The 10th of August ranked, by the family thermometer, as next to the
hottest day of the summer. It was a marked day in my calendar,—marked
long in advance for a night alone on the narrow rock which forms the tip
of Chocorua’s peak. It was chosen on account of the display of meteors
which, in case of a clear sky, always makes that night attractive for a
vigil. On August 10, 1891, I counted two hundred and fifty meteors
between sunset and eleven o’clock P. M. As I watched the sky, and saw
the great rock of the peak rising sharply into it, I determined that
another year I would count my meteors from its summit, and not from the
common level of a field.
By four o’clock in the afternoon a breeze had drifted down to us from
the mountains, and behind them cloud-heads were rising in the northwest.
Fanned by the breeze and undaunted by clouds, I began the ascent of
Chocorua by the Hammond path. In the woods the breeze was stifled by the
trees, and I was stifled by the still heat which oppressed all nature.
For three miles the only bird I heard was a red-eyed vireo, and the only
one I saw was a grouse which flew from the path. In the road below and
along the trail up the mountain there were dozens of young toads. They
were about the size of the Indian’s head on a cent. I wondered how far
up the trail I should find them, so I watched closely as the path grew
steeper and steeper. The last one seen was about sixteen hundred feet
above the sea, and one thousand feet above the Hammond clearing where I
first noticed them. There is no still water within a mile of the point
where I found the last one. In view of such facts, it is not difficult
to account for the popular belief that young toads fall from the clouds
with rain.
Clearing the forest, and reaching the open ledges on the crest of the
great southeastern ridge of Chocorua, along which the Hammond path runs
towards the peak, I saw that a storm was gathering in the west. Piles of
thunderheads were rolling up beyond Whiteface and the Sandwich Dome, and
tending northward. Chocorua might be too far east to be included in the
drenching which was in store. It was not too far away to lose the cool
wind which suddenly changed my gasping heat into a shiver. With a
quicker pace I pushed towards the foot of the peak.
All but one of the well-marked paths up Chocorua spend too much time in
the ravines and woods. It is discouraging to toil mile after mile
through uninteresting small growth, without a breath of cool air or a
glimpse of distance. The Hammond path cancels nearly half the height of
the mountain in the first mile of woodland, and then rewards the climber
by successive views which grow more charming as ledge after ledge is
passed. While following the top of the slowly rising and scantily wooded
ridge, the peak is seen coming nearer and nearer, and growing more and
more impressive. Range after range of northern mountains rise above the
foreground, and the far horizon widens slowly. When the foot of the peak
is finally reached, shutting out for a time all that is grandest in the
view, the climber feels that he must scale those forbidding cliffs,
whatever becomes of him when the final struggle is over. So I felt as,
at about half past six, I gained the top of the mountain’s shoulder and
looked up at the huge rock which forms its awful head. The eastern side
of the peak is so precipitous that few have the temerity even to try to
scale it. The southern side is broken into smaller cliffs, between which
tufts of spruces grow. In winter this face is quite readily climbed upon
the packed snow, but in summer wide sloping ledges polished by ice make
the way difficult and dangerous to the novice. A few score rods to the
west, yet still on the southern face of the peak, there is a rift in the
cliffs filled with small trees and fragments of rock. This cleft leads
straight upwards to a small sandy plateau on the west side of the peak,
two thirds of the way to its summit. As I struggled up this almost
perpendicular ravine, I heard the steady roar of thunder, and saw above
me black clouds surging across the sky. It would have been dark had not
the south been filled with silvery light and hazy sunset glory. A
black-mouthed cave upon my right offered a refuge. Hedgehogs lived in
it, but its outer chamber would be storm-proof. Should I wait? No, storm
or no storm, I would gain the peak, and do my part to keep my tryst with
the stars.
[Illustration: THE PEAK OF CHOCORUA FROM THE HAMMOND TRAIL]
Stumbling out of the ravine upon the plateau, I faced the north. A
picture was there which made the memory of Doré’s strongest delineations
of Dante’s visions seem weak. On my right was an upright wall of black
rock, on my left an abyss. Northward, before me, lay that wilderness of
forests and peaks which forms the White Mountains, thirty miles square
of spruce forests, and all of it on edge,—a sierra forbidding at its
best, but now made terrible by a tempest. The higher heavens were filled
with loose, rounded black clouds with white spaces between them. Below
them, impending over a belt of country about ten miles north of me, was
a very long but narrow cloud, black as ink, with a clean-cut lower edge
as straight as a level. From it forked lightning was playing downward.
The outlines of the mountains were singularly clear. I could see,
beginning at the right, the Presidential Range, the Crawford Notch,
Anderson, Nancy, Lowell, the Carrigain Notch, Carrigain; and then,
partly obscured by rain, the Franconia Mountains and the nearer heights
of Tripyramid and its neighbors. Just over Tripyramid, reaching nearly
to the zenith, was an opening in the clouds, a narrow space between two
storms. It was clear gold within, but hideous black profiles were
outlined against it, as though the fiends of one storm were looking
across it at their allied hosts in the second bank of clouds now
hurrying upward from the southwest.
Turning sharply to the right, I found and climbed the rough path leading
up the rocks to the highest point on the peak. Three thousand feet below
me, in that peaceful valley by the lake, was my home. I could just see
its red roof among the trees. Wind ripples were chasing each other
across the lake, marring its white surface. The lake is heart-shaped,
and my cottage rests at the tip. No storm impended over those whom I had
left behind, but the voice of the thunder reminded me of what was
passing to the northward.
Under the long level black cloud, from which zigzag lightning darted
downward like a snake’s tongue, were three zones of color. The first,
nearest the east, and at the head of the storm as it moved forward, was
gray. It was formed of scud. The second was black, and from it shot most
of the lightning. The third was snowy white shaded by perpendicular
lines. This was the rain. Each belt seemed to be two miles or more in
width, and the whole was moving about twenty miles an hour. When I
reached the peak, Carrigain Notch was just passing under the scud, and
as I watched, Lowell, Anderson, and Nancy were in turn obscured. By the
time Mount Nancy was covered, Carrigain and its notch were reappearing.
Meanwhile, the golden gap in the clouds had closed, and the second storm
was approaching. Its course was such as to take in Chocorua, Paugus, and
the Swift River intervale which lay just below me on the north. Wild as
the first storm made the northern sky, the second one seemed bent upon
making the picture even more gloomy. It was the moment of sunset, but
the sun was lost in a wilderness of thunder-clouds. Suddenly a sound
clear and sweet came to me. It was the first sound, save thunder and
wind, that I had heard since reaching the peak. A long, pure note,
followed by one much higher, repeated several times, formed the song of
my companion on the heights. It was the farewell to the day of a
white-throated sparrow, that sweetest singer of the mountain peaks. A
feeling of forlornness which had been creeping over me was dispelled.
Let the storm come; I was ready for it.
Not many rods below the peak, on the very verge of the eastern crag,
stands an enormous detached rock, roughly cubical in shape, and at least
twenty feet in each dimension. This rock, which is known as “the Cow,”
rests upon a narrow shelf having a saucer-shaped depression about
fifteen feet in diameter in its upper surface. The Cow projects slightly
beyond the outer edge of the ledge, but at the point where it projects
the concavity of the under granite leaves a space exactly eighteen
inches in height and several feet long, which admits light into the
hollow beneath the Cow.
[Illustration: “THE COW”]
Years before, I had discovered this strange cave, and had found that a
projecting corner of rock gave standing-room near enough to the narrow
mouth to allow a man to creep into it. To this shelter I determined to
take my luggage for safe-keeping during the rain. As I wound my way down
the zigzag path to the cave, a junco flew past me in the gloom and
chirped inquiringly. A drop or two of rain fell. Thunder roared in the
southwest as well as in the north. The mountains had lost the wonderful
dark violet shade which they possessed before the light faded, and were
now almost black, those nearest being darkest. As I reached the mouth of
the cave, an uncomfortable thought intruded itself upon my mind,—was it
possible that bears used the cave? I peered in. The place was empty now,
at all events. Pushing in my oilskin coat, jersey, knapsack with lunch,
lantern, and star-atlas, I slid in after them. At the deepest part of
the depression in the ledge, the space between the rock below and the
rock above is thirty inches. I could not sit up straight, but I could
recline comfortably at various angles. Lighting my lantern, I unpacked
my bag and furnished my lodgings. A watch, match-box, foot rule,
thermometer, pencil, a mirror for signaling, compass, hunting-knife,
bird whistles, supper, breakfast, and dry underclothing made the cave
seem quite homelike. The dry clothing attracted me, for I was wet with
perspiration, and my thermometer reminded me that I felt chilly. I
listened. Was it raining? No. Taking my lantern, supper, and dry
clothes, I wriggled to the entrance and regained the air. Happy thought:
if any bear could get into that cave, it would be a very thin one.
Unhappy thought: his thinness would betoken all the greater hunger.
There was a lull in the storm, for although everything above was black,
the wind seemed to have died away and the thunder to be very distant. On
the narrow ledge between the towering pinnacle and the black abyss below
the Cow, I discarded my damp clothes and put on the dry ones. The change
was comforting. I was glad when it was accomplished, for I had no
inclination to fight a bear in the costume of Mulvaney at the taking of
Lungtungpen.
Step by step I crept back up the cliff to the summit. There was wind
enough on top, and my lantern had to be thrust into a crack in the rock
on the lee side to keep it not only from blowing out, but from blowing
away. The top of Chocorua is about the shape and size of a large, wide
dining-table. On the south, other levels lead up to it gradually; but
west, north, and east this highest rock is bounded by abrupt sides, from
which a fall in the night would be a serious matter. Lying down on this
dizzy platform, I ate my supper with savage relish, and took new account
of the night and its pictures. Except when lightning illumined some part
of the horizon, the only things visible to me were the long black ridge
of Paugus, the hump of Passaconaway over Paugus, fragments of white
ledges on the northern spurs of Chocorua, and lakes in the valley. Even
Ossipee Lake, fifteen miles or more away, was plainly distinguishable as
a white spot in the surrounding gloom. Lights shone from many of the
cottages near Chocorua Lake, and from Birch intervale, Albany intervale,
and Conway. They were the connecting link between me and the rest of
mankind. In the sky there was absolute blackness, curiously broken once
by the sudden appearance of the red planet for the space of a single
minute. Sometimes a few drops of rain fell, but the second storm seemed
to be reserving most of its strength for a region farther east. It was
now nine o’clock, and the first storm had passed far over into Maine,
its lightning playing with rapid flashes behind Mount Pequawket. At
every flash the sky just behind the pyramidal peak assumed the color of
dead gold, while the mountain was embossed upon it like an emblem on a
shield. Occasionally the second storm produced lightning, and when it
did so the effects were startling, so near was the heavenly fire. One
flash was from side to side across a low cloud which hung near Chocorua
on the east. It was very vivid, and so complex with its many delicate
lines and loops of light that a fiery sentence appeared to have been
written on the sky. Another bolt was broad and straight, and went down
into the forest like an arrow. It was so near and so brilliant that for
almost a minute I could see nothing. The thunder which followed it began
in the zenith, and rolled away, booming and crashing, in three
directions, lasting so long that I wished I had timed it, to see for how
many seconds its terrific echoes refused to subside. As many of its
rumblings and mutterings resounded from the ravines and hillsides below
me, the effect of this great peal was unlike any I had ever before
heard.
While I was listening to the sighing of the wind-tossed forest in the
hollows eastward of the mountain, another sound reached my ears, and
made me concentrate my senses in an effort to determine its nature. At
the moment I heard it, I was somewhat below the peak, leaning against a
wall of rock facing the south. The sound seemed to come from above. It
resembled that made by a thin stick or shingle when whirled rapidly in
the air. At the same time there was a creaking, and sounds almost like
wailing and groaning. A moment later, a slender column of white cloud, a
hundred feet or more in height, but proportioned like a human figure,
glided past the mountain over the black abyss below the eastern cliffs.
It is needless to say that I was interested in these phenomena. I was
much more than interested; and the fact that I was absolutely alone, in
the dark, miles away from home, with a storm howling around me, was
brought clearly to my mind. The legend of Chocorua, the Indian for whom
this mountain was named, of his curse upon the whites, and of his
melancholy death near these eastern cliffs, rose, for some illogical
reason, into my memory.
[Illustration: THE PEAK FROM THE SOUTHEAST]
The sounds in the air continued, and at one time made me wonder whether
electric waves passing through the low-hanging clouds above me could
produce them. There being no light accompanying the sounds, I dismissed
this hypothesis as unsatisfactory. Once I thought that something was
scratching and grinding down the side of a sloping ledge. Since rain
began falling thick and fast at the same moment, I seized my lantern and
retreated to the cave. When I gained the dizzy rock at the mouth of the
cave, the heavens again spoke, and mist-forms swept past in front of me.
The next moment I was at the bottom of the cave, wondering whether a
temperature of 60°, which my thermometer recorded, justified wholly the
goose-flesh that crept over me.
My lantern cast a clear, steady light into all parts of the cave. Now
and then a flash of lightning showed where the entrance faced the east,
and where one or two other cracks were open between the Cow and its
rocky foundation. I lay perfectly motionless, pondering upon the strange
sounds I had heard. My eyes rested upon several stones lying in the
narrow space beyond my feet where the two rocks neared each other.
Something moved there. A body had passed from the shelter of one stone
to that of another. I held my breath, and watched. Again a brownish
thing flashed past an opening, came nearer, darted forward into the
light, vanished, reappeared, came clearly into view, shot back, and
finally sped across a broad, well-lighted face of rock, and revealed
itself as a large short-tailed mouse,—perhaps an Eastern _Phenacomys_ as
yet unknown to collectors. Although I did not move for a long time, he
failed to reappear, and my only companion was a gauzy-winged fly which
sat upon my knee and contemplated the flame of the lantern.
The rain continuing, I sang and whistled until after ten o’clock, when I
crawled to the mouth of my cave and looked down into the depths beneath.
A stone thrown far out, so as to clear the first few ledges, might fall
eight hundred feet before it struck the rocks below. As I stared into
the darkness, I found that much which had been invisible an hour earlier
was now dimly outlined in black and white. The sky, too, showed gaps in
its curtain, and the white lakes in the distant valleys were more
silvery than before. The storm was over, the moon was at work eating the
clouds, and soon, I hoped, the stars would keep their tryst. Lantern in
hand, I crept up the rocks, and settled myself once more on the peak.
All my friendly lights in the valley had gone out, and I was now alone
in the sky.
Paugus, Passaconaway, and Whiteface were quite clearly outlined against
each other and the sky. They seemed very near, however, so that it was
easier for me to imagine myself on a lonely rock in the ocean, with huge
waves about to overwhelm me, than to make those combing waves stand back
three, eight, twelve miles and become spruce-covered mountains.
Gradually other mountain outlines became discernible, and the
cloud-curtain above showed folds and wrinkles, which in time wore out
under the moon’s chafing and let through a glimpse of Mars or Vega,
marvelously far away in that serene ether. Half an hour before midnight
the pale disk of the moon appeared through the thin clouds, and at the
witching hour she sailed out proudly into a little space of clear
blue-black heaven. The wind came in fresher puffs, a snowy cloud-cap
rested on the head of Paugus, and the air was so much colder that I was
glad to put on both jersey and oilskin jacket. A dozen lakes and
twenty-five mountain peaks were visible at half past twelve, and Mars
had worked a place for his red eye, so that it could look down through
the breaking clouds without interruption. Drowsiness now overtook me,
and in order to keep awake I was forced to walk rapidly up and down the
small area of the top, or to jump about over the ledges farther south.
About one o’clock a light flashed brightly from a point near the Maine
line; perhaps in Fryeburg. At first I thought it might be a fire which
would gather strength and size; then, as it appeared to move and come
nearer, it looked more like the headlight of a locomotive. My glass made
it seem smaller, and the motion was so slow and irregular that I thought
the gleam might be from a doctor’s buggy, as the man of sickness took
his way through the night.
[Illustration: THE PEAK FROM THE NORTH]
My own light was now growing dim, so I extinguished it in order to save
the remaining oil for emergencies. Immediately afterwards a bat flew
against the lantern, and then perched upon a lichen-hung rock near by,
to recover his composure. The moon slowly made way with the clouds, and
by two o’clock a quarter part of the sky was clear. The mercury had
dropped to 52°, and the moisture hurled against the mountain by the wind
was condensed and sent boiling and seething up the sides of the peak.
Tongues of fog lapped around me with the same spasmodic motion which
flames display in rising from a plate of burning alcohol. At first they
scarcely reached the peak; then they came to my feet, and swept past me
around both sides of my platform; finally they flung themselves higher
and higher, hiding not only the black valley from which they came, but
Paugus and more distant peaks, the sky, the moon, and the glimmering
stars. Suddenly from the fog-filled air came once more the gruesome
sound which I had heard earlier in the night. Its cause was nearer to me
now, and I felt sure that it was some creature of the air, and
consequently nothing which could cause me inconvenience. I strained my
eyes to see the creature as it passed, but in vain, until in its flight
it chanced to cross the face of the moon. Then the mystery was solved. I
saw that it was either a night-hawk or a bird of similar size. The speed
at which it was flying was wonderful. When it tacked or veered, it
produced the extraordinary sounds which, with their echoes from the
rocks, had so puzzled me at first. Once or twice during the night I had
heard night-hawks squawking, and from this time on their harsh voices
were heard at intervals mingled with the booming which, for some
unexplained reason, they make by night as well as by day; after as well
as during the breeding season.
A few minutes after two o’clock a large meteor shot across a small patch
of clear sky near the constellation Andromeda, and was quenched in the
fog. From time to time other smaller ones flashed in brief glory in the
same quarter of the heavens, and one brilliant fragment burned its way
past Jupiter, as though measuring its passing glory with the light of
the planet. The wind was falling, the temperature rising, and, following
these two influences, the fog decreased, until its only remnants clung
to the ponds and rivers far below. Two thirds of the sky were clear by
three o’clock. In the east, the Pleiades sparkled in mysterious
consultation; farther north, Capella flashed her colored lights, and
Venus, radiant with a lustre second only to Selene’s own, threw off the
clouds which for an hour had concealed her loveliness, and claimed from
Mars the foremost place in the triumph of the night. Her reign was
short. At a quarter after three I noticed that the cloudbank which lay
along the eastern and northern horizon was becoming more sharply defined
by the gradual growth of a white band above it. A greater orb than Venus
was undermining her power in the east. The white line imperceptibly
turned to a delicate green, and extended its area to left and right and
upward. The clouds in the high sky took on harder outlines and rounder
shapes. Shadows were being cast among them, and a light was stealing
through them from something brighter even than the yellow moon. The pale
green band had changed to blue, the blue was deepening to violet, and
through this violet sky the brightest meteor of the night passed slowly
down until it met the hills. High in the sky the stars were growing dim,
and the spaces between the clouds, which looked for all the world like a
badly painted picture, were growing blue, deep real blue. The line of
brightest light above the eastern clouds showed a margin of orange.
Venus in the violet sky was still dazzling, but her glory was no longer
of the night, but of the twilight. She was wonderful, in spite of the
stronger light which was slowly overpowering her. Mars burned like a red
coal low down in the west, unaffected thus far by the sun’s rays, while
Jupiter, supreme among the high stars, was paling fast as the light of
day rolled towards him.
The eastern sky looked strangely flat. Its colors were like a pastel
drawing. Small, very black clouds, with hard outlines, lay unrelieved
against the violet, silver, and orange. A full hour had sped by since I
first noted the coming of the day, and still the earth below slept on.
Hark! up from the deep valley below the Cow comes a single bird-voice,
but scarcely are its notes sprinkled upon the cool, clear air, when a
dozen, yes, fifty singers join their voices in a medley of morning
music. The first songster was a white-throat, and the bulk of the chorus
was made up of juncos and white-throats, the stronger song of Swainson’s
and hermit thrushes coming in clearly now and then from points more
distant from the peak. There was ecstasy in those matins. No sleepy
choir of mortal men or women ever raised such honest, buoyant music in
honor of the day’s coming. The birds love the day, and they love life
for all that each day brings. They labor singing, and they sing their
vespers, as they sing their matins, with hearts overflowing with joy and
thanksgiving.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM “THE COW,” SHOWING MOAT MOUNTAIN AND MOUNT
PEQUAWKET BEYOND]
There is something inexpressibly touching and inspiring in the
combination of fading night, with its planets still glowing, and the
bird’s song of welcome to the day. Night is more eloquent than day in
telling of the wonders of the vast creation. Day tells less of distance,
more of detail; less of peace, more of contest; less of immortality,
more of the perishable. The sun, with its dazzling light and burning
heat, hides from us the stars, and those still depths as yet without
stars. It narrows our limit of vision, and at the same time hurries us
and worries us with our own tasks which we will not take cheerfully, and
the tasks of others which are done so ill. Night tells not only of
repose on earth, but of life in that far heaven where every star is a
thing of motion and a creation full of mystery. Men who live only in
great cities may be pitied for being atheists, for they see little
beyond the impurity of man; but it seems incredible that a being with
thoughts above appetite, and imagination above lust, should live through
a night in the wilderness, with the stars to tell him of space, the dark
depths of the sky to tell him of infinity, and his own mind to tell him
of individuality, and yet doubt that some Being more powerful and less
fickle than himself is in this universe. The bird-music coming before
the night is ended combines the purest and most joyous element of the
day with the deep meaning of the night. The birds bear witness to the
ability of life to love its surroundings and to be happy. The night
bears witness to the eternity of life and to the harmony of its laws.