The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

Believing I saw a veteran of our great civil war, I asked, with undisguised interest,

“Where did you serve? Where were you wounded?”

“Von year und half in war mit Danemark, von year und half mit Oustria, und two mit Vrance.”

I looked at him again. What! That undersized, insignificant appearing little chap, whom I could easily have pitched into the ditch, he a soldier of Sadowa, of Metz, of Paris. Bah!

“So, the wars over, you emigrated to America?”

“Right avay. Ven I get home from Baris I tell Linda, my vife, ‘Look here, Linda: I been soldier six year. Now I plenty fighting got. Dere’s two hunder thaler in the knapsack. Shut your mouth tight, open your eye close, and we get out of dis double-quig.’ She say ‘Where I go?’ und I tell her the U-nited States, by hell, befor anoder var come. She begin to cry, I begin to schwear, und we settle it right avay.”

I asked if he minded telling how he came by the wound in his hand. This is what he told me in his broken English:

When Marshal Bazaine made his last desperate effort to shake off the deadly gripe the Prussians had fastened upon Metz, a battalion of tirailleurs suddenly surrounded an advanced post established by the Germans in the suburbs. The morning was foggy, and the surprise complete. The picket had hardly the time to run to their arms before they were driven back pell-mell on the reserve, amid a shower of balls. The reserve took refuge in a stone building surrounded by a thick hedge, maintaining an irregular fire from the windows. One of the last to cross the court-yard, with the French at his heels, was our German. Before he could gain the friendly shelter of the house he stumbled and fell headlong, his gun flying through the air as he came to the ground, so that he was not only prostrate but disarmed.

Half-stunned, he scrambled to his knees just as his nearest pursuer made a savage lunge with his sabre-bayonet. The Prussian instinctively grasped it. While trying thus to parry the deadly thrust, the keen weapon pierced his hand, and he was a second time borne to the earth, or, rather, pinned to it by his adversary’s bayonet.

“Rendez-vous Allemand, cochon!” screamed the Frenchman, bestriding the little Prussian with a look of mortal hatred.

“Je ne fous combrends,” replied the wounded man, drawing a revolver with his free hand and shooting his enemy dead. “I couldn’t helb it, I vas so mad,” finished the ex-soldier, running to serve two of his customers, who stood waiting for him at a gate by the roadside. I left him exhibiting ribbons, edgings, confectionery – heaven knows what! – with all the volubility of an experienced shopman.

IX.

JEFFERSON, AND THE VALLEY OF ISRAEL’S RIVER

Through the valley runs a river, bright and rocky, cool and swift,
Where the wave with many a quiver plays around the pine-tree’s drift.

    Good Words.
IT remains to introduce the reader into the valley watered by Israel’s River, and for this purpose we take the rail from Bethlehem to Whitefield, and from Whitefield to Jefferson.

Like Bethlehem, Jefferson lies reposing in mid-ascent of a mountain. Here the resemblance ends. The mountain above it is higher, the valley beneath more open, permitting an unimpeded view up and down. The hill-side upon which the clump of hotels is situated makes no steep plunge into the valley, but inclines gently down to the banks of the river. Instead of crowding upon and jostling each other, the mountains forming opposite sides of this valley remain tranquilly in the alignment they were commanded not to overstep. The confusion there is reduced to admirable order here; the smooth slopes, the clean lines, the ample views, the roominess, so to speak, of the landscape, indicate that everything has been done without haste, with precision, and without deviation from the original plan, which contemplated a paradise upon earth.

Issuing from the wasted sides of Mount Jefferson and Mount Adams, Israel’s River runs a short north-westerly course of fifteen miles into the Connecticut at Lancaster. This beautiful stream received its name from Israel Glines, a hunter, who frequented these regions long before the settlement of the country. The road from Lancaster to Gorham follows the northern highlands of its valley to its head, then crossing the dividing ridge which separates its waters from those of Moose River, descends this stream to the Androscoggin at Gorham.

On the north side Starr King Mountain rises 2400 feet above the valley and 3800 feet above the sea. On the south side Cherry Mountain lifts itself 3670 feet higher than the tide-level. These two mountains form the broad basin through which Israel’s River flows for more than half its course. The village of Jefferson Hill lies on the southern slope of Starr King, and, of course, on the north side of the valley. Cherry Mountain, the most prominent object in the foreground, is itself a fine mountain study. It looks down through the great Notch, greeting Chocorua. It is conspicuous from any elevated point north of the Franconia group – from Fabyan’s, Bethlehem, Whitefield, Lancaster, etc. Owl’s Head is a conspicuous protuberance of this mountain. Over the right shoulder of Cherry Mountain stand the great Franconia Peaks, and to the right of these, its buildings visible, is Bethlehem. Now look up the valley.

We see that we have taken one step nearer the northern wing of the great central edifice whose snowy dome dominates New England. We are advancing as if to turn this magnificent battle-line of Titans, on whose right Madison stands in an attitude to repel assault. Adams next erects his sharp lance, Jefferson his shining crescent, Washington his broad buckler, and Monroe his twin crags against the sky. Jefferson, as the nearest, stands boldly forward, showing its tremendous ravines, and long, supporting ridges, with great distinctness. Washington loses something of its grandeur here; at least it is not the most striking object; that must be sought for among the sable-sided giants standing at his right hand. The southern peaks, being foreshortened, show only an irregular and flattened outline which we do not look at a second time. From Madison to Lafayette, our two rallying points, the distance can hardly be less than forty miles as the eye travels: the entire circuit it is able to trace cannot fall short of seventy or eighty miles. As at Bethlehem, the view out of the valley is chiefly remarkable for its contrast with every other feature.

I took a peculiar satisfaction in these views, they were so ample, so extensive, so impressive. Here you really feel as if the whole noble company of mountains were marshalled solely for your delighted inspection. At no other point is there such unmeasured gratification in seeing, because the eye roves without hinderance over the grandest summits, placed like the Capitol at the head of its magnificent avenue. It alights first on one pinnacle, then flits to another. It interrogates these immortal structures with a calm scrutiny. It dives into the cool ravines; it seeks to penetrate, like the birds, the profound silence of the forests. It toils slowly up the broken crags, or loiters by the cascades, hanging like athletes from dizzy brinks. It shrinks, it admires, it questions; it is grave, gay, or thoughtful by turns. I do not believe the man lives who, looking up to those mountains as in the face of the Deity, can deliberately utter a falsehood: the lie would choke him.

Furthermore, you get the best idea of height here, because the long amphitheatre of mountains is seen steadily growing in stature toward the great central group; and comparison is, by all odds, the best of teachers for the eye.

If for no other reason than the respect due to age, Jefferson deserves a moment to itself. It was granted, October 3d, 1765, to John Goffe, under the name of Dartmouth. The road diverging here, and crossing Cherry Mountain to Fabyan’s, is the oldest, as it long was the only highway through the White Mountains. In those early times the travelled way was by the Connecticut River and Lancaster through this valley to the White Mountain Notch. The divergent road is the old turnpike between Vermont and Portland. Gradually, as settlements were pushed farther and farther up the Ammonoosuc, a way was made by Bath, Lisbon, Littleton, and Dalton, to Lancaster; but to pass beyond it was still necessary to follow the old route; nor was it until after the settlement of Bethlehem cleared the way that an execrable horse-path was made over the present great highway up the Ammonoosuc. In 1803 President Dwight passed over this new road on his second excursion to the great Notch. Few travellers would now be willing to undergo what he did to see the mountains. There were then only three or four houses in the sixteen miles between Bethlehem and the Notch.

One of the first settlers of Jefferson was Colonel Joseph Whipple, mentioned in the narrative of Nancy, the ill-starred mountain-maid, who died while following her faithless lover in his flight from Jefferson out of the mountains. Colonel Whipple lived on the road to Cherry Mountain, near the mill. In 1797 his was the only house on the road. During the Revolution a party of Indians, led by a white man, surrounded the house, and made Whipple their prisoner. Inventing some pretext, the colonel obtained leave to go into another room, from which he made his escape by a window and fled to the woods, where he successfully eluded pursuit.

Finding myself already well advanced toward the summit of Starr King, I finished the ascent of this mountain during an afternoon’s stroll. Nothing worthy of remark, except the exquisite view from the summit, presented itself. Here I met again a throng of old acquaintances, and encountered a crowd of new ones. Here I saw something like a shadow darken the side of Mount Washington, and watched it creep steadily up and up to the summit. The shadow was the smoke of the locomotive making its last ascent for the day, under the eyes of thousands of spectators, who look at it to turn away with a smile, a shrug, or a shake of the head.

The name of Starr King has become a household word with all travellers in the White Mountains. It was most fitting that he who interpreted Nature so well and so truly should receive his monument at her hands. To him the mountains were emblematic of her highest perfection. He loved them. His tone when speaking of them is always tender and caressing. They appealed to his rare and exquisite perception of the beautiful, to his fine and sensitive nature, capable of detecting intuitively what was hid from common eyes. He felt their presence to be ennobling and uplifting. He opened for us the charmed portal. We accompanied him through an earthly paradise then first revealed to us by the fervor and wealth of his description. He led us to the shadiest retreats, the coolest groves, the most secluded glens. He guided our footsteps up the steep mountain-side to the bleak summit. Thrice fitting was it that a mountain should perpetuate the name of Thomas Starr King. As was said at the grave of Gautier, he too dated “from the creation of the beautiful.”

I have now rested four days at Ethan Crawford’s, who lives on the side of Boy Mountain, five miles east of Jefferson Hill, on the road to Gorham. This Ethan is a son of the celebrated guide and host so well known to former travellers by the sobriquet of Keeper of the Mountains.

I go to the window, and facing toward the setting sun look down the broadening valley of Israel’s River, over the glistening house-tops of Whitefield, into and beyond the Connecticut Valley. I have Mitten Mountain and Cherry Mountain, both heavily wooded, just over the way, although the view of these elevations is in part intercepted by a nearer mountain, also covered with a vigorous forest. At this moment I hear the rush of the stream far down in the Hollow; and, following the serpentine line its dark course makes among the press of hills, am confronted by the massive slopes of Madison and Adams, the sombre ravine and castled crags of Jefferson, and the hoary crest of Washington. I am really in the heart of the mountains.

Swiftly from these mountains descend, with exquisite grace, enormous billows of deep sea-green, which do not subside but lift themselves proudly at the foot of those great overhanging walls of olive and malachite. Here rolling together, their foliage, bright or dark, repeats the effect of flaws sweeping over a sunny sea. Their deep hollows, arching sides, and limpid crests perfect the resemblance to the moment when, having exerted its utmost energy, the panting ocean stands exhausted and motionless in the grasp of the north wind.

These lower mountains, interposing a barrier between the two valleys of the Ammonoosuc and of Israel’s River, seem, you think, pushed up from the yielding earth simply by the enormous weight of the higher and neighboring mountains whose keen summit-lines cut New England in halves. At this hour these lines are edged with dull gold. All along the wavering heights I can detect with the naked eye isolated black crags, and can plainly see the deep dents in the broken cornices and capitals of the grand old mountains – those vestiges of their primordial architecture. Here the inclined ridge of the plateau, connecting the pinnacle of Washington with the peaks of Monroe, is traced along its whole extent. At this distance its craggy outline breaks in light ripples, announcing nothing of that wilderness of stones assailing the climber. All the asperities are softened into capricious harmonies. Below yawn the ravines.

The tracks of old slides and torrents in the side of Monroe remind you of the branches of a gigantic fossil tree, exposed by a fracture dividing the mountain in two. Such is, in fact, the impression received by looking at this mountain; but the object which most excites my attention is the broad and deep rent in the side of Jefferson, over which hang on one side the crumbling counterfeits of towers and battlements, while on the other cataracts, like necklaces, are suspended over its unfathomed abysses. Cloud-shadows drift noiselessly along the warm steeps. Cataracts glisten brightly in the sun. The grave peaks look down unmoved on the play of the one and the sport of the other.

The picture of life in East Jefferson would not be complete without the old hound dozing in the sun, the turkey-cocks strutting consequentially up and down, the barn-swallows darting swiftly in and out, the ring of young Ethan’s anvil, and the bleating of sheep far up the mountain-side. I see them nibbling the fresh herbage, and watch the gambols of the lambs like a child – only the child laughs aloud, and I do not laugh. Voices come down the hillside, and I see the slow movement of a hammock and the flutter of a dress in the maple-grove. Poetry and perfume mingle with the scent of wild-flowers and songs of golden-mouthed birds.

Evening does not drive us within doors, the nights are so enchanting. Day fades imperceptibly out. Even the stars seem disconcerted. One by one they peep, and then flit from view. We watch the slow mustering of the celestial host in silence. A meteor leaps from heaven to earth. The fire-flies resemble a shower of sparks, or, as darkness deepens, a phosphorescent sea. Dorbeetles hurtle the still air, and frogs sing barcarolles in the misty fens. Now the mountains put on their sable armor that is to render them invisible. Here the poet must assist us:

“It is the hush of night; and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen —
Save darkened Jura, whose capped heights appear
Precipitously steep.”

Light seems reluctant to leave the summits. It does not wholly fade out of the west until a late hour. In a clear and starry night all the surrounding mountains can be distinguished long after the valley is steeped in darkness. At half-past nine I could easily tell the time by my watch; and even at this hour a pale, nebulous light still lingered where the sun had gone down. So at near two thousand feet above the full sea one peers over into that deeper horizon where twilight and dawn meet and embrace on the dusky threshold of midnight.

While in the neighborhood, I devoted a day to an exploration of the Ravine of the Cascades. This ravine is entered from a point on the Gorham road about three miles distant from the Mount Adams House. A cart-way crosses the meadow here to an abandoned mill which is on the stream coming from the ravine, and by which you must ascend. A more beautiful example of a mountain brook it has never been my lot to see. The ascent is, however, tedious and toilsome in the extreme over the smooth and slippery rocks in its bed. Four hours of this brought me to the region of low trees, and to the foot of the first fall, which, I judged, descended about thirty feet. This way to the summit is open only to the most vigorous climbers. Even then it is better to descend into the ravine from the gap between Adams and Jefferson in order to visit these cascades.

The two most profitable excursions to be made here are undoubtedly the ascent of Mount Adams and the drive to the top of Randolph Hill. I have found on the first summit irrefragable evidence that, next to Washington and Lafayette, Adams is the peak which summer tourists are most desirous of ascending. A good path, on which there is a camp, leads to the summit. Having other views in regard to this mountain, which I had so often admired from a distance, I made a third reconnoisance of its outworks and its remarkable ravine, while en route for Randolph Hill.

Unquestionably fine as the views are along this road, on which you are at one time rolling smoothly over meadow or upland, with the great northern peak rising to its full height, or again toiling up a stony hill-side to obtain a much better idea of its real character and prodigious dimensions, the climax is reserved until, turning from the highway, you begin a slow advance up the long hill-side that makes an almost uninterrupted descent for five miles to the Androscoggin. Here I saw from a balcony what I had before seen from the ground-floor. The view is large and expansive. You look down the surging land into the Androscoggin. You look over among the mountains circling its head, huddled together like a frightened herd. You look down into the valley of the Moose, and through the gap in the great chain you again see the valley of the Peabody and the Carter Notch. Now you hold the great northern peaks admiringly at arm’s-length, as you would an old friend. Putting an imaginary hand on each broad shoulder, you scan them from head to foot. They submit calmly and with condescension to your lengthened scrutiny. Presently the low sun floods them with royal purple and gilds the topmost crags with refined gold. You glance up the valley. The little river comes like a stream of fire which the huge mountains seem crowding forward to trample out. Now look down. The same mountains seem spurning the glittering serpent away from their feet.

King’s Ravine is as well seen from this point, perhaps, as any. It is a huge natural niche excavated high up the mountain. You see everything – grizzled spruces, blackened shafts of stone, rifted walls, tawny crags – all in one glance. It is formidable and forbidding, though a way has been made through it by which to ascend Mount Adams. Now that there is a good path skirting the ravine and avoiding it, that look will usually suffice to deter sensible people from attempting to reach the summit by it. It is far better to descend into it and grope one’s way down through and underneath the bowlders. The same, and even greater, obstacles are encountered as in Tuckerman’s. In early spring the walls of the ravine are streaked with slowly-melting snows. These gulches, all converging toward the bottom, send a torrent roaring down with noise equal to surf on a hard sea-beach. This torrent is the principal source of the Moose.

Well do I remember my first venture here. I had walked from Gorham. Seeing a man chopping wood by the side of the road, I entered into conversation with him; but at the first suggestion I let fall of an intention to climb to the ravine he gaped open-mouthed. To ascend the brook to the ravine, the escarpment of the ravine to the high precipices, the precipices to the gate-way, was an exploit in those days. But this was long ago. A good climber now puts King’s Ravine down in his list of excursions with the same nonchalance that a belle of the ball-room enters an additional waltz on her card of engagements.[39 - The greater part of the ascent so nearly coincides, in its main features, with that into Tuckerman’s, that a description would be, in effect, a repetition. To my mind Tuckerman’s is the grander of the two; it is only when the upper section of King’s is reached that it begins to be either grand or interesting by comparison.]

One day I had fished along the Moose without success. Nothing could give a better idea of a mountain stream than this one, fed by snows and gushing from the breached side of Mount Adams. But either the water was too cold or the trout too wary. They persistently refused my fly. I tried red and brown hackle, then a white moth-miller; all to no purpose. Feeling downright hungry, I determined to seek a dinner elsewhere. Unjointing my rod, I returned, rather crestfallen, down the mountain into the road.

I knocked at the first house. Pretty soon the curtain of the first window at my left hand was partly drawn aside. I felt that I was under the fire of a pair of very black eyes. An instant after the door was half-opened by a woman past middle life, who examined me with a scared look while wiping her hands on a corner of her apron. Two or three white heads peeped out from the folds of her dress like young chickens from the old hen’s wing, and as many pairs of widely-opened eyes surveyed me with innocent surprise.

Perceiving her confusion, I was on the point of asking some indifferent question, about the distance, the road – I knew not what – but my stomach gave me a twinge of disdain, and I stood my ground. Hunger has no conscience: honor was at stake. In two words I made known my wants, I confess with confidence oozing away at my fingers’ ends.

Her confusion became still greater – so evident, indeed, that I took a backward step and stammered, quite humbly, “A hunch of bread-and-cheese or a cup of milk – ” when the good-wife nailed me to the threshold.

Quoth she, “The men folks have all et their dinners, and there hain’t no more meat; but if you could put up with a few trout?”

Put up with trout! Did I hear aright? The word made my mouth water. I softly repeated it to myself – “Trout!” – would I put up with trout? Not to lower myself in this woman’s estimation, I replied that, seeing there was nothing else in the house, I would put up with trout. Let it suffice that I made a repast fit for a prince, and, like a prince, being served by a bashful maiden with cheeks like the arbutus, which everybody knows shows its most delicate pink only in the seclusion of its native woods.

My hours of leisure in Jefferson being numbered, having now made the circuit of the great range by all the avenues penetrating or environing it, the reader’s further indulgence is craved while his faithful guide points his well-worn alpenstock to the last stage of our mountain journeys.

Behold us at last, after many capricious wanderings, after calculated avoidance, approaching the inevitable end. We are en route for Fabyan’s by the road over Cherry Mountain. This road is twelve miles long. As we mount with it the side of Cherry Mountain the beautiful vistas continually detain us. We are now climbing the eastern wall of the valley, so long the prominent figure from the heights of Jefferson. We now look back upon the finely-traced slopes of Starr King, with the village luxuriously extended in the sun. For some time we are like two travellers going in opposite directions, but who turn again and again for a last adieu. Now the forest closes over us and we see each other no more.