The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

There is one peculiarity, common to all these mountain villages, to which I must allude. A stranger is not known by any personal peculiarity, but by his horse. If you ask for such or such a person, the chances are ten to one you will immediately be asked in return if he drove a bay horse, or a black colt, or a brown mare with one white ear; so quick are these lazy-looking men, that loll on the door-steps or spread themselves out over the shop-counters, to observe what interests them most. The girls here know the points of a horse better than most men, and are far more reckless drivers than men. To a man who, like myself, has lived in a horse-stealing country, it does look queerly to see the barn-doors standing open at night. But then every country has its own customs.

One seeks in vain for any scraps of history or tradition that might shed even a momentary lustre upon this village out of the past. Yet its situation invites the belief that it is full of both. Disappointed in this, we at least have an inexhaustible theme in the dark and tranquil mountains bending over us.

Mount Lafayette presents toward Franconia two enormous green billows, rolled apart, the deep hollow between being the great ravine dividing the mountain from base to summit. Over this deep incision, which, from the irregularity of one of its ridges, looks widest at the top, presides, with matchless dignity, the bared and craggy peak whose dusky brown gradually mingles with the scant verdure checked hundreds of feet down. With what hauteur it seems to regard this effort of Nature to place a garland on its bronzed and knotted forehead! One can never get over his admiration for the savage grace with which the mountain, which at first sight seems literally thrown together, develops a beauty, a harmony, and an intelligence giving such absolute superiority to works of Nature over those of man.

The side of Mount Cannon turned toward the village now elevates two almost regular triangular masses, one rising behind the other, and both surmounted by the rounded summit, which, except in its mass, has little resemblance to a mountain. It is seen that on two-thirds of these elevations a new forest has replaced the original growth. Twenty-five years ago a destructive fire raged on this mountain, destroying all the vegetation, as well as the thin soil down to the hard rock. Even that was cracked and peeled like old parchment. This burning mountain was a scene of startling magnificence during several nights, when the village was as light as day, the sky overspread an angry glow, and the river ran blood-red. The hump-backed ridges, connecting Cannon with Kinsman, present nearly the same appearance from this as from the other side of the Notch – or as remarked when approaching from Campton.

The superb picture seen from the upper end of the valley, combining, as it does, the two great chains in a single glance of the eye, is extended and improved by going a mile out of the village to the school-house on the Sugar Hill road. It is a peerless landscape. I have gazed at it for hours with that ineffable delight which baffles all power of expression. It will have no partakers. One must go there alone and see the setting sun paint those vast shapes with colors the heavens alone are capable of producing.

Distinguished by the beautiful groves of maple that adorn its crest, Sugar Hill is destined to grow more and more in the popular esteem. No traveller should pass it by. It is so admirably placed as to command in one magnificent sweep of the eye all the highest mountains; it is also lifted into sun and air by an elevation sufficiently high to reach the cooler upper currents. The days are not so breathless or so stifling as they are down in the valley. You look deep into the Franconia Notch, and watch the evening shadows creep up the great east wall. Extending beyond these nearer mountains, the scarcely inferior Twin summits pose themselves like gigantic athletes. Passing to the other side of the valley, we see as far as the pale peaks of Vermont, and those rising above the valley of Israel’s River. But better than all, grander than all, is that kingly coronet of great mountains set on the lustrous green cushion of the valley. Nowhere, I venture to affirm, will the felicity of the title, “Crown of New England,”32 receive more unanimous acceptance than from this favored spot. Especially when a canopy of clouds overspreading permits the pointed peaks to reflect the illuminated fires of sunset does the crown seem blazing with jewels and precious stones. All the great summits are visible here, and all the ravines, except those in Madison, are as clearly distinguished as if not more than ten instead of twenty miles separated us.

The high crest of Sugar Hill unfolds an unrivalled panorama. This is but faint praise. Yet I find myself instinctively preferring the landscape from Goodenow’s; for those great horizons, uncovered all at once, like a magnificent banquet, are too much for one pair of eyes, however good, or however unwearied with continued sight-seeing. As we cannot look at all the pictures of a gallery at once, we naturally single out the masterpieces. The effort to digest too much natural scenery is a species of intellectual gluttony the overtaxed brain will be quick to revenge, by an attack of indigestion or a loss of appetite.

I was very fond of walking, in the cool of the evening, either in this direction or to the upper end of the village, on the Bethlehem road. There is one point on this road, before it begins in earnest its ascent of the heights, that became a favorite haunt of mine. Emerging from the concealment of thick woods upon a sandy plain, covered here with a thick carpet of verdure, and skirted by a regiment of pines seemingly awaiting only the word of command to advance into the valley, a landscape second to none that I have seen is before you. At the same time he would be an audacious mortal who attempted to transfer it to page or canvas. Nothing disturbs the exquisite harmony of the scene. To the left of you are all the White Mountains, from Adams to Pleasant; in front, the Franconia range, from Kinsman to the Great Haystack. Here is the deep rent of the Notch from which we have but lately descended. Here, too, overtopped and subjugated by the superb spire of Lafayette, the long and curiously-distorted outline of Eagle Cliff pitches headlong down into the half-open aperture of the pass. Nothing but an earthquake could have made such a breach. How that tremendous, earth-swooping ridge seems battered down by the blows of a huge mace! Unspeakably wild and stern, the fractured mountains are to the valley what a raging tempest is to the serenest of skies: one part of the heavens convulsed by the storm, another all peace and calm. Thus from behind his impregnable outworks Lafayette, stern and defiant, keeps eternal watch and ward over the valley cowering at his feet.

From this spot, too, sacred as yet from all intrusion, the profound ravine, descending nearly from the summit of Lafayette, is fully exposed. It is a thing of cracks, crevices, and rents; of upward curves in brilliant light; of black, mysterious hollows, which the eye investigates inch by inch, to where the gorge is swallowed up by the thick forests underneath. The whole side of the principal peak seems torn away. Up there, among the snows, is the source of a flashing stream which comes roaring down through the gorge. Storms swell it into an ungovernable and raging torrent. Thus under the folds of his mantle the lordly peak carries peace or war for the vale.

After the half-stifled feeling experienced among the great mountains, it is indeed a rare pleasure to once more come forth into full breathing-space, and to inspect at leisure from some friendly shade the grandeur magnified by distance, yet divested of excitements that set the brain whirling by the rapidity of their succession. If the wayfarer chances to see, as I did, the whole noble array of high summits presenting a long, snowy line of unsullied brilliance against a background of pale azure, he will account it one of the crowning enjoyments of his journey.

The Bridal Veil Falls, lying on the northern slope of Mount Kinsman, will, when a good path shall enable tourists to visit them, prove one of the most attractive features of Franconia. Truth compels me to say that I did not once hear them spoken of during the fortnight passed in the village, although fishermen were continually bringing in trout from the Copper-mine Brook, on which these falls are situated. The height of the fall is given at seventy-six feet, and its surroundings are said to be of the most romantic and picturesque character. Its marvellous transparency, which permits the ledges to be seen through the gauze-like sheet falling over them, has given to it its name.

From Franconia I took the daily stage to Littleton, which lies on both banks of the Ammonoosuc, and, turning my back upon the high mountains, ran down the rail to Wells River, having the intention of cultivating a more intimate acquaintance with that most noble and interesting entrance formed by the meeting of the Ammonoosuc with the Connecticut.

V.

THE CONNECTICUT OX-BOW

Say, have the solid rocksInto streams of silver been melted,Flowing over the plains,Spreading to lakes in the fields?Longfellow.

THE Connecticut is justly named “the beautiful river,” and its valley “the garden of New England.” Issuing from the heart of the northern wilderness, it spreads boundless fertility throughout its stately march to the sea. It is not a rapid river, but flows with an even and majestic tide through its long avenue of mountains. Radiant envoy of the skies, its mission is peace on earth and good-will toward men. As it advances the confluent streams flock to it from their mountain homes. On one side the Green Mountains of Vermont send their hundred tributaries to swell its flood; on the other side the White Hills of New Hampshire pour their impetuous torrents into its broad and placid bosom. Two States thus vie with each other in contributing the wealth it lavishes with absolutely impartial hand along the shores of each.

Unlike the storied Rhine, no crumbling ruins crown the lofty heights of this beautiful river. Its verdant hill-sides everywhere display the evidences of thrift and happiness; its only fortresses are the watchful and everlasting peaks that catch the earliest beams of the New England sun and flash the welcome signal from tower to tower. From time to time the mountains, which seem crowding its banks to see it pass, draw back, as if to give the noble river room. It rewards this benevolence with a garden-spot. Sometimes the mountains press too closely upon it, and the offended stream repays this temerity with a barrenness equal to the beneficence it has just bestowed. Where it is permitted to expand the amphitheatres thus created are the highest types of decorative nature. Graciously touching first one shore and then the other, making the loveliest windings imaginable, the river actually seems on the point of retracing its steps; but, yielding to destiny, it again resumes its slow march, loitering meanwhile in the cool shadows of the mountains, or indolently stretching itself at full length upon the green carpet of the level meadows. Every traveller who has passed here has seen the Happy Valley of Rasselas.33

Such is the renowned Ox-Bow of Lower Coös. Tell me, you who have seen it, if the sight has not caused a ripple of pleasurable excitement?

Here the Connecticut receives the waters of the Ammonoosuc, flowing from the very summit of the White Hills, and, in its turn, made to guide the railway to its own birthplace among the snows of Mount Washington. Here the valley, graven in long lines by the ploughshare, heaped with fruitful orchards and groves, extends for many miles up and down its checkered and variegated floor. But it is most beautiful between the villages of Newbury and Haverhill, or at the Great and Little Ox-Bow, where the fat and fecund meadows, extending for two miles from side to side of the valley, resemble an Eden upon earth, and the villages, prettily arranged on terraces above them, half-hid in a thick fringe of foliage, the mantel-ornaments of their own best rooms. Only moderate elevations rise on the Vermont side; but the New Hampshire shore is upheaved into the finely accentuated Benton peaks, behind which, like a citadel within its outworks, is uplifted the gigantic bulk of Moosehillock – the greatest mountain of all this valley, and its natural landmark – keeping strict watch over it as far as the Canadian frontiers.

The traveller approaching by the Connecticut Valley holds this exquisite landscape in view from the Vermont side of the river. The tourist who approaches by the valley of the Merrimac enjoys it from the New Hampshire shore.

The large village of Newbury, usually known as the “Street,” is built along a plateau, rising well above the intervale, and joined to the foothills of the Green Mountains. The Passumpsic Railway coasts the intervale, just touching the northern skirt of the village. The village of Haverhill is similarly situated with respect to the skirt of the White Mountains; but its surface is much more uneven, and it is elevated higher above the valley than its opposite neighbor. The Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railway, having crossed the divide between the waters of the Merrimac and the Connecticut, now follows the high level, after a swift descent from Warren Summit. These plateaus, or terraces, forming broken shelves, first upon one side of the valley, then upon the other, strongly resemble the remains of the ancient bed of a river of tenfold the magnitude of the stream as we see it to-day. They give rise at once to all those interesting conjectures, or theories, which are considered the special field of the geologist, but are also equally attractive to every intelligent observer of Nature and her wondrous works.

Of these two villages, which are really subdivided into half a dozen, and which so beautifully decorate the mountain walls of this valley, it is no treason to the Granite State to say that Newbury enjoys a preference few will be found to dispute. It has the grandest mountain landscape. Moosehillock is lifted high above the Benton range, which occupies the foreground. The whole background is filled with high summits – Lafayette feeling his way up among the clouds, Moosehillock roughly pushing his out of the throng. Meadows of emerald, river of burnished steel, hill-sides in green and buff, and etched with glittering hamlets, gray mountains, bending darkly over, cloud-detaining peaks, vanishing in the far east – surely fairer landscape never brought a glow of pleasure to the cheek, or kindled the eye of a traveller, already sated with a panorama reaching from these mountains to the Sound.

We are now, I imagine, sufficiently instructed in the general characteristics of the famed Ox-Bow to pass from its picturesque and topographical features into the domain of history, and to summon from the past the details of a tragedy in war, which, had it occurred in the days of Homer, would have been embalmed in an epic. Our history begins at a period before any white settlement existed in the region immediately about us. No wonder the red man relinquished it only at the point of the bayonet. It was a country worth fighting for to the bitter end.

VI.

THE SACK OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES

“L’histoire à sa vérité; la legende a la sienne.”

IN the month of September, 1759, the army of Sir Jeffrey Amherst was in cantonments at Crown Point. A picked corps of American rangers, commanded by Robert Rogers, was attached to this army. One day an aide-de-camp brought Rogers an order to repair forthwith to head-quarters, and in a few moments the ranger entered the general’s marquee.

“At your orders, general,” said the ranger, making his salute.

“About that accursed hornet’s-nest of St. Francis?” said the general, frowning.

“When I was a lad, your excellency, we used to burn a hornet’s-nest, if it became troublesome,” observed Rogers, significantly.

“And how many do you imagine, major, this one has stung to death in the last six years?” inquired General Amherst, fumbling among his papers.

“I don’t know; a great many, your excellency.”

“Six hundred men, women, and children.”

The two men looked at each other a moment without speaking.

“At this rate,” continued the general, “his Majesty’s New England provinces will soon be depopulated.”

“For God’s sake, general, put a stop to this butchery!” ejaculated the exasperated ranger.

“That’s exactly what I have sent for you to do. Here are your orders. You are commanded, and I expect you to destroy that nest of vipers, root and branch. Remember the atrocities committed by these Indian scoundrels, and take your revenge; but remember, also, that I forbid the killing of women and children. Exterminate the fighting-men, but spare the non-combatants. That is war. Now make an end of St. Francis once and for all.”

Nearly a hundred leagues separated the Abenaqui village from the English; and we should add that once there, in the heart of the enemy’s country, all idea of help from the army must be abandoned, and the rangers, depending wholly upon themselves, be deprived of every resource except to cut their way through all obstacles. But this was exactly the kind of service for which this distinctive body of American soldiers was formed.

Sir Jeffrey Amherst had said to Rogers, “Go and wipe out St. Francis for me,” precisely as he would have said to his orderly, “Go and saddle my horse.”

But this illustrates the high degree of confidence which the army reposed in the chief of the rangers. The general knew that this expedition demanded, at every stage, the highest qualities in a leader. Rogers had already proved himself possessed of these qualities in a hundred perilous encounters.

That night, without noise or display, the two hundred men detailed for the expedition left their encampment, which was habitually in the van of the army. On the evening of the twenty-second day since leaving Crown Point a halt was ordered. The rangers were near their destination. From the top of a tree the doomed village was discovered three miles distant. Not the least sign that the presence of an enemy was suspected could be seen or heard. The village wore its ordinary aspect of profound security. Rogers therefore commanded his men to rest, and prepare themselves for the work in hand.

At eight in the evening, having first disguised himself, Rogers took Lieutenant Turner and Ensign Avery, and with them reconnoitred the Indian town. He found it the scene of high festivity, and for an hour watched unseen the unsuspecting inhabitants celebrating with dancing and barbaric music the nuptials of one of the tribe. All this marvellously favored his plans. Not dreaming of an enemy, the savages abandoned themselves to unrestrained enjoyment and hilarity. The fête was protracted until a late hour under the very eyes of the spies, who, finding themselves unnoticed, crept boldly into the village, where they examined the ground and concerted the plan of attack.

At length all was hushed. The last notes of revelry faded on the still night air. One by one the drowsy merry-makers retired to their lodges, and soon the village was wrapped in profound slumber – the slumber of death. This was the moment so anxiously awaited by Rogers. Time was precious. He quickly made his way back to the spot where the rangers were lying on their arms. One by one the men were aroused and fell into their places. It was two in the morning when he left the village. At three the whole body moved stealthily up to within five hundred yards of the village, where the men halted, threw off their packs, and were formed for the assault in three divisions. The village continued silent as the grave.

St. Francis was a village of about forty or fifty wigwams, thrown together in a disorderly clump. In the midst was a chapel, to which the inhabitants were daily summoned by matin and vesper bell to hear the holy father, whose spiritual charge they were, celebrate the mass. The place was enriched with the spoil torn from the English and the ransom of many miserable captives. We have said that these Indians had slain and taken, in six years, six hundred English: that is equivalent to one hundred every year.

The knowledge of numberless atrocities nerved the arms and steeled the hearts of the avengers. When the sun began to brighten the east the three bands of rangers, waiting eagerly for the signal, rushed upon the village.

A deplorable and sickening scene of carnage ensued. The surprise was complete. The first and only warning the amazed savages had were the volleys that mowed them down by scores and fifties. Eyes heavy with the carousal of the previous night opened to encounter an appalling carnival of butchery and horror. Two of the stoutest of the rangers – Farrington and Bradley – led one of the attacking columns to the door where the wedding had taken place. Finding it barred, they threw themselves so violently against it that the fastenings gave way, precipitating Bradley headlong among the Indians who were asleep on their mats. All these were slain before they could make the least resistance.

On all sides the axe and the rifle were soon reaping their deadly harvest. Those panic-stricken, half-dazed wretches who rushed pell-mell into the streets either ran stupidly upon the uplifted weapons of the rangers or were shot down by squads advantageously posted to receive them. A few who ran this terrible gauntlet plunged into the river flowing before the village, and struck boldly out for the opposite shore; but the avengers had closed every avenue of escape, and the fugitives were picked off from the banks. The same fate overtook those who tumbled into their canoes and pushed out into the stream. The frail barks were riddled with shot, leaving their occupants an easy target for a score of rifles. The incessant flashes, the explosions of musketry, the shouts of the assailants, and the yells of their victims were all mingled in one horrible uproar. For two hours this massacre continued. Combat it cannot be called. Rendered furious by the sight of hundreds of scalps waving mournfully in the night-wind in front of the lodges, the pitiless assailants hunted the doomed savages down like blood-hounds. Every shot was followed by a death-whoop, every stroke by a howl of agony. For two horrible hours the village shook with explosions and echoed with frantic outcries. It was then given up to pillage, and then to the torch, and all those who from fear had hid themselves perished miserably in the flames. At seven o’clock in the morning all was over. Silence once more enveloped the hideous scene of conflagration and slaughter. The village of St. Francis was the funeral pyre of two hundred warriors. Rogers had indeed taken the fullest revenge enjoined by Sir Jeffrey Amherst’s orders.

From this point our true history passes into the legendary.

While the sack of St. Francis was going on a number of the Abenaquis took refuge in the little chapel. Their retreat was discovered. A few of their assailants having collected in the neighborhood precipitated themselves toward it, with loud cries. Others ran up. Two or three blows with the butt of a musket forced open the door, when the building was instantly filled with armed men.

An unforeseen reception awaited them. Lighted candles burnt on the high altar, shedding a mild radiance throughout the interior, and casting a dull glow upon the holy vessels of gold and silver upon the altar. At the altar’s foot, clad in the sacred vestments of his office, stood the missionary, a middle-aged, vigorous-looking man, his arms crossed upon his breast, his face lighted up with the exaltation of a martyr. Face and figure denoted the high resolve to meet fate half-way. Behind him crouched the knot of half-crazed savages, who had fled to the sanctuary for its protection, and who, on seeing their mortal enemies, instinctively took a posture of defence. The priest, at two or three paces in advance of them, seemed to offer his body as their rampart. The scene was worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt.

At this sight the intruders halted, the foremost even falling back a step, but the vessels of gold and silver inflamed their cupidity to the highest pitch; while the hostile attitude of the warriors was a menace men already steeped in bloodshed regarded a moment in still more threatening silence, and then by a common impulse recognized by covering the forlorn group with their rifles.