* * * * *

Of two attempts to obtain a view from the summit of Mount Washington,

the MS. Journal from which we have already made extracts, gives an

interesting account of one which the weather rendered unsuccessful.

“The morning opened with every symptom of a fine day for the ascent. We

had an early breakfast, and started a little before six, with the

intention of first ascending Mount Clinton, and afterwards Mount

Washington. Before we came to the peak of Clinton, however, a thick mist

had swept over the mountains, which grew heavier and heavier. At the

beginning of the granite pile that caps Mount Washington, a heavy wind

with violent rain came on, and, as we climbed upwards, the storm

increased, and the cold became every moment more intense. In four hours

we reached the summit, thoroughly drenched, and stiff as icicles. The

rain beat across the peak with tremendous force, and it was with

difficulty we could stand. Below us was a sea of mist, around us a

howling tempest, and our only resource was to seek the shelter of a

rock, and seek consolation in the guide’s knapsack. Though my hands were

so benumbed with cold, and my limbs so heavy with the water which had

been driven into every thread of my dress that I could hardly raise the

food to my lips, I contrived to cut the cork of a bottle of champagne,

and its sparkling contents sent a momentary and grateful thrill through

my veins: when it had passed, however, I was colder than ever.

“We found so few attractions on the mountain that we soon began our

descent towards Ethan Crawford’s, but were so blinded by the tempest

that the guide could not at once discover the way. Half an hour we

wandered about in absolute uncertainty whether we should get down the

mountain, or bide the peltings of the storm through the night. We hit at

last upon the path, and after some sharp scrambling reached the wood,

the friendly shelter of which afforded us a most welcome protection from

the rain. The path was execrable, owing to the heavy rain, and the

trampling of the horses of another party who had gone up before us; but

at four we arrived at our destination, tired, cold, wet, and hungry. A

change of dress, a roaring fire, and a substantial dinner, soon put us

in better condition and humour.”

From a more successful attempt by the same gentleman, we take the

following description of the view from Mount Washington.

“The light streamed down through breaks in the clouds on the scenery

below in such masses, and in such a manner, as to bring out fully and

distinctly all the leading points in the immeasurable panorama. In our

immediate neighbourhood, but far below us, lay on one side, Mounts

Clinton, Pleasant, Monroe, and Franklin; on the other, Jefferson, Adams,

and Madison. On the east and west, openings were visible, through which

several rivers, taking their rise in the mountains, wound their way and

widened their valleys toward the lowlands. Far in the distance, chains

of hills and mountains, distinct in outline and beautiful in form, arose

on all sides; and these were still overtopped by others beyond, whose

blue summits mingled with the sky, and shut in the overpowering scene.

Far to the south, the bright sheet of Lake Winipiseogee met the eye, and

with its calm and gem-like beauty, set, as it were, in a frame-work of

distant hills, relieved and contrasted the bewildering and boundless

majesty which encircled the mountain. On the west the green mountains of

Vermont, and on the east the mountains of Maine, skirted the horizon,

and seemed to support the heavens. Occasionally, a cloud would rest for

a few moments on some distant or neighbouring summit, but during the

whole of our visit the awful head of Mount Washington was surrounded by

a pure atmosphere and the clearest light.”

Mount Washington was ascended by several scientific gentlemen in July,

1784. The historian of the expedition records that one of the company

had taken a thermometer from his bosom, when it stood at fever heat, and

it fell to 44°; and that, during the time he was adjusting a barometer

and thermometer, the cold nearly deprived him of the use of his fingers.

[Illustration]

MOUNT WASHINGTON AND THE WHITE HILLS.

(FROM NEAR CRAWFORD’S.)

* * * * *

The White Hills have a double claim to their title—one founded upon the

fact, that, for nine, ten, and sometimes eleven months in the year, they

are covered with snow; and the other, that, in all clear days, (the only

times in which they can be distinctly seen,) white fleecy clouds resting

upon them, give them a white aspect. When viewed from a neighbouring

position, they are always, except where snow lies, or the rocks are

naked, shrouded in misty azure.

The height of these mountains has been a subject of much dispute. A

scientific gentleman, whose remarks on physical subjects merit

consideration and respect, supposes the summit of Mount Washington to be

about seven thousand eight hundred feet above the level of the ocean;

seventy-two feet below the point, which, in the latitude of 44° 15´

(that of these mountains) is the estimated point of perpetual

congelation on the eastern continent. This point, he says, from the

greater coldness of the American climate, cannot exceed, but must rather

fall short, of what it is in the European climate. The climates of

America are indeed colder than those of Europe in the same latitude

during the winter, but in the summer they are generally much hotter. Nor

are the mountains in any part of New England of sufficient height and

extent to lessen materially the degree of heat generally prevailing. The

air on the summit of Mount Washington, therefore, must continually be

rendered less cold by the ascent of the intensely heated atmosphere from

the subjacent regions. As the whole country partakes of this heat, the

ascending volume, whencesoever derived, must be heated to nearly the

same temperature. It seems scarcely credible, therefore, that the

temperature of the atmosphere around the single point of Mount

Washington should not, during the summer, be sensibly raised by the

general heat of the country: for we are to remember that this is the

only height in the United States which approximates near to the region

of perpetual frost.

The following observations of Dr. Cutler exhibit the state of vegetation

on these mountains:—

“At the base of the summit of Mount Washington, the limits of vegetation

may with propriety be fixed. There are indeed, on some of the rocks,

even to their apices, scattered specks of a mossy appearance; but I

conceive them to be extraneous substances accidentally adhering to the

rocks, for I could not discover, with my botanical microscope, any part

of that plant regularly formed. The limits of vegetation at the base of

this summit are as well defined as that between the woods and the bald

and mossy part. So striking is the appearance, that, at a considerable

distance, the mind is impressed with the idea that vegetation extends no

farther than a line, as well defined as the penumbra and shadow in a

lunar eclipse. The stones that I have by me from the summit have not the

smallest appearance of moss upon them.

“There is evidently the appearance of three zones—the woods, the bald,

mossy part, and the part above vegetation. The same appearance has been

observed on the Alps, and all other high mountains.

“I recollect no grass on the plain. The spaces between the rocks in the

second zone and on the plain are filled with spruce and fir, which,

perhaps, have been growing ever since the deluge; and yet many of them

have not attained a greater height than three or four inches; but their

spreading tops are so thick and strong as to support the weight of a man

without yielding in the slightest degree. In many places on the sides we

could get glades of this growth some rods in extent, when we could, by

sitting down on our feet, slide the whole length. The tops of the growth

of wood were so thick and firm as to bear us currently a considerable

distance before we arrived at the utmost boundaries, which were almost

as well defined as the water on the shore of a pond. The tops of the

wood had the appearance of having been shorn off, exhibiting a smooth

surface from their upper limits to a great distance down the mountains.”

On the summit of Mount Washington there is usually little or no snow.

That which is so long visible in the regions below is blown from the

summit, and the north-western side, and lies only on the southern and

south-eastern, where it is defended from every cold wind by the

precipice above, and exposed through June, July, and sometimes a part of

August, to the full strength of the sun.

[Illustration]

THE PARK AND CITY HALL, NEW YORK.

* * * * *

The first _Stadt Huys_ in this city was constructed of stone, and stood

originally at the head of Coenties Slip, facing on Pearl Street, towards

the East river. It was built as early in the Dutch dynasty as 1642, and

became so weakened and impaired in half a century afterwards, that the

court sitting there recommended it to be sold, and another to be

constructed. In 1699, they sold the old building for nine hundred and

twenty pounds, “reserving only the bell, the king’s arms, and iron works

(fetters) belonging to the prison.” By the agreement, leave was granted

“that the cage, pillory, and stocks, before the same, be removed any

time within one year, and the prisoners in the city hall to remain one

month.” “In front of all these, on the river, was placed the _Rondeal_,

or Half-Moon Fort, where it probably assisted the party sheltered in the

City Hall, while the civil war prevailed.”

The new building must have been finished in 1700. It stood at the head

of Broad Street, fronting on Wall Street; and its lower story formed an

open arcade over the foot pavement. It was also the proper prison of the

city, and had before it, on Broad Street, a whipping-post, pillory, &c.

There were also held the sessions of the Provincial Assembly, the

Supreme Court, and the Mayor and Admiralty Courts. It was finally

altered to suit the Congress; and at that time the prisoners were moved

to the new jail in the park; but the Congress removing to Philadelphia,

it was again altered to receive the courts and the State Assembly.

“It was in the gallery of the old City Hall, on Wall Street,” says

Watson in his Annals, “that General Washington was inaugurated the first

President of the United States. The oath of office was taken in the open

gallery in front of the Senate Chamber, in the view of an immense

concourse of citizens. There this nobleman of nature, with his noble

height and port, in a suit of dark silk velvet of the old cut,

steel-hilted small sword by his side, hair in bag and full powdered, in

black silk hose, and shoes with silver buckles, made his pledge on a

quarto Bible, still preserved in St. John’s Lodge. How uprightly,

intelligently, and disinterestedly, he executed his task, history will

never cease to tell to his fame and glory.”

The present City Hall was erected in 1803, at an expense of half a

million of dollars. The front and sides are constructed of white marble,

and the remainder of red sandstone. It is a beautiful edifice, and only

wants elevation. When the trees of the park are in full leaf, it is

difficult to get an entire view of it.

The park is the centre of New York, and its two most thronged and finest

avenues form the two sides of it. Broadway, the much crowded and much

praised Broadway, the Corso, the Toledo, the Regent Street, of New York,

pours its tide of population past the western side of the verdant

triangle, and, just at the park, its crowd and its bustle are thickest.

Broadway is a noble street, and on its broad side-walks may be seen

every thing that walks the world in the shape of a foreigner, or a

fashion—beauties by the score, and men of business by the thousand;

but, besides every possible ingredient of continental crowds, there are

to be seen in Broadway two additional classes of peripatetics seen never

on foreign _pavés_ but in rare specimens—coloured dandies, and

belligerent pigs. The former take the wall of you, and the latter, when

the question of passing on one side or the other becomes embarrassing,

escape with great dexterity between your legs.

It would be difficult in one day to describe the prevailing style of

dress in Broadway, for fashions have become unfashionable, and each man

and woman dresses as Fortune pleases. But here is a picture of dresses

in Broadway a century ago:—

“Men wore three-square, or cocked hats, and wigs; coats with large

cuffs, and big skirts lined and stiffened with buckram. The coat of a

beau had three or four large plaits in the skirts, and wadding, like a

coverlet, to keep them smooth. The cuffs were very large, up to the

elbows, open below, and loaded with lead to keep them down. The cape was

thin and low, so as readily to expose the close-plaited neck-stock of

fine linen cambric, and the large silver stock-buckle on the back of the

neck. The shirts were worn with hand-ruffles, and sleeve-buttons were

worn at the wrist, of precious stones, or gold. The little boys wore

wigs, like their elders, and their dresses generally were similar to

those of the men. Coats of red plush were very fashionable, and the

breeches were commonly made of this material.”

We refer the reader to Watson’s Annals for many curious particulars

touching the apparel and habits of the New Yorkers in the early part of

the last century.

[Illustration]

THE TWO LAKES AND THE MOUNTAIN HOUSE

ON THE CATSKILLS.

* * * * *

At this elevation, you may wear woollen and sleep under blankets in

midsummer; and that is a pleasant temperature where much hard work is to

be done in the way of pleasure-hunting. No place so agreeable as

Catskill, after one has been parboiled in the city. New York is at the

other end of that long thread of a river, running away south from the

base of the mountain; and you may change your climate in so brief a

transit, that the most enslaved broker in Wall Street may have half his

home on Catskill. The cool woods, the small silver lakes, the falls, the

mountain-tops, are all delicious haunts for the idler-away of the hot

months; and, to the credit of our taste, it may be said they are fully

improved—Catskill is a “resort.”

From the Mountain-House, the busy and all-glorious Hudson is seen

winding half its silver length—towns, villas, and white spires,

sparkling on the shores, and snowy sails and gaily-painted steamers,

specking its bosom. It is a constant diorama of the most lively beauty;

and the traveller, as he looks down upon it, sighs to make it a home.

Yet a smaller and less-frequented stream would best fulfil desires born

of a sigh. There is either no seclusion on the Hudson, or there is so

much that the conveniences of life are difficult to obtain. Where the

steamers come to shore, (twenty a day, with each from one to seven

hundred passengers,) it is certainly far from secluded enough; yet, away

from the landing-places, servants find your house too lonely, and your

table, without unreasonable expense and trouble, is precarious and poor.

These mean and _menus plaisirs_ reach, after all, the very citadel of

philosophy. Who can live without a cook or a chambermaid, and dine seven

days in the week on veal, consoling himself with the beauties of a

river-side?

On the smaller rivers these evils are somewhat ameliorated; for in the

rural and uncorrupt villages of the interior, you may find servants born

on the spot, and content to live in the neighbourhood. The market is

better, too, and the society less exposed to the evils that result from

too easy an access to the metropolis. No place can be rural, in all the

_virtues_ of the phrase, where a steamer will take the villager to the

city between noon and night, and bring him back between midnight and

morning. There is a suburban look and character about all the villages

on the Hudson which seems out of place among such scenery. They are

suburbs; in fact, steam has destroyed the distance between them and the

city.

The Mountain-House on the Catskill, it should be remarked, is a

luxurious hotel. How the proprietor can have dragged up, and keeps

dragging up, so many superfluities from the river level to that eagle’s

nest, excites your wonder. It is the more strange, because in climbing a

mountain the feeling is natural that you leave such enervating

indulgences below. The mountain-top is too near heaven. It should be a

monastery to lodge in so high—a St. Gothard, or a Vallambrosa. But here

you may choose between Hermitages, “white” or “red,” Burgundies,

Madeiras, French dishes, and French dances, as if you had descended upon

Capua.

[Illustration]

TRENTON HIGH FALLS.

* * * * *

Those who visit these Falls in the pleasantest season for travelling,

(the time at which the drawing was taken by Mr. Bartlett,) see them when

there is the least water; consequently, when they are (as falls) at

their lesser phase of grandeur. It is like seeing a race-horse in the

stall, or a line-of-battle-ship in port, with sails furled. It is

possible that after one of the tremendous thunder-storms which burst

upon this climate sometimes in summer, the glory of the cataract may,

for a few hours, renew, and so unite the splendour of full foliage with

the flashing of mighty waters: but this is a chance which the traveller

for pleasure will scarce hit or wait for. It should be remembered,

however, in looking on the drawing, that it is one of a sleeping lion.

The frowning walls on either side, driven asunder by the plunges of the

torrent in more “yeasty moods,” present a sufficient scale by which to

measure its slumbering power. Those who live in climes where snow seldom

falls, and more seldom lies through one sunny day unmelted, can have but

a faint idea of a spring _freshet_ in America. After the first heavy

snow in December, each successive fall adds solidity to the heap upon

the earth’s bosom, and the alternate thawing and freezing consolidates

the bottom into ice, and cuts off the heat of the soil from the flakes

added almost daily to the surface. Till the middle of March, perhaps, or

later, the sleighing (_Anglicè_ sledging) is hard and crisp. Then the

sun draws towards the line, and with the equinox come soft southern

winds, with sharp changes to the north, pouring sleet and rain upon the

crusty covering of nature; and, first of all, the small streams begin to

trickle under the ice, smothered and faint; the roads across the

hard-frozen rivers crack and grow treacherous; and the horse, as they

phrase it here, _slumps through_ in travelling on the highway. As the

days grow longer, the snow gets clammy and heavy, and drops to the

ground, (undermined by the water,) an acre at a time, clicking like a

troop of morris-dancers. If you “sit upon a rail” at noon-day, and send

a dog to run over an untrodden field, his weight will break it down in

large tablets, like the giving way of a marble floor. Then comes the

spring thaw. Instead of one rivulet to half a mile, every hill-side

sends down a hundred streams, every road is a brook, every hollow in the

fields an overflowing pond. The benevolent societies which thrive more

by the “widows’ mites” than the rich man’s gift, have learned the secret

of these “small contributions.” Down they pour, in troops of legions, to

the beds of the larger water-courses, “drowning the springs,”

overflowing the banks, and laying every low plain under water. The ice

crashes and loosens in the large rivers, and with the loosening of their

frost-bound chains, the merry dance is led off to the ocean. If you

would see waterfalls, it should be then; though the foliage is not

around them, nor the sky or the moon-light so genial above. Niagara

alone, of all the cataracts, remains unchanged. He rolls on in his calm

sublimity, spring and autumn, summer and winter, the same. His floods

seem never to increase by the melting of snow, nor to be drunk up by the

fervour of the sun. If changes he has, they are imperceptible, or seen

only in the crumbling of rock beneath him, mountains at a convulsion,

and at intervals of years.

Trenton is in a wild and not very accessible part of the country, else

it were worth the while of the traveller to see these fine Falls during

the spring. I am very sure that a series of sketches upon the same

ground—the same scenes by the same artist, done when the waters are at

the flood, would not be recognised as at all resembling. The attempt

would be curious to the artist, at least.

[Illustration]

VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH,

FROM JEFFERSON’S ROCK.

* * * * *

This is one of the most harmonious combinations of mountain, vale, and

river, to be found in America; we know not whether to call it more

beautiful or grand. Fine as is all the scenery of this neighbourhood,

however, it is not till very lately that the current of travel has

turned thither, and but partially yet. Harper’s Ferry will soon be a

resort for admirers of nature from all nations, and it may well share

the honours of pilgrimage with Trenton Falls and Niagara. Steam

navigation across the Atlantic will make our New World _lions_ as tame

as the Pyramids.

It is difficult, at least for me, to stand on any eminence commanding a

landscape, wild, yet formed for a blest human residence, without seeing

in it the forfeited inheritance of the red man. The unpicturesque new

village of the white man, his mill, or his factory, does not convey to

my imagination an image of happiness; and I regret the primitive rover

of the wild, who neither blackened nature with smoke, nor violated her

harmony with brick and shingle. The tide of sympathy seems turning of

late against these oppressed tribes, and it is not amiss sometimes to

remember our own atrocities as well as theirs. What will be thought

hereafter of the massacre of the poor Conestogoes, as related in the

history of these middle regions of our territory!

“On the first arrival of the English,” says the chronicler, “messengers

from this tribe entered into a treaty of friendship with the first

proprietary, William Penn, which was to last as long as the sun should

shine, or the waters run in the rivers.

“This treaty has been since frequently renewed, and the chain

brightened, as they express it, from time to time. It has never been

violated on their part, or ours, till now. As their lands by degrees

were mostly purchased, and the settlement of the white people began to

surround them, the proprietor assigned them lands on the manor of

Conestogoe, which they might not part with; there they have lived many

years in friendship with their white neighbours, who loved them for

their peaceable inoffensive behaviour.

“It has always been observed, that Indians, settled in the neighbourhood

of white people, do not increase, but diminish continually. This tribe

accordingly went on diminishing, till there remained in their town on

the manor but twenty persons, namely, seven men, five women, and eight

children, boys and girls.

“Of these, Shehaes was a very old man, having assisted at the second

treaty held with them by Mr. Penn, in 1701, and ever since continued a

faithful friend to the English; he is said to have been an exceeding

good man, considering his education, being naturally of a kind,

benevolent temper.