for its
missionaries, domesticated among their enemies, in whom they believed
they saw the real heads of the tribes, and the legitimate objects,
therefore, of their vengeance.
"Yield, Papist! Come, you shall have good quarter; on the word of a
ranger you shall," cried an authoritative voice, the speaker at the same
time advancing a step, and dropping his rifle the length of his sinewy
arms.
"Never!" answered the ecclesiastic, crossing himself.
A suppressed voice from behind hurriedly murmured in his ear, "_Écoutez:
rendez-vous, mon père: je vous en supplie!_"
"_Jamais! mieux vaut la mort que la miséricorde de brigands et
meurtriers!_" ejaculated the missionary, rejecting the counsel also,
with a vehement shake of the head.
"_Grand Dieu! tout, donc, est fini_," sighed the voice, despairingly.
The rangers understood the gesture better than the words. An officer,
the same who had just spoken, again impatiently demanded, this time in a
higher and more threatening key,
"A last time! Do you yield or no? Answer, friar!"
The priest turned quickly, took the consecrated Host from the altar,
elevated it above his head, and, in a voice that was long remembered by
those who heard it, exclaimed,
"To your knees, monsters! to your knees!"
What the ranger understood of this pantomime and this command was that
they conveyed a scornful and a final refusal. Muttering under his
breath, "Your blood be upon your own head, then," he levelled his
gun and pulled the trigger. A general discharge from both sides shook
the building, filling it with thick and stifling smoke, and instantly
extinguishing the lights. The few dim rays penetrating the windows, and
which seemed recoiling from the frightful spectacle within, enabled the
combatants vaguely to distinguish each other in the obscurity. Not a cry
was heard; nothing but quick reports or blows signaled the progress of
this lugubrious combat.
This butchery continued ten minutes, at the end of which the rangers,
with the exception of one of their number killed outright, issued from
the chapel, after having first stripped the altar, despoiled the shrine
of its silver image of the Virgin, and flung the Host upon the ground.
While this profanation was enacting a voice rose from the heap of dead
at the altar's foot, which made the boldest heart among the rangers stop
beating. It said,
"The Great Spirit of the Abenaquis will scatter darkness in the path of
the accursed Pale-faces! Hunger walks before and Death strikes their
trail! Their wives weep for the warriors that do not return! Manitou is
angry when the dead speak. The dead have spoken!"
The torch was then applied to the chapel, and, like the rest of the
village, it was fast being reduced to a heap of cinders. But now
something singular transpired. As the rangers filed out from the
shambles the bell of the little chapel began to toll. In wonder and
dread they listened to its slow and measured strokes until, the flames
having mounted to the belfry, it fell with a loud clang among the ruins.
The rangers hastened onward. This unexpected sound already filled them
with gloomy forebodings.
After the stern necessities of their situation rendered a separation
the sole hope of successful retreat, the party which carried along
with it the silver image was so hard pressed by the Indians, and by a
still more relentless enemy, famine, that it reached the banks of the
Connecticut reduced to four half-starved, emaciated men. More than once
had they been on the point of flinging their burden into some one of the
torrents every hour obstructing their way; but as one after another fell
exhausted or lifeless, the unlucky image passed from hand to hand, and
was thus preserved up to the moment so eagerly and so confidently looked
for, during that long and dreadful march, to end all their privations.
But the chastisement of heaven, prefigured in the words of the expiring
Abenaqui, had already overtaken them. Half-crazed by their sufferings,
they mistook the place of rendezvous appointed by their chief, and,
having no tidings of their comrades, believed themselves to be the sole
survivors of all that gallant but ill-fated band. In this conviction, to
which a mournful destiny conducted, they took the fatal determination
to cross the mountains under the guidance of one of their number who
had, or professed, a knowledge of the way through the Great Notch of the
White Hills.
For four days they dragged themselves onward through thickets, through
deep snows and swollen streams, without sustenance of any kind, when
three of them, in consequence of their complicated miseries, aggravated
by finding no way through the wall of mountains, lost their senses.
What leather covered their cartouch-boxes they had already scorched
to a cinder and greedily devoured. At length, on the last days of
October, as they were crossing a small river dammed by logs, they
discovered some human bodies, not only scalped, but horribly mangled,
which were supposed to be some of their own band. But this was no
time for distinctions. On them they accordingly fell like cannibals,
their impatience being too great to await the kindling of a fire to
dress their horrid food by. When they had thus abated somewhat the
excruciating pangs they before endured, the fragments were carefully
collected for a future store.
My pen refuses to record the dreadful extremities to which starvation
reduced these miserable wretches. At length, after some days of
fruitless wandering up and down, finding the mountains inexorably
closing in upon them, even this last dreadful resource failed, and,
crawling under some rocks, they perished miserably in the delirium
produced by hunger and despair, blaspheming, and hurling horrible
imprecations at the silver image, to which, in their insanity, they
attributed all their sufferings. One of them, seizing the statue,
tottered to the edge of a precipice, and, exerting all his remaining
strength, dashed it down into the gulf at his feet.
Tradition affirms that the first settlers who ascended Israel's River
found relics of the lost detachment near the foot of the mountains; but,
notwithstanding the most diligent search, the silver image has thus far
eluded every effort made for its recovery.
VII.
MOOSEHILLOCK.
And so, when restless and adrift, I keep
Great comfort in a quietness like this,
An awful strength that lies in fearless sleep,
On this great shoulder lay my head, nor miss
The things I longed for but an hour ago.
SARAH O. JEWETT.
Moosehillock, or Moosilauke,[34] is one of four or five summits from
which the best idea of the whole area of the White Mountains may be
obtained. It is not so remarkable for its form as for its mass. It is an
immense mountain.
Lifted in solitary grandeur upon the extreme borders of the army of
peaks to which it belongs, and which it seems defending, haughtily
over-bearing those lesser summits of the Green Mountains confronting
it from the opposite shores of the Connecticut, which here separates
the two grand systems, like two hostile armies, the one from the other,
Moosehillock resembles a crouching lion, magnificent in repose, but
terrible in its awakening.
This immense strength, paralyzed and helpless though it seems, is
nevertheless capable of arousing in us a sentiment of respectful
fear--respect for the creative power, fear for the suspended life we
believe is there. The mountain really seems lying extended under the sky
listening for the awful command, "Arise and walk!"
This mountain received a name before Mount Washington, and is in
some respects, as I hope to point out, the most interesting of the
whole group. In the first place, it commands a hundred miles of the
Connecticut Valley, including, of course, all the great peaks of the
Green Mountain and Adirondack chains. Again, its position confers
decided advantages for studying the configuration of the Franconia
group, to which, in a certain sense, it is allied, and of the ranges
enclosing the Pemigewasset Valley, which it overlooks. Moosehillock
stands in the broad angle formed by the meeting waters of the
Connecticut and the Ammonoosuc. In a word, it is an advanced bastion
of the whole cluster of castellated summits, constituting the White
Mountains in a larger meaning.
Therefore no summit better repays a visit than Moosehillock; yet it is
astonishing, considering the ease of access, how few make the ascent.
The traveller can hardly do better than begin here his experiences of
mountain adventure, should chance conduct him this way; or, if making
his exit from the mountain region by the Connecticut Valley, he may,
taking it in his way out, make this the appropriate pendant of his
tours, romantic and picturesque.
Having been so long known to and frequented by the Indian as well as
white hunters, the mountain is naturally the subject of considerable
legend,[35] which the historian of Warren has scrupulously gathered
together. One of these tales, founded on the disaster of Rogers,
recounts the sufferings of two of his men, hopelessly snared in the
great Jobildunk ravine. But that tale of horror needs no embellishment
from romance. This enormous rent, equally hideous in fact as in name,
cut into the vitals of the mountain so deeply that a dark stream gushes
from the gaping wound, conceals within its mazes several fine cascades.
Owing to long-continued drought, the streams were so puny and so languid
when I visited the mountain that I explored only the upper portion of
the gorge, which bristles with an untamed forest, levelling its myriad
spears at the breast of the climber.
The greater part of the mountain lies in the town of Benton, or,
perhaps, it would be nearer the truth to say that fully half the
township is appropriated by its prodigious earthwork. But, to reach it
without undergoing the fatigues of a long march through the woods,
it is necessary to proceed to the village of Warren, which is twenty
miles north of Plymouth, and about fourteen south of Haverhill. Behind
the village rises Mount Carr. Still farther to the north the summits
of Mounts Kineo, Cushman, and Waternomee, continuing this range now
separating us from the Pemigewasset Valley, form also the eastern wall
of the valley of Baker's River, which has its principal source in the
ravines of Moosehillock. There is a bridle-path opening communication
with the mountain from the Benton side, on the north; and so with Lisbon
and Franconia. A carriage-road is also contemplated on that side, which
will render access still more feasible for a large summer population;
while a bridle-path, lately opened between two peaks of the Carr range,
facilitates ingress from the Pemigewasset side.
I set out from the village of Warren on one of the hottest afternoons
of an intensely hot and dry summer. The five miles between the village
and the base of the mountain need not detain the sight-seer. At the
crossing of Baker's River I remarked again the granite-bed honey-combed
with those curious pot-holes sunk by whirling stones, first set in
motion and then spun around by the stream, which here, breaking up into
several wild pitches, pours through a rocky gorge. But how gratefully
cool and refreshing was even the sound of rushing water in that still,
stifling atmosphere, coming, one would think, from a furnace! Then for
two miles more the horse crept along the road, constantly ascending the
side of the valley, until the last house was reached. Here we passed a
turnpike-gate, rolled over the crisped turf of a stony pasture through a
second gate, and were at the foot of Moosehillock.
In a trice we exchanged the sultriness, the dryness, the dust, parching
or suffocating us, of a shadeless road, for the cool, moist air of the
mountain-forest and the delectable sound of running water. A brook shot
past; then another; then the horse, who stopped when he liked, and as
often as he liked, like a man forced to undertake a task which he is
determined shall cost his task-masters dearly, began a languid progress
up the increasing declivity before us. His sighs and groans, as he
plodded wearily along, were enough to melt a heart of stone. I therefore
dismounted and walked on, leaving the driver to follow as he could. The
question was, not how the horse should get us up the mountain, but how
we should get the horse up.
They call it four and a half miles from the bottom to the top. The
distances indicated by the sign-boards, nailed to trees, did not appear
to me exact. They are not exact; and the reason why they are not is
sufficiently original to merit a word of explanation. Having long
observed the effect of imagination, especially in computing distances,
the builder of the road, as he himself informed me, adopted a truly
ingenious method of his own. He lengthened or shortened his miles
according as the travelling was good or bad. For example: the first
mile, being an easy one, was stretched to a mile and a quarter. The
last mile is also very good travelling. That, too, he lengthened to a
mile and a half. In this way he reduced the intervening two and a half
miles of the worst road to one and three-fourth miles. This absolutely
harmless piece of deception, he averred, considerably shortened the most
difficult part of the journey. No one complained that the good miles
were too long, while the bad ones were now passed over with far less
grumbling than before they were abbreviated by this simple expedient,
which very few, I am convinced, would have thought of. In fact, the sum
of the whole distance being scrupulously adhered to, it is the most
civil piece of engineering of which I have any knowledge.
The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the
south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute
lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting
also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain
from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a
glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. The trees now visibly
dwindled. Just before reaching the ridge, where it joins this peak, a
fine spring, deliciously cold, gushed from the mountain side. A few
rods more of ascent brought us quite out upon the long, narrow, curving
backbone of the mountain, uplifting its sharp edge between two profound
gorges, connecting the peaks set at its two extremes, between which
Nature has decreed a perpetual divorce. The sun was just setting as we
emerged upon this natural way conducting from peak to peak along the
airy crest of the mountain.
Although this, it will be remembered, is one of the longest miles,
according to the scale of computation in vogue here, the unexpected
speed which the horse now put forth, the sight of the squat, little
Tip-Top House, clinging to the summit beyond, the upper and nether
worlds floating or fading in splendor, while the night-breezes sweeping
over cooled our foreheads, and rudely jostled the withered trees, drawn
a little apart to the right and left to let us pass, quickly replaced
that weariness of mind and body which the mountain exacts of all who
pass over it on a sultry midsummer's day.
At the extremity of the ridge, which is only wide enough for the road,
a gradual ascent led to the high summit and to a level plateau of a
few acres at its top. This was treeless, but covered with something
like soil, smooth, and, being singularly free from the large stones
found everywhere else, affords good walking in any direction. The
house is built of rough stone, and, though of primitive construction,
is comfortable, and even inviting. Furthermore, its materials being
collected on the spot, one accepts it as still constituting a part of
the mountain, which, indeed, at a little distance it really seems to
be. In the evening I went out, to find the mountain blindfolded with
clouds. Soon rain began to drive against the window-panes in volleys.
At a late hour we heard wheels grinding on the rocks outside, and then
a party of tourists drove up to the door, dripping and crestfallen at
having undertaken the ascent with a storm staring them in the face. But
they had only this one day, they said, and were "bound" to go up the
mountain. So up they toiled through pitch darkness, through rain and
cloud, passed the night in a building said to be on the summit, and
returned down the mountain in the morning, to catch their train, through
as dense a fog as ever exasperated a hurried tourist. But they had been
to the top! Are there anywhere else in the world people who travel two
hundred miles for a single day's recreation?
It is very curious, this being domesticated on the top of a mountain. We
go to bed wondering if the scene will not all vanish in our dreams. It
was very odd, too, to see the tourists silently mount their buck-board
in the morning, and disappear, within a stone's throw, in clouds.
Detaching themselves to all intents from earth, they began a flight in
air. Walking a short distance, perhaps a gunshot, from the house, I
groped my way back with difficulty. The case seemed desperate.
But grandest scene of all was the breaking up of the storm. Shortly
after noon the high sun began to exert a sensible influence upon the
clouds. A perceptible warmth, replacing the chill and clammy mists,
began to pervade the mountain-top. Presently a dim sun-ray shot through.
Then, as if a noiseless explosion had suddenly rent them, the whole
mass of clouds was torn in ten thousand tatters flying through space.
All nature seemed seized with sudden frenzy. Here a summit and there a
peak was seen, struggling fiercely in the grasp of the storm. Coming up
with rushing noise, the west wind charged home the routed storm-clouds
with fresh squadrons. What indescribable yet noiseless tumult raged in
the heavens! Even the mountains seemed scarcely able to stem the tide
of fugitives. A panic seized them. Fear gave them wings. They rushed
pell-mell into the ravines and clung to the tree-tops; they dashed
themselves blindly against the adamant of Lafayette, only to fall
back broken into the deep fosse beneath. Bolts of dazzling sunshine
continually tore through them. The gorges themselves seemed heaped with
the wounded and the dying. But the rushing wind, trampling the fugitives
down, dispersed and cut them mercilessly to pieces. One was irresistibly
carried away by this rage of battle. In ten minutes I looked around upon
a clear sky. One cloud, impaled on the gleaming spear of Lafayette,
hung limp and lifeless; another floated like a scarf from the polished
casque of Chocorua; a third, taken prisoner _en route_, humbly held the
train of Washington. All the rest of the phantom host, using its power
to render itself invisible, vanished from sight as if the mountains had
swallowed it up.
The landscape being now fully uncovered, I enjoyed all its rare
perfection. It is a superb and fascinating one, invested with a
powerful individuality, surrounded by a charm of its own. You wish to
see the two great chains? There they are, the greater rising over the
lesser, in the order fixed by Nature. That sunny space in the softened
coloring of old tapestry, more to the right, is the Pemigewasset Valley,
and the spot from where not long ago we looked up at this mountain
looming large in the distance. We raise our eyes to glance up the East
Branch upon Mount Hancock and the peaks of Carrigain peeping over.
We touch with magic wand the faint cone of Kearsarge, so dim that it
seems as if it must rise and float away; then, continuing to call the
roll of mountains, Moat, Tripyramid, Chocorua, and all our earlier
acquaintances rise or nod among the Sandwich peaks. Some draw their
cloud-draperies over their bare shoulders, some sun their naked and
hairy breasts in savage luxury. We alight like a bird upon the glassy
bosom of Winnepiseogee the incomparable, and, like the bird, again rise,
refreshed, for flights still more remote. We sweep over the Uncanoonucs
into Massachusetts, steadying the eye upon far Wachusett as we pass from
the Merrimac Valley. Now come thronging in upon us the mountains of the
Connecticut Valley. We rest awhile upon the transcendently beautiful
expanse of the Ox-Bow, and its playthings of villages, strung along
the glittering necklace of the river. Across this valley, lifting our
eyes, we wander among the loftiest peaks of the Green Mountains--those
colossal _verd-antiques_--exchanging frozen glances across the placid
expanse of Champlain with the haughtiest summits of the Adirondacks.
We grow tired of this. One last look, this time up the valley, reveals
to us the wide and curious gap between two distant mountains, and far
beyond Memphremagog, where these mountains rise, we scan all the route
travelled by Rogers, the perils of which are fresh in our memory. We
pass on unchallenged into the dominions of Victoria.