And yet the half is not told. I have merely indicated its dimensions.
Now let the reader, drawing an imaginary line from peak to peak, go
over at leisure all that lies between. I merely prick the chart for
him. Moosehillock, not quite five thousand feet high, overlooks all
New Hampshire, pushes investigation into Maine and Massachusetts, is
familiar with Vermont, distant with New York, and has an eye upon
Canada. It is said the ocean has been seen, but I did not see it.
Circumstances compelled me to drive the old horse, who has made more
ascensions of the mountain than any living thing, back to Warren. No
other was to be had for love or money. Had there been time I would have
preferred walking, but there was not. This horse measured sixteen hands.
His thin body and long legs resembled a horse upon stilts. He looked
dejected, but resigned. I argued that he would be able to get down the
mountain somehow; and, once out of the woods, I could count on his
eagerness to get home, to some extent, perhaps. I was not deceived in
either expectation.
The road, as I have said, is for most of the way a rough, steep, and
stony one. In order to check the havoc made by sudden showers, and
to hold the thin soil in place, hemlock-boughs were spread over it,
artfully concealing those protruding stones which the scanty soil
refused to cover. He who intrusted himself to it did not find it a
bed of roses. The buck-board was the longest, clumsiest, and most
ill-favored it has ever been my lot to see. This vehicle, being peculiar
to the mountains, demands, at least, a word. It is a very primitive and
ingenious affair, and cheaply constructed. Naturally, therefore, it
originated where the farmers were poor and the roads bad. But what is
the buck-board? Every one has seen the spring-board of a gymnasium or of
a circus. A smooth plank, ten feet long, resting upon trestles placed
at either end, assists the acrobat to vault high in the air. Each time
he falls the rebound sends him up again. This is the principle of the
buck-board. Remove the trestles, put a pair of wheels in the place of
each, and you have the vehicle itself, _minus_ shafts or pole, according
as one or two horses are to draw it. Increased weight bends the board or
the spring more and more until it is in danger of touching the ground.
The passengers sit in the hollow of this spring, the natural tendency of
which is to shoot them into the air.
[Illustration: THE BUCK-BOARD WAGON.]
I am justified in speaking thus of the road and the vehicle. But
who shall describe the horse? That animal was possessed of a devil,
and, like the swine of the miracle, ran violently all the way down
the mountain, without stopping for water or breath. Fortunate indeed
for me was it that the sea was not at the bottom. In three-quarters
of an hour, half of which was spent in the air, I was at the foot
of the mountain which had required two tedious hours to ascend. How
the quadruped managed to avoid falling headlong fifty times over
the concealed stones I have no idea. How I contrived to alight,
when a wheel, coming violently against one of these stones, put the
spring-board in play--how I contrived to alight, I remark, during this
game of battledoor and shuttlecock, never twice in the same place, is to
this day an enigma.
The houses of ancient Rome frequently bore the inscription for the
benefit of strangers, "_Cave canem._" This could be advantageously
replaced here, upon the first turnpike-gate, at the mountain's foot,
with the warning, "Beware of the horse!"
VIII.
_BETHLEHEM._
_Ros._ O Jupiter! how weary are my spirits!
_Touch._ I care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary.
_As You Like It._
Having finished with the western approach to the White Mountains, I
was now at liberty to retrace my route up the Ammonoosuc Valley, which
so abounds in picturesque details--farms, hamlets, herds, groups of
pines, maples, torrents, roads feeling their way up the heights--to
that anomaly of mountain towns, Bethlehem. Thanks to the locomotive,
the journey is short. The villages of Bath, Lisbon, Littleton, are
successively entered; the same flurry gives a momentary activity to each
station, the same faces crowd the platforms, and the same curiosity is
exhibited by the passengers, whose excitement receives an increase with
every halt of the laboring train.
Bethlehem is ranged high up, along the side of a mountain, like the
best china in a cupboard. The crest of Mount Agassiz[36] rises behind
it. Beneath the village the ground descends, rather abruptly, to the
Ammonoosuc, which winds, through matted woods, its way out of the
mountains. There are none of those eye-catching gleams of water which so
agreeably diversify these interminable miles of forest and mountain land.
It is only by ascending the slopes of Mount Agassiz that we can secure
a stand-point fairly showing the commanding position of Bethlehem, or
where its immediate surroundings may be viewed all at once. It is so
situated, with respect to the curvature of this mountain, that at one
end of the village they do not know what is going on at the other.
One end revels in the wide panorama of the west, the other holds the
unsurpassed view of the great peaks to the east.
Bethlehem has risen, almost by magic, at the point where the old highway
up the Ammonoosuc is intersected by that coming from Plymouth, the
Pemigewasset Valley, and the Profile House. In time a small roadside
hamlet naturally clustered about this spot. Dr. Timothy Dwight, the
pioneer traveller for health and pleasure among these mountains,
passed through here in 1803. Speaking of the appearance of Bethlehem,
he says: "There is nothing which merits notice, except the patience,
enterprise, and hardihood of the settlers which have induced them to
stay upon so forbidding a spot; a magnificent prospect of the White
Mountains; and a splendid collection of other mountains in their
neighborhood, particularly on the south-west." It was then reached by
only one wretched road, which passed the Ammonoosuc by a dangerous ford.
The few scattered habitations were mere log-cabins, rough and rude.
The few planting-fields were still covered with dead trees, stark and
forbidding, which the settlers, unable to fell with the axe, killed by
girdling, as the Indians did.
From this historical picture of Bethlehem in the past, we turn to
the Bethlehem of to-day. It is turning from the post-rider to the
locomotive. Not a single feature is recognizable except the splendid
prospect of the White Mountains, and the magnificent collection of
other mountains, which call forth the same admiration to-day. Fortunate
geographical position, salubrity, fine scenery--these, and these alone,
are the legitimate cause of what may be termed the rise and progress
of Bethlehem. All that the original settlers seem to have accomplished
is to clear away the forests which intercepted, and to make the road
conducting to the view.
It is the position of Bethlehem with respect to the recognized points
or objects of interest that gives to it a certain strategic advantage.
For example, it is admirably situated for excursions north, south,
east, or west. It is ten miles to the Profile, twelve to the Fabyan,
seventeen to the Crawford, fifteen to the Waumbek, and eighteen to the
base of Mount Washington. One can breakfast at Bethlehem, dine on Mount
Washington, and be back for tea; and he can repeat the experience with
respect to the other points named as often as inclination may prompt.
Moreover, the great elevation exempts Bethlehem from the malaria and
heat of the valleys. The air is dry, pure, and invigorating, rendering
it the paradise of those invalids who suffer from periodical attacks of
hay-fever. Lastly, it is new, or comparatively new, and possesses the
charm of novelty--not the least consideration to the thousands who are
in pursuit of that and that only.
Bethlehem Street is the legitimate successor of the old road. This is
a name _sui generis_ which seems hardly appropriate here, although it
is so commonly applied to the principal thoroughfares of our inland New
England villages. It has a spick-and-span look, as if sprung up like
a bed of mushrooms in a night. And so, in fact, it has; for Bethlehem
as a summer resort dates only a few years back its sudden rise from
comparative obscurity into the full blaze of popular fame and favor.
The guide-book of fifteen years ago speaks of the _one_ small but
comfortable hotel, kept by the Hon. J. G. Sinclair. In fact, very little
account was made of it by travellers, except to remark the magnificent
view of the White Mountains on the east, or of the Franconia Mountains
on the south, as they passed over the then prescribed tour from North
Conway to Plymouth, or _vice versa_.
But this newness, which you at first resent, besides introducing here
and there some few attempts at architectural adornment, contrasts
very agreeably with the ill-built, rambling, and slip-shod appearance
of the older village-centres. They are invariably most picturesque
from a distance. But here there is an evident effort to render the
place itself attractive by making it beautiful. Good taste generally
prevails. I suspect, however, that the era of good taste, beginning with
the incoming of a more refined and intelligent class of travellers,
communicated its spirit to two or three enterprising and sagacious
men,[37] who saw in what Nature had done an incentive for their own
efforts. We walk here in a broad, well-built thoroughfare, skirted on
both sides with hotels, boarding-houses, and modern cottages, in which
three or four thousand sojourners annually take refuge. All this has
grown from the "one small hotel" of a dozen years ago. Shade-trees and
grass-plots beautify the way-side. An immense horizon is visible from
these houses, and even the hottest summer days are rendered endurable
by the light airs produced and set in motion by the oppressive heats of
the valley. The sultriest season is, therefore, no bar to out-of-door
exercise for persons of average health, rendering walks, rambles, or
drives subject only to the will or caprice of the pleasure-seeker.
But in the evening all these houses are emptied of their occupants.
The whole village is out-of-doors, enjoying the coolness or the
panorama with all the zest unconstrained gratification always brings.
The multitudes of well-dressed promenaders surprise every new-comer,
who immediately thinks of Saratoga or Newport, and their social
characteristics. Bethlehem, he thinks, must be the ideal of those who
would carry city or, at least, suburban life among the mountains; who do
not care a fig for solitude, but prefer to find their pleasures still
connected with their home life. They are seeing life and seeing nature
at the same time.
Sauntering along the street from the Sinclair House, a strikingly large
and beautiful prospect opens as we come to the Belleview. Here the
road, making its exit from the village, descends to the Ammonoosuc. The
valley broadens and deepens, exposing to view all the town of Littleton,
picturesquely scattered about the distant hill-sides. Its white houses
resemble a bank of daisies. The hills take an easy attitude of rest.
Six hundred feet below us the bottom of the valley exhibits its rich
savannas, interspersed with cottages and groves. Above its deep hollow
the Green Mountains glimmer in the far west. "Ah!" you say, "we will
stop here."
Let us now again, leaving the Sinclair House behind, ascend the
road to the Profile. It is not so much travelled as it was before
the locomotive, in his coat-of-mail, sounded his loud trumpet at
the gates of Franconia. A mile takes us to the brow of the hill. We
hardly know which way to look first. Two noble and comprehensive views
present themselves. To the left Mount Agassiz rears his commanding
peak. In front of us, across a valley, is the great, deeply-cloven
Franconia Notch. Lafayette is superb here. Now the large, compact
mass of Moosehillock looms on the extreme right, together with all
those striking objects lately studied or observed from the village of
Franconia, which so quietly reposes beneath us. But this landscape
properly belongs to the environs of Bethlehem, and never is it so
incomparably grand as when the summits are fitfully revealed, battling
fiercely with storm-clouds. Every phase of the conflict is watched with
eager attention. Seeing all this passion above, it calls up a smile to
look down at the unbroken and unconscious tranquillity of the valley.
[Illustration: MOUNT LAFAYETTE, FROM BETHLEHEM.]
Facing now in the direction of Bethlehem, the eye roves over the
broad basin of the Ammonoosuc for many miles up and down. The hills of
Littleton, Whitefield, Dalton, Carroll, and Jefferson bend away from
the opposite side; and over the last the toothed Percy Peaks[38] rise
blue and clear at the point where the waters of the Connecticut and the
Androscoggin, approaching each other, conduct the Grand Trunk Railway
out of the mountains. The west is packed with the high summits of the
Green Mountain chain. The great White Mountains are concealed, as yet,
by the swell of the mountain down whose side the road conducts to the
village. "This," you exclaim, "this is the spot where we will pitch
our tents!" But there is no public-house here, and we are reluctantly
forced to descend. In proportion as we go down, this seemingly limitless
panorama suffers a partial eclipse. The landscape changes from the
high-wrought epic to the grand pastoral, if such a distinction may
be applied to differing forms of mountain scenery. This approach is,
without doubt, the most striking introduction to Bethlehem. It is
curiously instructive, too, as regards the relative merits of successive
elevations, each higher than the other, as proper view-points.
A third ramble is altogether indispensable before we can say that we
know Bethlehem of the Hills. The direction is now to the east, by the
road to the Crawford House, or Fabyan's, or the Twin. We continue along
the high plateau, in the shade of sugar-maples or Lombardy poplars,
to the eastern skirt of the village, the houses getting more and more
unfrequent, until we come upon the edge of the slope to the Ammonoosuc,
where the road to Whitefield, Lancaster, and Jefferson, leaving the main
thoroughfare, drops quietly down into Bethlehem Hollow. No envious hill
now obstructs the truly "magnificent view." Through the open valley the
lordly mountains again inthrall us with the might of an overpowering
majesty.
This locality has taken the name of the great hotel erected here
by Isaac Cruft, whose hand is visible everywhere in Bethlehem. The
Maplewood, as it is called, easily maintains at its own end the prestige
of Bethlehem for rapid growth. When I first visited the place, in
1875, I found a modest roadside hostelry accommodating sixty guests;
five years later a mammoth structure, in which six hundred could be
accommodated, had risen, like Aladdin's palace, on the same spot.
Instead of our little musical entertainment, our mock-trial, our quiet
rubber of whist, of an evening, there were readings, lectures, balls,
masquerades, theatricals, _musicales_, for every day of the week.
But Bethlehem is emphatically the place of sunsets. In this respect no
other mountain resort can pretend to equal it. From no other village
are so many mountains visible at once; at no other has the landscape
such length and breadth for giving full effect to these truly wonderful
displays. More because the sublimity of the scene deserves a permanent
chronicle than from any confidence in my own ability to reproduce it, I
attempt in black and white to describe one of unparalleled intensity of
color, one that may never be repeated, certainly never excelled, while
the sun, the heavens, and the mountains shall last.
A cold drizzle having set in on the day of my arrival, the mountains
were invisible when I rose in the morning. I looked, but they were no
longer there. I was much vexed at the prospect of being storm-bound,
or of making under compulsion a sojourn I had beforehand resolved
to make at my own good will and pleasure. So strongly is the spirit
of resistance developed in us. After a critical investigation of
the weather, it crossed my mind like an intuition that something
extraordinary was preparing behind the enormous masses of clouds
clinging like wet draperies to the skirts of the mountains, forming
an impenetrable curtain, now and then slowly lifted by the fresh
north wind, now suddenly distended or collapsing like huge sails, but
noiselessly and mysteriously as the ghostly canvas of the _Flying
Dutchman._
Toward the middle of the afternoon, the wind having freshened, the
lower clouds broke apart here and there--just enough to reveal to us
that ever-new picture of the White Mountains, beautifully robed in
fresh snow, above the darker line of forest; but so thoroughly were
the high summits blended with the dull silver-gray of upper sky that
the true line of separation defied the keenest scrutiny to detect it.
This produced a curious optical illusion. Extended sumptuously along
the crest-line, rivalling the snow itself, a bank of white clouds
rendered the deception perfect, since just above them began that heavy
and dull expanse which overspread and darkened the whole heavens,
thus imperfectly delineating a second line of summits mounting to a
prodigious height. They seemed miles upon miles high.
Up stretched this gigantic and shadowy phantasm of towers, domes,
and peaks, illimitably, as if mountains and heavens were indeed come
together in eternal alliance. At the same time the finger dipped in
water could trace a more conclusive outline on glass than the eye could
find here. The summits, a little luminous, emitted a cold, spectral
glare. It gave you a chill to look at them. No sky, no earth, no deep
gorges, no stark precipices--no anything except that dead wall, so
sepulchral in its gray gloom that equally mind and imagination failed to
find one familiar outline or contour. The true peaks seemed clouds, and
the clouds peaks. But this phantasm was only the prologue.
At the hour of sunset all the lower clouds had disappeared. The
upper heavens now wore that deep grape-purple impervious to light
or warmth, and producing the effect of a vast dome hung with black.
The storm replaced the azure tint of the sky with the most sombre
color in its laboratory. The light visibly waned. The icy peaks still
reflected a boreal glitter. But in the west these funereal draperies
fell a little short of touching the edge of the horizon--a bare
hand's-breadth--leaving a crevice filled with golden light, pure and
limpid as water, clear and vivid as winnowed sunshine. The sun's eye
would soon be applied to this peep-hole. A feverish impatience seized
us. We could see the people at their doors and in the street standing
silent and expectant, with their faces turned to the heavens. From a
station near Cruft's Ledge we watched intently for the moment when this
splendid light, concentrated in one level sheet, should fall upon the
great mountains.
In a few seconds a yellow spot of piercing brilliancy appeared in this
narrow band of light. One look at it was blinding; a second would have
paralyzed the optic nerve. Mechanically we put up our hands to shut
it out. Imagine a stream of molten iron--hissing-hot and throwing off
fiery spray--gushing from the side of a furnace! Even that can give
but a feeble idea of the unspeakable intensity of this last sun-ray.
It blazed. It flooded us with a suffocating effulgence. Suppose now
this cataract of liquid flame suddenly illuminating the pitchy darkness
of a cavern in the bowels of the earth. The effect was electrifying.
Confined between the upper and nether expanse--dull earth and brooding
sky--rendered tenfold more dazzling by the blackness above, beneath, the
sun poured upon the great mountains one magnificent torrent of radiance.
In an instant the broad land was deluged with the supreme glories of
that morning when the awful voice of God uttered the sublime command,
"Let there be light, and there was light."
An electric shock awoke the torpid earth, transfigured the mountains. On
swept the mighty wave, shedding light, and warmth, and splendor where a
moment before all was dark, cold, and spiritless. Like Ajax before Troy,
the giant hills braced on their dazzling armor. Like Achilles's shield,
they threw back the brightness of the sun. Every tree stood sharply out.
Every cavern disclosed its inmost secrets. Twigs glittered diamonds,
leaves emitted golden rays. All was ravishingly beautiful.
This superb exhibition continued while one might count a hundred. Then
all the lower mountains took on that ineffable purple that baffles
description. Starr King, Cherry Mountain, were resplendent. As if the
livid and thick-clustered clouds above had been trodden by invisible
feet, these peaks seemed drenched with the juice of the wine-press.
The high summits, buried in snow and cloud, were yet coldly impassive,
but presently, little by little, the light crept up and up. Now it
seized the topmost pinnacles. Heavens, what a sight! Ineffable glory
seemed quenched in the sublime terrors of that moment. On our right the
Twin and Franconia mountains glowed, from base to summit, like coals
of fire. The lower forests were wrapped in flame. Then all the snowy
line of peaks, from Adams to Clinton, turned blood-red. No pale rose
or carnation tints, as in those enrapturing summer sunsets so often
witnessed here. The stupendous and flaming mountains of hell seemed
risen before us, clothed with immortal terrors. We stood rooted to
the spot, like men who saw the judgment-day dawning, the solid earth
consuming, before their doubting eyes. Everlasting, unquenchable fires
seemed encompassing us about. Nothing more weird, more unearthly,
or more infernal was ever seen. Even the country-people, stolid and
indifferent as they usually are, regarded it with mingled stupefaction
and dismay.
The drama approached its climax. Before we were aware, the valley grew
dark. But still, the granite peaks of Lafayette, and of that admirable
pyramid, Mount Garfield, which even the greater mountain cannot reduce
to impotence, glowed like iron drawn from the fire. Their incandescent
points, thrust upward into the black gulf of the heavens, towered
above the blacker gulfs below unspeakably. By degrees the scorching
heat cooled. The great Franconia spires successively paled. But long
after they seemed reduced to ashes, the red flame still lingered upon
the snows of Mount Washington. At last that, too, faded out. Life was
extinct. The great summit took on a wan and livid hue. Night kindly
spread her mantle over the lifeless form of the mountain, which still
disclosed its larger outlines rigid, majestic, even in death.
Twilight succeeded--twilight steeped in silence and coolness, in the
thousand odors exhaled by the teeming earth. One by one the birds hushed
their noisy twitter. Overcome by their own perfumes, flowers shut their
dewy petals and drooped their tender little heads. The river seemed a
drowsy voice rising from the depths of the forest, complaining that
it alone should toil on while all else reposed. With night comes the
feeling of immensity. With sleep the conviction that we are nothing,
and that the order of nature disturbs itself in nothing for us. If we
awake, well; if not, well again. What if we should never wake? One such
splendid pageant as I have attempted to describe instinctively quenches
human pride. It is true, a sunset is in itself nothing, but it compels
you to admit that the world moves for itself, not for you. Believe it
not a gorgeous display in which you, the critical spectator, assist, but
the signal that the day ends and the night cometh. A spectacle that can
arouse the emotions of joy, fear, hope, suspense--nothing? Perhaps. God
knows.