The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862

The approach to the mountain, dreary. The girls—Lord, help us!—call it beautiful, sublime! Not very cold, but the driver says the bulb has already burst on Mount Washington! What an arrant old fool I was to propose coming up here! The 'Glen-House closed!' But the landlord graciously, as a favor, 'took us in'—a 'take in' to the tune of his summer-prices, no doubt. Fried salt-ham at dinner, and mince-pie for a supplement!

Went with the girls to walk, and plunged into forest-paths, where, instead of our broad, smiling, home meadows, and orchards, and gardenspots, we could see nothing but the ghostly mountains in their fog-shrouds, and precipices, and uprooted trees, and that plague of our Egypt—Paddies—who are making a road to the summit of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be dragged up to see a savage view—ninety-nine times out of a hundred befogged!

Wednesday.—Well, here we are! raining all night, and when I could sleep, haunted by dire mischances, torrents, slides, etc. Waked by a devilish gong! Hot biscuits, potatoes, and corn-bread, on the breakfast-table; could eat none of them. Villainous tea! Raining and sunshining alternately, so that no mortal can tell whether to go or stay; and meantime here am I, sitting by a gloomy window where I can see nothing but these useless mountains. Lord, forgive me! The angels do hover about me, even here, in the shape of my children! Etc., etc., etc.!

The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. It has been long, but not tedious. We began it with reading aloud The Heir of Redcliffe. It is one of those novels of the day that seem to me to preach, as few preachers do, the true Gospel doctrine. It is so cleverly, so charmingly written, that one is persuaded of the Christian truths of forgiveness and self-sacrifice, vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy, without one thought or argument bristling up against them, as they sometimes do against the ordained preacher. I will try to imitate Amy in her cheerful submission to a disappointment far heavier than mine—for the husband must be dearer than the lover.

You think me cool, dear friend; I am only trying to be so, and how far I shall succeed I doubt, as a cold shivering runs through my veins as I hear the winds and think of Carl on the ocean.

I laid down my pen. I perceive my father watches me very narrowly. 'My child,' he said, 'you are shaking with cold,' (not with 'cold,' I could have answered;) 'these confounded stoves,' he added, 'keep one in an alternate ague and fever; come, waltz round the room with your sister, and get into a glow.' So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were out of breath; and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father, who has a run of luck, 'point! seizieme! and capote!' which puts him into high good humor—and I may write unmarked, and let my thoughts, unbridled, fly off after Carl. He was to write me once more before his embarkation, but I can not get the letter till we return, and I have not the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer's passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me happy enough to be in the same ship with him—and yet, what care they for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company, I know. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said, 'Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel'—'Oh! that's nothing but a nonsense, child,' she said, 'men an't that way; they go about among folks and get rid of feelings; it's women that stay at home and keep 'em alive, brooding on 'em!' Will he soon 'get rid' of them?

Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? and yet, in my secret soul, I do shrink from it. But perhaps it will be easier as I go on, if it be true that

'Each goodly thing is hardest to begin;But entered in a spacious court, they seeBoth plain, and pleasant to be walked in.'

Wednesday Morning.—My father happened to cast his eye across the table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing down his cards he said, 'Come, come, children, it's time to go to bed;' and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly, and murmured: 'Dear, good child, I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.' He shall not see me so; I have risen to-day with this resolution.

The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are 'equal to either fate,' going on or staying.

Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender chickens, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of comforts at a hotel, delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream. We wondered at all these domestic comforts, for we have not heard the flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady in spectacles gliding out of the room. We learned from her that she was the only womankind on the 'diggings.' Every thing is neatly done, so we bless our October star for exempting us from the tardy and careless service of chambermaids. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down the mountains, and roll off—like the shadows on our human life, dear Susan, that God's love does often lift from it.

The Glen-House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and shoulders above the other summits, having no peer. Madison and Monroe come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears (characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names (excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political associations, seem quite to suit these sublime, eternal mounts, but as time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson's head seems quite consistently modeled after an European pattern. It runs up to a sharp point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more beautiful than this—none can be grander.

My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day, dear Susan. Whenever he lays his hand upon my head or shoulder, it seems like a benediction; and Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she said: 'Will you let Sara come and pass the winter with you and father?' I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as I do on paper to you—a kind of confidential implement is a pen.

We have all been walking, in the lowering twilight, on the turnpike, which is making by a joint-stock company, up Mount Washington, The road, by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at sixty-three thousand dollars. The workmen, of course, are nearly all Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by macadamizing it, from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to the enterprise, the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions: 'When is the road to be finished?' 'And, faith, sir, it must be done before winter comes, down below.' The next replied: 'When the year comes round.' And another: 'Some time between now and niver.' 'Friend,' said I to one of them, 'have you such high mountains in Ireland?' 'Yis, indeed, that we have, and higher—five miles high!' Paddy is never over-crowed. 'Straight up?' I asked. 'By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.' 'In what part of Ireland is that mountain?' 'In county Cork.' 'Of course, in county Cork!' said my father, and we passed on through the débris of blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stones, till we got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern, silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson's. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of 'something different,' as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her general luck in life.

Thursday Morning, October 6th.—The weather still uncertain, but more beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains, in their October glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand—Mount Washington1 being higher than Mount Rhigi and Mount Rhigi is majestic even in the presence of Mont Blanc and of the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with brilliant smiles the dark, stern face of the mountains! Even when the sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden fringe, radiant in the sun; and wherever they are seemingly rippling adown the mountain's side, they make 'sunshine in a shady place.' The maples are flame-colored, and in masses so bright that you can scarcely look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the mountain-side. Then there is the infinite diversity of coloring—the soft brown, the shading off into pale yellow, and the delicate May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately-defining pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope, and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed out the foot and bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained horses; for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the lowlands as soon as the season is over. Besides, the summits are now powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice. And though I like the scramble, and the achievement of attaining a difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less savage views below it. Guided by my landlord, my eye had followed the path past two huge, out-standing rocks which look like Druidical monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and alone, could climb up those steeps. My imagination invested him with a strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it. There was something in his mind—perhaps in his destiny—akin to the severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my father: 'Come, Mary; are you glued to that glass?' he exclaimed; 'the rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.' And so we were—with Thompson, Jr., for our driver, one of our young countrymen who always make me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior, with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true republicanism of New-England!

My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson, to take advantage of our dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for conveying us thirty-three miles to the Mountain-Notch; but, on talking the matter over with our host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright, 'a good business' out of us; so, my father being relieved from the dread of imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the Glen Ellis Fall. We compromised, and gave up seeing the Crystal Fall, a half-mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual consolation bestowed on travelers on like occasions, of being told that the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, we hold all these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to the top and bottom of the Glen Ellis.

I have often tried to analyze the ever fresh delight of seeing a water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing, and, as you know, 'tout depend de la manière que le sang circule.'

I can not describe to you, my dear Susan, the enjoyment of this day's ride. As heart to heart, my father's serenity answered to my cheerfulness, and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain-sides into ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed, as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hailstones, came pelting in our faces as if the elements had turned boys and threw them in sport! What may not Nature be to us—play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator!

Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth's 'ladies of the wood'—and danced on the mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face, and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth 'scape, but quietly told us that 'three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry!' It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin's appetite.

This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable—would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty legends or traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the

'Forsaken, woful, solitary maid,In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,'

set on by the 'ramping beast;' and for the knight? why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and deliverer, whose 'allegiance and fast fealty' had bound him to my trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near Davis's, crossing the way, which we were told was called 'Nancy's Brook.' We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man's perjury and woman's trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and 'singing to him,' no doubt, 'when she his evening food did dress,' till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back; and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale.

The sun was set to us behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the 'Willey Slide,' and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the 'Mountain Notch.' Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice's, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest.

'Are you frightened?' said Alice; 'this is a lonely road; shall I hail the wagon?'

'Oh! no,' I replied.

'But,' she urged, 'this may be some fugitive from justice.'

'Nonsense, Alice; don't you see by his air that he is a gentleman?'

'No,' she saw nothing 'but that he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.'

I had seen more; I had seen, or my mind being prepossessed by one image, I had shaped the reality to the imagination, as ghost-seers do, and in the pedestrian had seen that form that henceforward is to me as if it had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns. It was a mere fancy. Alice—she is a cautious little woman—was continually looking back, from fear; and I—I may as well confess it—from hope; but we saw nothing more of the traveler. He was truly a fugitive from us—or, more probably, in spite of the gentlemanly graces my imagination had lent him, a collier returning to his shanty in the forest. The apparition had spoiled our twilight walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountains that rise like walls on either side of the road, and Alice hurried forward, so that we had no time to look for the cascades, and forms of animals, and profiles of men, that we had been forewarned we should see on the hill-sides. The stars were coming out, and the full moon—indicated by the floods of silver light it sent up from behind Mount Webster—when we passed through the portal of the 'Notch' and came upon the level area where the 'Crawford House' now stands.

Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair by a broad hearthstone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the low-country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The stranger was a fine, intelligent, genteel-looking person, who proved to be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume-House. He is a true lover of nature and explorer of nature's secrets, a geologist, botanist, etc., etc., and he most wisely comes up to the high places at all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and mind's eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology; and I am sure that after a study here he may go hence a better as well as a wiser man, and better able, by his communings here, to inform and mold the minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature's solitudes.

Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers information. He made for us, from memory, a pencil-sketch of the peaks to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreo-typed. An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate, are to be envied.

This house, at the Mountain Notch, is called the Crawford House. The old Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was burned, and its site is now marked by a few charred timbers. Old Crawford's memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on age, 'respect, and troops of friends.' His son—whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the middle ages—is driver, in the season, and sportsman in and out of it. He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his youth—some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and besides, I fancy, he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a brace of partridges; so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford's request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell nothing; the 'tongues in trees' were far more fluent than his. But even so stony a medium had power, afterward, to make my heart beat. I was standing near him at the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him (Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that 'fugitive' all night) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road last evening or this morning. 'No; there was few travelers any way in October.' He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: 'It's a pity folks don't know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart!' Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, the most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring with my eye the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to me. 'Oh!' said the man, 'I recollect—I did see a stranger on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my gun—he was drawing the mountains; a great many of the young folks try to do it, but they don't make much likeness.'

Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my father and Alice's thought following the direction of mine. I know this youth is not Carl Heiner, it is not even possible he should be; and yet, the resemblance that in my one glance I had fancied to perceive to him, and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested him with a power to make my cheeks burn, and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks, but I did not escape my sister's woman's eye.

'Mary, dear,' she whispered, when she joined me, 'you are not so strong as you think yourself.'

Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient; patience, you will say, implies a waiting for something to come; well, let it be so; can a spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?

The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunken to a mere rill, but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! a drive any where in these hills 'pays'—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the Casse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark even from our sportsman's eye, and—a far easier achievement—started the blood in my father's veins. The instinct to kill game is, I believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition. He sprang from the wagon, borrowed Crawford's gun, and reminding Alice and me so much of Mr. Pickwick, that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he should kill, not the partridge, but himself; but, luckily, he escaped unhurt—and so did the bird. Crawford secured two or three brace of them in the course of the morning's drive. I fear we shall relish them at breakfast, to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high latitudes? 'Oh!' he said, 'they had the neatest way of folding their legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.' They subsist on berries and birchen-buds—dainty fare, is it not?