The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

A chapter could not give the thousand details of this grand picture. One devours it with avidity. He sees to the greatest possible advantage the magnificent proportions of Washington, with his massive slopes rolling up and up, like petrified storm-clouds, to the final summit. He sees the miles of carriage-road, from where it leaves the woods, as far as the great northern plateau. He looks deep down into the depths of Tuckerman’s and Huntington’s ravines, and between them sees Raymond’s Cataract crusting the bare cliffs with a vein of quicksilver. The massive head-wall of Tuckerman’s was freely spattered with fresh snow; the Lion’s Head rose stark and forbidding; the upper cliffs of Huntington’s, the great billows of land rushing downward into the dark gulfs, resembled the vortex of a frozen whirlpool.

“With twenty trenched gashes in his head,”

But for refinement of form, delicacy of outline, and a predominant, inexplicable grace, Adams stands forth here without a rival. Washington is the undisputed monarch, but Adams is the highest type of mountain beauty here. That splendid, slightly concave, antique shaft, rising in unconscious symmetry from the shoulders of two supporting mountain-peaks, which seem prostrating themselves at its feet, changes the emotion of awe and respect to one of admiration and pleasure. Our elevation presented all the great summits in an unrivalled attitude for observation or study; and whoever has once beheld them – banded together with bonds of adamant, their heads in the snow, and their feet in the impenetrable shades of the Great Gulf; with every one of their thousands of feet under his eye – every line as firm and strong, and every contour true as the Great Architect drew it – without loss or abatement; vigorous in old age as in youth; monuments of one race, and silent spectators of the passing of another; victors in the battle with Time; chronicles and retrospect of ages; types of the Everlasting and Unchangeable – will often try to summon up the picture of the great peaks, and once more marshal their towering battlements before the memory.

The descent occupied less than half an hour, so rapidly is it made. We had nothing whatever to do with regulating our speed, but were fully occupied in so placing our feet as to avoid pitching headlong, or sitting suddenly down in a miry place. We simply tumbled down the mountain, like two rocks detached from its peak.

After a last survey of the basin of the Notch, from the clearing above the upper lake, we crossed the little mountain at its head, taking the path leading to the Glen House. We descended the reverse side together, to the point where the great slide referred to came thundering down from the Dome into the gorge of Nineteen Mile Brook. This landslip, which happened October 4th, 1869, was one of the results of the disastrous autumnal storms, which deluged the mountains with rain, and set in motion here an enormous quantity of wreck and débris. It was at this time that Mr. Thompson, the proprietor of the Glen House, lost his life in the Peabody River, in a desperate effort to avert the destruction of his mill.

Here I parted from my guide; and, after threading the woods for two hours more, following the valley of Nineteen Mile Brook, came out of their shadowy embrace into the stony pastures above the Glen House.

IV.

THE PINKHAM NOTCH

Levons les yeux vers les saintes montagnes. – Racine.

THE Glen House is one of the last strongholds of the old ways of travel. Jackson is twelve, Randolph seven, and Gorham eight miles distant. These are the nearest villages. The nearest farm-houses are Copp’s, three miles on the road to Randolph, and Emery’s, six on the road to Jackson. The nearest railway-station is eight miles off, at Gorham. The nearest steam-whistle is there. So much for its seclusion.

Being thus isolated, the Glen House is naturally the point of direction for the region adjacent. Situated at the base of Carter Mountain, on a terrace rising above the Peabody River, which it overlooks, it has only the valley of this stream – a half mile of level meadow here – between it and the base of Mount Washington. The carriage-road to the summit, which, in 1861, superseded the old bridle-path, is seen crossing this meadow. This road occupied six years in building, is eight miles long, and is as well and solidly built as any similar piece of highway in New England.

When it is a question of this gigantic mass, which here offers such an easy mode of ascent, the interest is assured. Respecting the appearance of Mount Washington from the Glen House itself, it is a received truth that neither the height nor the proportions of a high mountain are properly appreciated when the spectator is placed exactly at the base. The same is true here of Mount Washington, which is too much foreshortened for a favorable estimate of its grandeur or its elevation. The Dome looks flat, elongated, obese. But it is only a step from the hotel to more eligible posts of observation, say the clearings on Mount Carter, or, better still, the slopes of Wildcat, which are easily reached over a good path.

Still, Mount Washington is surveyed with more astonishment, perhaps, from this point, than from any other. Its lower section is covered with a dense forest, out of which rise the successive and stupendous undulations culminating at last in the absolutely barren summit, which the nearer swells almost conceal. The true peak stands well to the left, indicated by a white building when the sun is shining, and a dark one when it is not. As seen from this spot, the peculiar formation of the mountain gives the impression of a semi-fluid mass, first cooled to hardness, then receiving successive additions, which, although eternally united with its bulk, have left the point of contact forever visible. When the first mass cooled, it received a second, a third, and a fourth. One believes, so to speak, certain intervals to have elapsed in the process of solidifying these masses, which seem, to me at least, not risen above the earth, but poured down upon it.

It is related that an Englishman, seated on the balcony of his hotel at Chamouni, after having conscientiously followed the peripatetics of a sunset, remarked, “Very fine, very fine indeed! but it is a pity Mont Blanc hides the view.” In this sense, Mount Washington “hides the view” to the west. No peak dares show its head in this direction.

From the vicinity of the hotel, Wildcat Mountain allows the eye to embrace, at the left, Mount Washington as far as Tuckerman’s Ravine. Only a few miles of the valley can be traced on this side; but at the right it is open for nearly its whole length, fully exposing that magnificent sweep of the great northern peaks, here bending majestically to the north-east, and exhibiting their titanic props, deep hollows, soaring peaks, to the admiring scrutiny of every wayfarer. It is impossible to appreciate this view all at once. No one can pretend to analyze the sensations produced by looking at mountains. The bare thought of them causes a flutter of enthusiasm wherever we may be. At such moments one lays down the pen to revel in the recollection.

Among these grandees, Adams looks highest. It is indispensable that this mountain should be seen from some higher point. It is only half seen from the Glen, although the view here is by far the best to be had in any valley enclosing the great chain. Ascend, therefore, even at the risk of some toil, one of the adjacent heights, and this superb monument will deign to show the true symmetrical relation of summit to base.

I have already said that most travellers approach this charming mountain nook by the Pinkham defile, instead of making their début by the Carter Notch. It will be well worth our while to retrace at least so much of this route, through the first-named pass, as will enable us to gain a knowledge, not so much of what it shows as of what it hides. By referring to the chapter on Jackson, we shall then have seen all that can be seen on the travelled highway.

The four miles back through the Pinkham forest deserve to be called the Avenue of Cascades. Not less than four drop from the mountain tops, or leap down the confined gorges. Let us first walk in this direction.

Two miles from the hotel we meet a sprightly and vigorous brook coming down from Wildcat Mountain to swell the Peabody. A short walk up this stream brings us to Thompson’s Falls, which are several pretty cascades slipping down a bed of granite. The ledges over which they glide offer a practicable road to the top of the falls, from which is a most interesting view into Tuckerman’s Ravine, and of the summit of Mount Washington.

Some overpowering, some unexplained fascination about these dark and mysterious chambers of the mountain arouses in us a desire strangely like to that intense craving for a knowledge of futurity itself. We think of the Purgatory of the ancients into which we would willingly descend if, like Dante holding the hand of Virgil, we might hope to return unscathed to earth. “This is nothing but an enormous breach in the mountain,” you say, weakly attempting to throw off the spell by ridiculing the imagination. Be it so. But it has all the terrible suggestiveness of a descent into the world of the dead. When we walk in the dark we say that we are afraid of falling. It is a falsehood. We are afraid of a Presence.

That dark curling lip of the south wall, looking as if the eternal adamant of the hills had been scorched and shrivelled by consuming flame, marks the highest curve of the massive granite spur rooted deep in the Pinkham defile. It is named Boott’s Spur. The sky-line of the ravine’s head-wall is five thousand feet above the sea, on the great plateau over which the Crawford trail passes. That enormous crag, rising like another Tower of Famine, on the north and east divides the ravine proper from the collateral chamber, known as Huntington’s, out of which the source of the Peabody gushes a swift torrent, and near which the carriage-road winds its devious way up to the summit. In the depression of this craggy ridge, between the two ravines, sufficient water is collected to form the beautiful cataract known as Raymond’s, which is seen from all those elevations commanding the ravine itself.

The ravine also furnishes a route to the summit of Mount Washington in so far that the ascent may be continued from the head of the chasm to the high plateau, and so up the pinnacle, by the old Crawford trail, or over the crag on the right to the carriage-road; but it is not to be highly recommended on that account, except to strong climbers. It should be visited for itself, and for what is to be seen going or returning by the different paths. I have also descended from the Summit House to the ravine and returned by the same route; an excursion growing in favor with those tourists having a day or two on their hands, and who approach the mountain from the west or opposite side. In that case a return to the summit saves a long détour.

Before we come to Thompson’s Falls a well-trod path leads to the Emerald Pool, which Bierstadt’s painting has rendered famous. At first one sees only a deep hollow, with a dark and glassy pool at the bottom, and a cool light coming down through the high tree-tops. Two large rocks tightly compress the stream which fills it, so that the water gushes out with sufficient force to whiten a little, without disturbing the placid repose of the pool. This gives the effect of milk poured upon ink. Above these rocks we look up the stony bed of the frantic river and meet the blue mass of a distant mountain. Rocks are picturesquely dropped about the margin. Upon one side a birch leans far out over the basin, whose polished surface brilliantly reflects the white light of its bark. One sees the print of foliage on the black water, like that of ferns and grasses upon coal; or, rather, like the most beautiful Italian mosaics – black marble inlaid with arabesques of color. The illusion is more perfect still when the yellow and scarlet of the maples is reflected, as in autumn.

The contrast between the absolutely quiet pool and the feverish excitement of the river is singular. It is that of a life: one, serene and unmoved, receives the other in its bosom and calms its excitement. It then runs out over the pebbles at a steadier pace, soothed, tranquillized, and strengthened, to meet its destiny by this one moment of peace and rest.

Doubtless many turn languidly into this charming sylvan retreat with only a dim perception of its beauty. Few go away except to sing its praises with heart and tongue. Solitude is here. Repose is here. Peace is omnipresent. And, freed from the excitements of city life, “Peace at any price” is the cry of him whom care pursues as with a knotted scourge. If he find not rest here, ‘tis his soul “is poor.” For him the smell of the earth, the fragrance of the pines, the very stones, have healing or strength. He grows drowsy with the lullaby of the brook. A delicious languor steals over him. A thousand dreamy fancies float through his imagination. He is a child again; or, rather, he is born again. The artificial man drops off. Stocks and bonds are clean forgotten. His step is more elastic, his eye more alert, his heart lighter. He departs believing he has read, “Let all who enter here leave care behind.” And all this comes of seeing a little shaded mountain pool consecrated by Nature. He has only experienced her religion and received her baptism.

Burying ourselves deeper in the pass, the trees, stirred by the breeze, shake out their foliage like a maiden her long tresses. And the glory of one is the glory of the other. We look up to the greater mountains, still wrapped in shadows, saying to those whom its beams caress, “Out of my sun!”

At the third mile a guide-board at the right announces the Crystal Cascade. We turn aside here, and, entering the wood, soon reach the banks of a stream. The last courtesy this white-robed maid makes on crossing the threshold of her mountain home is called the Crystal Cascade. It is an adieu full of grace and feeling.

The Crystal Cascade divides with Glen Ellis the honor of being the most beautiful water-fall of the White Mountains. And well may it claim this distinction. These two charming and radiant sisters have each their especial admirers, who come in multitudes every year, like pilgrims to the shrine of a goddess. In fact, they are as unlike as two human countenances. Every one is astonished at the changes effected by simple combinations of rocks, trees, and water. One shrinks from a critical analysis of what appeals so strangely to his human sympathies. Indeed, he should possess the language of a Dumas or a Ruskin, the poetry of a Longfellow or a Whittier, the pencil of a Turner or a Church, to do justice to this pre-eminently beautiful of cascades.

Look around. On the right bank of the stream, where a tall birch leans its forked branches out over the pool below, a jutting rock embraces in one glance the greater part of the fall. The cliffs, rising on both sides, make a most wild and impressive setting. The trees, which shade or partly screen it, exclude the light. The ferns and shrubbery trace their arabesques of foliage upon the cold, damp rocks. The sides of the mountain, receding into black shadows, seem set with innumerable columns, supporting a roof of dusky leafage. All this combines to produce the effect of standing under the vault of some old dimly-lighted cathedral – a subdued, a softened feeling. A voice seems whispering, “God is here!”

Through these sombre shades the cascade comes like a gleam of light: it redeems the solitude. High up, hundreds of feet up the mountain, it boils and foams; it hardly seems to run. How it turns and tosses, and writhes on its hard bed! The green leaves quiver at its struggles. Birds fly silently by. Down, down, and still down over its shattered stairs falls the doomed flood, until, lashed and broken into a mere feathery cloud, it reaches a narrow gorge between abrupt cliffs of granite. A little pellucid basin, half white, half black water, receives it in full career. It then flows out by a pretty water-fall of twenty feet more. But here, again, the sharp, wedge-shaped cliff, advancing from the opposite bank, compresses its whole volume within a deep and narrow trough, through which it flies with the rapidity of light, makes a right angle, and goes down the mountain, uttering loud complaints. From below, the jagged, sharp-edged cliff forms a kind of vestibule, behind which the cascade conceals itself. Behind this, farther back, is a rock, perfectly black, and smooth as polished ebony, over which the surplus water of the fall spreads a tangled web of antique lace. Some very curious work has been going on here since the stream first made its way through the countless obstacles it meets in the long miles to its secret fountains on Mount Washington. One carries away a delightful impression of the Crystal Cascade. To the natural beauty of falling water it brings the charm of lawless unrestraint. It scorns the straight and narrow path; has stolen interviews with secret nooks on this side or that; is forever coquettishly adjusting its beautiful dishabille. What power has taken one of those dazzling clouds, floating over the great summit, and pinned it to the mountain side, from which it strives to rise and soar away?

We are now in the wildest depths of the Pinkham defile. The road is gloomy enough, edging its way always through a dense wood around a spur of Mount Washington, which it closely hugs. Upon reaching the summit, thirteen hundred and fifty feet above the Saco, at Bartlett, a sign-board showed where to leave the highway, but now the noise of the fall coming clearer and clearer was an even surer guide.

The sense of seclusion is perfect. Stately pines, funereal cedars, sombre hemlocks, throng the banks, as if come to refresh their parched foliage with the fine spray ascending from the cataract. This spray sparkles in the sun like diamond-dust. Through the thick-set, clean-limbed tree-trunks jets of foam can be seen in mad riot along the rocky gorge. They leap, toss their heads, and tumble over each other like young lambs at play. Backward up the stream, downward beyond the fall, we see the same tumult of waters in the midst of statuesque immobility; we hear the roar of the fall echoing in the tops of the pines; we feel the dull earth throb with the superabundant energy of the wild river.

Making my way to the rocks above the cataract, I saw the torrent swiftly descending in two long, arching billows, flecked with foam, and tossing myriad diamonds to the sun. Two large masses of rock, loosened from the cliffs that hang over it, have dropped into the stream, turning it a little from its ancient course, but only to make it more picturesque and more tumultuous. On the left of the gorge the rocks are richly striped with black, yellow, and purple. The water is crystal clear, and cold as ice, having come, in less time than it takes to write, from the snows of Tuckerman’s Ravine. The variegated hues of the rocks, glistening with spray, of the water itself seizing and imprisoning, like flies in amber, every shadow these rocks let fall, the roar of the cataract, make a deep and abiding impression of savage force and beauty.

But I had not yet seen the fall. Descending by slippery stairs to the pool beneath it, I saw, eighty feet above me, the whole stream force its way through a narrow cleft, and stand in one unbroken column, superbly erect, upon the level surface of the pool. The sheet was as white as marble, the pool as green as malachite. As if stunned by the fall, it turns slowly round; then, recovering, precipitates itself down the rocky gorge with greater passion than ever.

On its upper edge the curling sheet of the fall was shot with sunlight, and shone with enchanting brilliancy. All below was one white, feathery mass, gliding down with the swift and noiseless movement of an avalanche of fresh snow. No sound until the moment of contact with the submerged rocks beneath; then it finds a voice that shakes the hoary forest to its centre. How this exquisite white thing fascinates! One has almost to tear himself away from the spot. Undine seems beckoning us to descend with her into the crystal grottoes of the pool. From the tender dalliance of a sunbeam with the glittering mists constantly ascending was born a pale Iris. Exquisitely its evanescent hues decorated the virgin drapery of the fall. Within these mists two airy forms sometimes discover themselves, hand-in-hand.

The story runs that the daughter of a sagamore inhabiting the little vale, now Jackson, was secretly wooed and won by a young brave of another and neighboring tribe. But the haughty old chief destined her for a renowned warrior of his own band. Mustering his friends, the preferred lover presented himself in the village, and, according to Indian usage, laying demanded his bride. The alliance was too honorable to permit an abrupt refusal. Smothering his wrath, the father assembled his braves. The matter was debated in solemn council. It was determined that the rivals should settle their dispute by a trial of skill, the winner to carry off the beautiful prize. A mark was set up, the ground carefully measured, and the two warriors took their respective places in the midst of the assembled tribe. The heart of the Indian maiden beat with hope when her lover sent his arrow quivering in the edge of the target; but it sunk when his rival, stepping scornfully to his place, shot within the very centre. A shout of triumph rewarded the skill of the victor; but before it died away the defeated warrior strode to the spot where his mistress was seated and spoke a few hurried words, intended for her ear alone. The girl sprung to her feet and grasped her lover’s hand. In another moment they were running swiftly for the woods. They were hotly pursued. It became a matter of life and death. Perceiving escape impossible, rendered desperate by the near approach of their pursuers, the fugitives, still holding fast each other’s hand, rushed to the verge of the cataract and flung themselves headlong into its deadly embrace.

“ – at her father’s feet that nightHis softest furs and wampum white.”

Over the pool the gray and gloomy wall of Wildcat Mountain seems stretching up to an incredible height. The astonishing wildness of the surroundings affects one very deeply. You look up. You see the firs surmounting those tall cliffs sway to and fro, as if growing dizzy with the sight of the abyss beneath them.

The Ellis Cascade is not so light as those mountain sylphs in the great Notch, which a zephyr lifts from their feet, and scatters far and wide; it is a vestal hotly pursued by impish goblins to the brink of the precipice, transformed into a water-fall. For an instant the iron grip of the cliff seems clutching its snowy throat, but with a mocking courtesy the fair stream eludes the grasp, and so escapes.

While returning from Glen Ellis, I saw, not more than a quarter of a mile from this fall, a beautiful cascade come streaming down a long trough of granite from a great height, and disappear behind the tree-tops that skirt the narrow gorge. I had never before seen this cascade, it being usually dry in summer. The sight of glancing water among the shaggy upper forests of the mountain – for you hear nothing – is a real pleasure to the eye. The rock down which this cascade flows is New River Cliff.

Before leaving the Ellis, which I did regretfully, it is proper to recall an incident which gave rise to one of its affluents. In 1775, says Sullivan, in his “History of Maine,” the Saco was found to swell suddenly, and in a singular manner. As there had not been rain sufficient to account for this increase of volume, people were at a loss how to explain the phenomenon, until it was finally discovered to be occasioned by a new river having broken out of the side of the White Mountains.

When this river issued from the mountains, in October, 1775, a mixture of iron-ore gave the water a deep red color, and this singular, and to them most startling, appearance led the people inhabiting the upper banks of the Saco to declare that the river ran blood – a circumstance which these simple-minded folk regarded as of evil omen for the success of their arms in the struggle then going on between the Colonies and Great Britain. Except for illustrating a marked characteristic the incident would possess little importance. Considerable doubt exists as to the precise course of this New River, by which it is conjectured that the ascents of Cutler, Boott, Bigelow, and perhaps others, early in this century, were made to the summit of Mount Washington. But this is merely conjecture.20