quietly, "you think I have lost my wits. But it is not so. I am a native
of the East Indies, and I assure you this is the first time in my life I
have ever seen snow near enough to handle it. Imagine what an experience
the ascent of Mount Washington is for me!"
We took a turn down the hard-frozen Glen road together in order to see
the moon come up. The telegraph-poles, fantastically crusted with ice to
the thickness of a foot, stretched a line of white-hooded phantoms down
the dark side of the mountain. From successive coatings of frozen mist
the wires were as thick as cables. Couches of snow lay along the rocks,
and fresh snow had apparently been rubbed into all the inequalties of
the cliffs rising out of the Great Gulf. The scene was supremely weird,
supremely desolate.
From here we crossed over to the railway, and, ascending by it, shortly
came upon the heap of stones, surmounted by its tablet, erected on
the spot where Miss Bourne perished while ascending the mountain, in
September, 1855. The party, of which she was one, setting out in high
spirits in the afternoon from the Glen House, was overtaken near the
summit by clouds, which hid the house from view, and among which they
became bewildered. It was here Miss Bourne declared she could go no
farther. Overcome by her exertions, she sunk exhausted and fainting
upon the rocks. Her friends were scarcely awakened to her true
condition when, amid the surrounding darkness and gloom, this young
and lovely maiden of only twenty expired in the arms of her uncle. The
mourners wrapped the body in their own cloaks, and, ignorant that a
few rods only separated them from the summit, kept a vigil throughout
the long and weary night. We hasten over this night of dread. In the
morning, discovering their destination a few rods above them, they bore
the lifeless form of their companion to it with feelings not to be
described. A rude bier was made, and she who had started up the mountain
full of life now descended it a corpse.
The evening treated us to a magnificent spectacle. The moon, in
full-orbed splendor, moved majestically up the heavens, attended by her
glittering retinue of stars. Frozen peaks, reflecting the mild radiance,
shone like beaten silver. But the immense hollows between, the deep
valleys that had been open to view, were now inundated with a white and
luminous vapor, from which the multitude of icy summits emerged like a
vast archipelago--a sea of islands. This spectral ocean seemed on the
point of ingulfing the mountains. This motionless sea, these austere
peaks, uprising, were inconceivably weird and solemnizing. An awful hush
pervaded the inanimate but threatening host of cloud-girt mountains.
Upon them, upon the sea of frozen vapor, absorbing its light, the clear
moon poured its radiance. The stars seemed nearer and brighter than
ever before. The planets shone with piercing brilliancy; they emitted
a sensible light. The Milky Way, erecting its glittering nebula to the
zenith, to which it was pinned by a dazzling star, floated, a glorious,
star-spangled veil, amid this vast sea of gems. One could vaguely catch
the idea of an unpeopled desolation rising from the fathomless void of
a primeval ocean. The peaks, incased in snow and ice, seemed stamped
with the traces of its subsidence. Pale and haggard, they lifted their
antique heads in silent adoration.
Going to my room and extinguishing the light, I stood for some time
at the window, unable to reconcile the unwonted appearance of the
stars shining far below, with the fixed idea that they ought not to be
there. Yet there they were. To tell the truth, my head was filled with
the surpassing pomp I had just witnessed, of which I had not before
the faintest conception. I felt as if I was silently conversing with
all those stars, looking at me and my petty aspirations with such
inflexible, disdainful immobility. When one feels that he is nothing,
self-assurance is no great thing. The conceit is taken out of him. On a
mountain the man stands naked before his Maker. He is nothing. That is
why I leave him there.
That night I did not sleep a wink. Twenty times I jumped out of bed and
ran to the window to convince myself that it was not all a dream. No;
moon and stars were still bright. Over the Great Gulf, all ghastly in
the moonlight, stood Mount Jefferson in his winding-sheet. I dressed
myself, and from the embrasure of my window kept a vigil.
Sunrise did not produce the startling effect I had anticipated. The
morning was fine and cloudless. A gong summoned the inmates of the
hotel to the spectacle. Without dressing themselves, they ran to their
windows, where, wrapped in bed-blankets, they stood eagerly watching the
east. To the pale emerald of early dawn a ruddy glow succeeded. Before
we were aware, the rocky waste around us grew dusky red. The crimsoned
air glided swiftly over the neighboring summits. Now the brightness
was upon Adams and Jefferson and Clay, and now it rolled its purpled
flood into the Great Gulf, to mingle with the intense blackness at the
bottom. For some moments the mountain-tops held the color, then it was
transfused into the clear sunshine of open day; while the vapors, heavy
and compact, stretched along the valleys, still smothering the land,
retained their leaden hue.
It was still early when I descended the carriage-road on my way to Mount
Adams. The usual way is to keep the railway as far as the old Gulf Tank,
near which is a house of refuge, provided with a cooking-stove, fuel,
and beds. I continued, however, to coast the upper crags of the Great
Gulf, until compelled to make directly for the southern peak of Mount
Clay. The view from this _col_ is imposing, embracing at once, and
without turning the head, all the southern summits of the chain. Here I
was joined by two travellers fresh from Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
Each choosing a route for himself, we pushed on to the high summit of
Clay, from which we looked down into the deep gap dividing this mountain
from Jefferson. Arrived there, we resolutely attacked the eastern slopes
of this fine peak, whose notched summit rose more than seven hundred and
fifty feet above our heads. Patches of Alpine grasses, of reindeer-moss,
interspersed with irregular ridges of stones, extended quite up to the
summit, which was a mere elongated stone-heap crowning the apex of its
cone. Those undulating masses encircling its bulk, half hid among the
grass, were like an immense python crushing the mountain in its deadly
folds. We picked our way carefully among this chaotic débris, which the
Swiss aptly call "cemeteries of the devil," tripping now and then in the
long, wiry grass, or burying our feet among the hummocks of dry moss,
which were so many impediments to rapid progress. This appearance and
this experience were common to the whole route.
At each summit we threw ourselves upon the ground, to feast upon the
landscape while regaining breath. Each halt developed more and more
the grand and stupendous mass of Washington receding from the depths
of the Great Gulf, along whose edge the carriage-road serpentined
and finally disappeared. We saw, a little softened by distance, the
horribly mutilated crags of the head wall stripped bare of all verdure,
presenting on its knobbed agglomerates of tempest-gnawed granite a
thousand eye-catching points and detaining as many shadows. Nothing--not
even the glittering leagues of mountains and valleys shooting or
slumbering above, beneath--so riveted the attention as this apparently
bottomless pit of the five mountains. It was a continued wonder. It drew
us by a strange magnetism to its dizzy brink, chained us there, and
then abandoned us to a physical and moral vertigo, in which the power
of critical investigation was lost. An invisible force seemed always
dragging us toward it. Whence comes this horrible, this uncontrollable
desire to throw ourselves in?
Out of the death-like torpor which eternally shrouds the ravine
the smiling valley seems escaping. The crystal air of the heights
grows thick in its depths. Beasts and birds of prey haunt its gloomy
solitudes. An immense grave seems yawning to receive the mountains. The
aged mountains seem standing with one foot in the grave.
This gulf makes an impression altogether different from the others.
It is an immense ravine. Each of the five mountains pushes down into
it massive buttresses of granite, forming lesser ravines between of
considerable extent. Through these streams trickle down from invisible
sources. But these buttresses, which fall lightly and gracefully as
folds of velvet from summit to base of the highest mountains, these
ravines, are hardly noticed. The insatiable maw of the gulf swallows
them as easily as an anaconda a rabbit. In immensity, which you do not
easily grasp, in grandeur, which you do not know how to measure, this
has no partakers here. Even the great Carter Mountain, rising from the
Peabody Valley, seems no more than a stone rolled away from the entrance
of this enormous sepulchre.
Our first difficulties were encountered upon the reverse of Mount
Jefferson, from whose side rocky spurs detached themselves, and, jutting
out from the side of the mountain, formed an irregular line of cliffs
of varying height, in the way we had selected for the descent. But
these were no great affair. We now had the Ravine of the Castles upon
our left, the stately pyramid of Adams in front, and, beneath, the deep
hollow between this mountain and the one we were descending. We had the
little hamlet of East Jefferson at the mouth of the ravine, and that
crowd of peaks, tightly wedged between the waters of the Connecticut and
the Androscoggin, looming above it.
A deviation to the left enabled us to approach the Castellated Ridge,
which is, beyond dispute, the most extraordinary rock-formation the
whole extent of the range can show. As it is then fully before you, it
is seen to much better advantage when approached from Mount Adams. I
do not know who gave it this name, but none could be more felicitous
or expressive. It is a sloping ridge of red-brown granite, broken at
its summit into a long line of picturesque towers and battlements,
rising threateningly over an escarpment of débris. Such an illusion is
too rarely encountered to be easily forgotten. It is hardly possible
to doubt you are really looking at an antique ruin. One would like to
wander among these pre-Adamite fortifications, which curiously remind
him of the old Spanish fortresses among the Pyrenees. From the opposite
side of the ravine--for I had not the time requisite for a closer
examination--the rock composing the most elevated portion of the ridge
appears to have been split perpendicularly down, probably by frost,
allowing these broken columns and shafts to stand erect upon the verge
of the abyss. In the warm afternoon light, when the shadows fall, it is
hardly possible to conceive a finer picture of a crumbling but still
formidable mountain fortress. Bastions and turrets stand boldly out.
Each broken shaft sends a long shadow streaming down into the ravine,
whose high and deeply-furrowed sides are thus beautifully striped with
dusk-purple, while the sunlit parts retain a greenish-gray.
At the foot of Jefferson we found, concealed among rushes, a spring,
which refreshed us like wells of the desert the parched and fainting
Arab. From here two routes offered themselves. One was by keeping the
curved ridge, rising gradually to a subordinate peak (Samuel Adams),[44]
and to the foot of the summit itself; a second was by crossing the
ground sloping downward from this ridge into the Great Gulf. We chose
the latter, notwithstanding the dwarf-spruce, advancing well up to the
foot of the ridge, promised a warm reception.
[Illustration: THE CASTELLATED RIDGE.]
At last, after sustaining a vigorous tussle with the scrub-firs, and
stopping to unearth a brook whose waters purred underneath stones,
I stood at the foot of the pointed shaft I had so often seen wedged
into the sky. Five hundred feet or more of the apex of this pyramid
is apparently formed of broken rocks, dropped one by one into place.
Nothing like a ledge or a cliff is to be seen: only these ponderous,
sharp-edged masses of cold gray stone, lifted one above another to the
tapering point. Up this mutilated pyramid we began a slow advance. It
was necessary to carefully choose one step before taking another, in
order to avoid plunging into the deep crevasses traversing the peak in
every direction. At last I placed my foot upon the topmost crag.
No one can help regarding this peak with the open admiration which is
its due. You conceive that every mountain ought to have a pinnacle.
Well, here it is. We could easily have stood astride the culminating
point. But how came these rocks here? and what was the primitive
structure, if these fragments we see are its relics? One hardly believes
that an ice-raft could have first transported and then deposited such
misshapen masses in their present symmetrical form. Still less does
he admit that the original shaft, crushed in a thousand pieces by
the glacier itself, fell with such grace as to rise again, as he now
sees it, from its own ruins. If, again, it proceeds from the eternal
hammering of King Frost, what was the antique edifice that first rose so
proudly above the frozen seas of the great primeval void? But to science
the things which belong to science. We have a book describing heaven,
but not one that resolves the problems of earth. The "_Veni, vidi,
vici,_" of the Book of Genesis leaves us at the beginning. We are still
staring, still questioning, still vacillating between this theory and
that hypothesis.[45]
We had from the summit an inspiring though not an extensive view. A
bank of dun-colored smoke smirched the fair western sky as high as the
summits of the Green Mountains. At fifty miles mountains and valleys
melted confusedly into each other. Water emitted only a dull glimmer.
Here a peak and there a summit surveyed us from afar. All else was
intangible; almost imaginary. At twenty-five miles the land, resuming
its ordinary appearance, was bathed in the soft brilliance caused by the
sun shining through an atmosphere only half transparent.
Upon this obscure mass we traced once more the well-known objects
environing the great mountain. To the south Mount Washington divided
the landscape in two. For some time we stood admiring its magnificent
_torso_, its amplitude of rock-land, its easy preponderance over every
other summit. Again we followed the road down the great north-east
spur. Once more we caught the white specks which denote the line of
the railway. We plunged our eyes down into the Great Gulf, and lifted
them to the shattered protuberances of Clay, which seemed to mark the
route where the glacier crushed and ground its way through the very
centre of the chain. A second time we descended Jefferson to the deep
dip, opening like a trough between two enormous sea-waves, where we
first saw the little Storm Lake glistening. Following now the long,
rocky ridge, rolling downward toward the hamlets of Jefferson and
Randolph, the mountains yawned wide at our feet. We were looking over
into King's Ravine--to its very bottom. We peered curiously into its
remotest depths, traced the difficult and breathless ascent through
the remarkable natural gateway at its head out upon a second ridge,
on which a little pond (Star Lake) lies hid. We then crossed the gap
communicating with Mount Madison, whose summit, last and lowest of the
great northern peaks, dominates the Androscoggin Valley with undisputed
sway. To-day it made on us scarcely an impression. Its peak, which from
the valley holds a rough similitude with that of Adams, is dwarfed here.
You look down upon it.
More applicable to Adams than to any other, for our eyes grow dazzled
with the glitter and sparkle of countless mica-flakes incrusting the
hard granite with clear brilliancy as from the facets of a diamond; more
applicable, again, from the stern, unconquerable attitude of the great
gray shaft itself, lifted in such conscious pride beyond the confines
of the vast ethereal vault of blue--a tower of darkness invading the
bright realms of light; a defiance flung by earth in the face of high
heaven--is the magnificent description of the Matterhorn from the pen of
Ruskin:
"If one of these little flakes of mica-sand, hurried in tremulous
spangling along the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink,
too faint to float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind
given to it as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into
the abysses of the stream, and laid (would it not have thought?) for a
hopeless eternity in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and
feeble of all earth's atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit,
down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth-wasp
to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen--what would it
have thought had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as
of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out
of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should hew that
Alpine tower;--that against _it_--poor, helpless mica-flake!--the snowy
hills should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the
earth fade away in unregarded blue; and around it--weak, wave-drifted
mica-flake!--the great war of the firmament should burst in thunder, and
yet stir it not; and the fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night
fall blunted back from it into the air; and all the stars in the clear
heaven should light, one by one, as they rose, new cressets upon the
points of snow that fringed its abiding-place on the imperishable spire!"
Myself and my companions set out on our return to the Summit House early
in the afternoon, choosing this time the ridge in preference to the
scrubby slope. From this we turned away, at the end of half an hour,
by an obscure path leading to a boggy pool, sunk in a mossy hollow
underneath it, crossed the area of scattered bowlders, strewn all around
like the relics of a petrified tempest, and, filling our cups at the
spring, drank to Mount Adams, the paragon of mountain peaks.
As we again approached the brow of Mount Washington the sun resembled
a red-hot globe of iron flying through the west and spreading a
conflagration through the heavens. Again the colossal shadow of the
mountain began its stately ascension in the east. One moment the burning
eye of the great luminary interrogated this phantom, sprung from the
loins of the hoary peak. Then it dropped heavily down behind the Green
Mountains, as it has done for thousands of years, the landscape fading,
fading into one vast, shadowy abyss, out of which arose the star-lit
dome of the august summit.
TOURIST'S APPENDIX.
PREPARED FOR "THE HEART OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS."
GEOGRAPHY.--The White Mountains are in the northern central part of the
State of New Hampshire. They occupy the whole area of the State between
Maine and Vermont, and between Lake Winnipiseogee and the head-streams
of the Connecticut and Androscoggin rivers.
Two principal chains, having a general direction from south-west to
north-east, constitute this great water-shed of New England. These are
the Franconia and the White Mountains proper, sometimes called the
"Presidential Range."
Grouped on all sides of the higher summits are a great number of
inferior ridges, among which, as in the Sandwich Range, rise some very
fine peaks, widely extending the mountainous area, and diversifying it
with numerous valleys, lakes, and streams.
Two principal rivers, the Saco and Merrimack, flowing from these two
chief clusters, form the two great valleys of the White Mountain system;
and by these valleys the railways enter the mountains from the seaboard.
Lake Winnipiseogee, which washes the southern foot of the mountains,
is also a thoroughfare, as are the valleys of the Connecticut and
Androscoggin rivers.
DISTANCES.--It is 430 miles from Philadelphia to Fabyan's; 340 from New
York, _via_ Springfield; 190 from Montreal, _via_ Newport; 208 _via_
Groveton; 169 from Boston, _via_ North Conway (Eastern R.R.); 208 _via_
Concord (B., C., & M. R.R.); 91 from Portland, _via_ North Conway (P.
& O. R.R.); 91 from Portland to Gorham (G. T. R.); 199 from Boston to
Gorham, _via_ Eastern and Grand Trunk roads; and 206 _via_ Boston and
Maine and Grand Trunk roads.
ROUTES.--Procure, before starting, the official time-tables of the
railroads running to the mountains or making direct connection with
them, by application to local agents, by writing to the ticket-agents of
the roads, or by consulting a railway guide-book. The roads reaching the
mountains are--
From Washington: The Pennsylvania, and New York & New England.
From Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania, and New York & New England.
From Montreal: The Grand Trunk, and The South-eastern.
From Quebec: The Grand Trunk Railway.
From Saratoga: The Delaware & Hudson Canal Co.
From New York: New York, New Haven, & Hartford (all rail _via_
Springfield, White River Junction, and Wells River to Fabyan's; or all
rail _via_ Springfield, Worcester, Nashua, and Concord, N. H.; or all
rail _via_ "Shore Line," Boston & Albany, or New York & New England
roads to Boston); or by Fall River, Norwich, or Stonington "Sound Lines"
to Boston; thence by either of the following railroads:
[Illustration: JACOBS LADDER, MOUNT WASHINGTON RAILWAY.]
From Boston: Eastern R.R., _via_ Beverly (18 miles, branch to Cape Ann);
Hampton (46 miles, Boar's Head and Rye Beaches); Portsmouth (56 miles,
Newcastle and Isles of Shoals and York Beach); Kittery (57 miles);
Wolfborough Junction (98 miles, branch to Lake Winnipiseogee); North
Conway (138 miles; connects with Portland and Ogdensburg); Intervale
(139 miles); Glen Station (144 miles, for Jackson and Glen House);
Crawford's (165 miles); Fabyan's (169 miles; connects with B., C., & M.
for Summit of Mount Washington, Bethlehem, Profile House, and Jefferson;
or by same route to Portland, thence by P. & O. R.R. to North Conway, or
Grand Trunk Railway to Gorham).
Boston, Lowell & Concord, and Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroads,
_via_ Lowell (26 miles); Nashua, Manchester, Concord (75 miles);
Plymouth (123 miles); Woodsville (166 miles, Wells River); Littleton
(185 miles, for Sugar Hill); Wing Road (192 miles, branch to Jefferson);
Bethlehem (196 miles, branch road to Profile House, also to "Maplewood,"
and Bethlehem Street); Twin Mountain House, Fabyan's (208 miles, branch
to Summit of Mount Washington, 217 miles); connects at Fabyan's with P.
& O. and Eastern roads for North Conway, Portland, and Boston.
Boston & Maine R.R. _via_ Lawrence (26 miles); Haverhill, Exeter (50
miles); Dover (68 miles); Rochester (78 miles); Alton Bay (96 miles),
connecting with steamer for Wolfborough and Centre Harbor, on Lake
Winnipiseogee; or by the same road to Portland, thence by P. & O. to
North Conway and Fabyan's, or Grand Trunk to Gorham and Glen House.
From Portland: Portland & Ogdensburg R.R. via Sebago Lake (17 miles);
Fryeburg (49 miles); Conway Centre, North Conway (60 miles); Glen
Station (66 miles, Jackson and Glen House); Bartlett (72 miles);
Crawford's (87 miles); Fabyan's (91 miles; connects with B., C., & M.
R.R. for Summit of Mount Washington, Bethlehem, Profile House, Sugar
Hill, Jefferson, etc.).
Grand Trunk Railway: Danville Junction (27 miles); Bethel (70 miles);
Shelburne (86 miles); Gorham (91 miles, for Glen House).
A good way to do the mountains by rail is to buy an excursion-ticket
over the route entering on the west, and, passing through, leave them
by the roads on the east side via Boston or Portland, or _vice versa_.
At Fabyan's, where the two great routes meet, the traveller coming from
either direction may pursue his journey without delay. From _Boston to
Boston_, _Portland to Portland_, there is continuous rail without going
twice over the same line.