The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

This, then, was what my young Jehu had meant. Where was I? I glanced out of the window. Nothing but sky, nothing but rocks; immensity and desolation. I disposed my ideas to hear my companion ask, “What is the news from the other world?”

VIII.

MOUNT WASHINGTON

The soldiers from the mountain Theches ran from rear to front, breaking their ranks, crowding tumultuously upon each other, laughing and shouting, “The sea! the sea!” – Xenophon’s Anabasis.

AFTER the repast we walked out, Private Doyle and I, upon the narrow platform behind the house. According to every appearance I had reached Ultima Thule.

For some moments – moments not to be forgotten – we stood there silent. Neither stirred. The scene was too tremendous to be grasped in an instant. A moment was needed to recover one’s moral equipoise, as well as for the unpractised eye to adjust itself to the vastness of the landscape, and to the multitude of objects, strange objects, everywhere confronting it. My own sensations were at first too vague for analysis, too tumultuous for expression. The flood choked itself.

All seemed chaos. On every side the great mountains fell away like mists of the morning, dispersing, receding to an endless distance, diminishing, growing more and more vague, and finally vanishing on a limitless horizon neither earth nor sky. Never before had such a spectacle offered itself to my gaze. The first idea was of standing on the threshold of another planet, and of looking down upon this world of ours outspread beneath; the second, of being face to face with eternity itself. No one ever felt exhilaration at first. The scene is too solemnizing.

But by degrees order came out of this chaos. The bewildering throng of mountains arranged itself in chains, clusters, or families. Hills drew apart, valleys opened, streams twinkled in the sun, towns and villages clung to the skirts of the mountains or dotted the rich meadows; but all was mysterious, all as yet unreal.

Comprehending at last that all New England was under my feet, I began to search out certain landmarks. But this investigation is fatiguing: besides, it conducts to nothing – absolutely nothing. Pointing to a scrap of blue haze in the west, my companion observed, “That is Mount Mansfield;” and I, mechanically, repeated, “Ah! that is Mount Mansfield.” It was nothing. Distance and Infinity have no more relation than Time and Eternity. It sufficed for me, God knows, to be admitted near the person of the great autocrat of New England, while under skies so fair and radiant he gave audience to his imposing and splendid retinue of mountains.

But still, independent of the will, the eye flitted from peak to peak, from summit to summit, making the slow circuit of this immense horizon, hovering at last over a band of white gleaming far away in the south-east like a luminous cloud, on whose surface objects like birds reposed. It was the sea, and the specks ships sailing on the main. With the aid of a telescope we could even tell what sails the vessels carried. In these few seconds the eye had put a girdle of six hundred miles about.[25 - Considering the pinnacle of Mount Washington as the centre of a circle of vision, the greatest distance I have been able to see with the naked eye, in nine ascensions, did not probably much exceed one hundred miles. This being half the diameter, the circumference would surpass six hundred miles. It is now considered settled that Katahdin, one hundred and sixty miles distant, is not visible from Mount Washington.]

I consider this first introduction to what the peak of Mount Washington looks down upon an epoch in any man’s life. I saw the whole noble company of mountains from highest to lowest. I saw the deep depressions through which the Connecticut, the Merrimac, the Saco, the Androscoggin, wind toward the lowlands. I saw the lakes which nurse the infant tributaries of those streams. I saw the great northern forests, the notched wall of the Green Mountains, the wide expanse of level land, flat and heavy like the ocean, and finally the ocean itself. And all this was mingled in one mighty scene.

The utmost that I can say of this view is that it is a marvel. You receive an impression of the illimitable such as no other natural spectacle – no, not even the sea – can give. Astonishment can go no farther. Nevertheless, the truth is that you are on too high a view-point for the most effective grasp of mountain scenery. This immense height renders near objects indistinct, obscures the more distant. Seldom, indeed, is the land seen, even under favoring conditions, except through a soft haze, which, you are surprised to notice, becomes more and more transparent as you descend. The eye explores this clair-obscur, and gradually discerns this or that object. It is true that you see to a great distance, but you do not distinguish anything clearly. This is the rule, derived from many observations, to which the crystal air of autumn and winter makes the rare and fortunate exception.

There is a more cogent reason why the view from Mount Washington is inferior to that from other and lower summits. Everything is below you, and, naturally, therefore, any picture of these mountains not showing the cloud-capped dome of the monarch, attended by his cortége of grand peaks – the central, dominating, perfecting group – must be essentially incomplete. Imagine Rome without St. Peter’s, or, to come nearer home, Boston without her State House! One word more: from this lofty height you lose the symmetrical relation of the lesser summits to the grand whole. Even these signal embodiments of heroic strength – the peaks of Jefferson, Adams, and Madison – so vigorously self-asserting that what they lose in stature they gain by a powerful individuality, even these suffer a partial eclipse; but the summits stretching to the southward are so dwarfed as to be divested of any character as typical mountain structures. What fascinates us is the “sublime chaos of trenchant crests, of peaks shooting upward;” and the charm of the view – such at least is the writer’s conviction – resides rather in the immediate surroundings than in the extent of the panorama, great as that unquestionably is.

One thing struck me with great force – the enormous mass of the mountain. The more you realize that the dependent peaks, stretching eight miles north, and as many south, are nothing but buttresses, the more this prodigious weight amazes. Two long spurs, divided by the valley of the Rocky Branch, also descend into the Saco Valley as far as Bartlett; and another, shorter, but of the same indestructible masonry, is traced between the valleys of the Ammonoosuc and of Israel’s River. In a word, as the valleys lie and the roads run, we must travel sixty or seventy miles around in order to make the circuit of Mount Washington at its base.

Even here one is not satisfied if he sees a stone ever so little above him.[26 - The highest point, formerly indicated by a cairn and a beacon, is now occupied by an observatory, built of planks, and, of course, commanding the whole horizon. It is desirable to examine this vast landscape in detail, or so much of it as the eye embraces at once, and no more.] The best posts for an outlook, after the signal station, are upon a point of rocks behind the old Tip-Top House, and from the end of the hotel platform, where the railway begins its terrifying descent. From all these situations the view was large and satisfying. From the first station one overlooks the southern summits; from the second, the northern. A movement of the head discloses, in turn, the ocean, the lakes and lowlands of Maine and New Hampshire, the broad highlands of Massachusetts, the fading forms of Monadnock and Wachusett, the highest peaks of Vermont and New York, and, finally, the great Canadian wilderness.

After all this, the eye dwells upon the hideous waste of rock blackened by ages of exposure, corroded with a green incrustation, like verd-antique, constituting the dome. It is at once mournful and appalling. Time has dealt the mountain some crushing blows, as we see by these ghastly ruins, bearing silent testimony to their own great age. It is necessary to step with care, for the rocks are sharp-edged. The green appearance is due to lichens which bespatter them. Greedy little spiders inhabit them. Truly this is a spot disinherited by Nature.

Noticing many boards scattered helter-skelter about the top and sides of the mountain, I drew my companion’s attention to them, and he explained that what I saw was the result of the great January gale, which had blown down the shed used as an engine-house, demolished every vestige of the walk leading from the hotel to the signal station, and distributed the fragments as if they had been straws far and wide, as I saw them.

The same gale had swept the coast from Hatteras to Canso with destructive fury. I begged Private Doyle to give me his recollections of it. We returned to the station, and he began as follows:

“At the time of the tornado I was sick, and my comrade, Sergeant M – , who is now absent on leave, had to do my turn as well as his own. ‘Uncle Sam,’ you know, keeps two of us here, for fear of accidents.”[27 - One poor fellow (Private Stevens) did die here in 1872. His comrade remained one day and two nights alone with the dead body before help could be summoned from below.]

“It surprised me to find you here alone,” I assented.

“This is the third day.” Then, resuming his narrative, “During the forenoon preceding the gale we observed nothing very unusual; but the clouds kept sinking and sinking, until, in the afternoon, the summit alone was above them. For miles around nothing could be seen but one vast ocean of frozen vapor, with peaks sticking out here and there, like icebergs floating in this ocean – all being cased in snow and ice. I cannot tell you how curious this was. Later in the day the density of the clouds became such that they reflected the colors of the spectrum: and that too was beautiful beyond description. It was about this time Sergeant M – came to where I was lying, and said, ‘There is going to be the devil to pay; so I guess I’ll make everything snug.’

“By nine in the evening the wind had increased to one hundred miles an hour, with heavy sleet, so that no observation could be safely made from without. At midnight the velocity of the storm was one hundred and twenty miles, and the exposed thermometer recorded 24° below zero. We could hardly get it above freezing inside the house. With the stove red, water froze within three feet of the fire; in fact, where you are now sitting.

“At this time the uproar outside was deafening. About one o’clock the wind rose to one hundred and fifty miles. It was now blowing a hurricane. That carpet (indicating the one in the room where we were) stood up a foot from the floor, like a sail. The wind, gathering up all the loose ice on top of the mountain, dashed it against the house in one continuous volley. I lay wondering how long we should stand this terrific pounding, when all at once there came a crash. M – shouted to me to get up; but I had tumbled out in a hurry on hearing the glass go. You see I was ready-dressed, to keep myself warm in bed.

“Our united efforts were hardly equal to closing the storm-shutters from the inside; but we succeeded, finally, though the lights were out, and we worked in the dark.” He rose in order to show me how the shutters, made of thick oak planks, were secured by a bar, and by strong wooden buttons screwed in the window-frame.

“We had scarcely done this,” resumed Doyle, “and were shivering over the fire, when a heavy gust of wind again burst open the shutters as easy as if they had never been fastened at all. We sprang to our feet. After a hard tussle we again secured the windows by nailing a cleat to the floor, against which we fixed one end of a board, using the other end as a lever. You understand?” I nodded. “Well, even then it was all we could do to force the shutters back into place. But we did it. We had to do it.

“The rest of the night was passed in momentary expectation that the building would be blown over into Tuckerman’s Ravine, and we with it. At four in the morning the wind registered one hundred and eighty-six miles. It had shifted then from east to north-east. From this time it steadily fell to ten miles at nine o’clock – as calm as a daisy. This was the heaviest blow ever experienced on the mountain.”

“Suppose this house had gone, and the hotel stood fast, could you have effected an entrance into the hotel?” I asked.

“No, indeed. We could not have faced the wind.”

“Not for a hundred feet, and in a matter of life and death?”

“In that gale? We should have been lifted clean off our feet and smashed upon the rocks like this bottle,” flinging one out at the door.

“So then for all those hours you expected from one moment to another to be swept into eternity?”

“We did what we could. Each of us wrapped himself up in blankets and quilts, tying these tightly around him with ropes, to which were attached bars of iron, so that if the house went by the board we might stand a chance – a slim one – of anchoring, somehow, somewhere.”

I tried to make him admit that he was afraid; but he would not. Only he forgot, he said, in the excitement of that terrible night, that he was ill, until the danger was over.

“We are going to have a blow,” observed Doyle, glancing at the barometer – “barometer falling, wind rising. Besides, that blue haze, creeping over the valley, is a pretty sure sign of a change of weather.” His prognostic was completely verified in the course of a few hours.

“Now,” said Doyle, rising, “I must go and feed my chick.”

We retraced our steps to the point of rocks overhanging the southern slope, where he stopped and began to scatter crumbs, I watching him curiously meanwhile. Pretty soon he went down on his hands and knees and peered underneath the rocks. “Ah!” he exclaimed, with vivacity, “there you are!”

“What is it?” I asked; “what is there?”

“My mouse. He is rather shy, and knows I am not alone,” he replied, chirruping to the animal with affectionate concern.

Brought to the mountain top in some barrel or box, the little stowaway had become domesticated, and would come at the call of his human playmate. The incident was trifling enough of itself, yet there was something touching in this companionship, something that sharply recalled the sense of loneliness I had myself experienced. In reality, the disparity between the man and the mouse seemed not greater than that between the mountain and the man.

While we were standing among the rocks the sun touched the western horizon. The heavens became obscured. All at once I saw an immense shadow striding across the valley below us. Slowly and majestically it ascended the Carter chain until it reached the highest summit. I could not repress an exclamation of surprise; but what was my astonishment to see this immense phantom, without pausing in its advance, lift itself into the upper air to an incredible height, and stand fixed and motionless high above all the surrounding mountains. It was the shadow of Mount Washington projected upon the dusky curtain of the sky. All the other peaks seemed to bow their heads by a sentiment of respect, while the actual and the spectre mountain exchanged majestic salutations. Then the vast gray pyramid retreated step by step into the thick shades. Night fell.

The expected storm which the observer had predicted did not fail to put in an appearance. By the time we reached the house the wind had risen to forty miles an hour, driving the clouds in an unbroken flight against the summit, from which they rebounded with rage equal to that displayed in their vindictive onset. The Great Gulf was like the crater of some mighty volcano on the eve of an eruption, vomiting forth volumes of thickening cloud and mist. It seemed the mustering-place of all the storm-legions of the Atlantic, steadily pouring forth from its black jaws, unfurling their ghostly standards as they advanced to storm the battlements of the mountain. Occasionally a break in the column disclosed the opposite peaks looming vast and black as midnight. Then the effect was indescribable. At one moment everything seemed resolving into its original elements; the next I was reminded of a gigantic mould, not from mortal hands, in which all these vast forms were slowly cooling. The moon shed a pale, wan light over this unearthly scene, in which creation and annihilation seemed confusedly struggling. The sublime drama of the Fourth Day, when light was striving with darkness for its allotted place in the universe, seemed enacting under my eyes.

The evening passed in comparative quiet, although the gale was now moving from east to west at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Rain rattled on the roof like shot. Now and then the building shuddered and creaked, like a good ship breasting the fury of the gale. Vivid flashes of lightning made the well-lighted room momentarily dark, and checked conversation as suddenly as if we had felt the electric shock. Under such novel conditions, with strange noises all about him, one does not feel quite at ease. Nevertheless the kettle sung on the stove, the telegraph instrument ticked on the table. We had Fabyan’s, Littleton, and White River Junction within call. We had plenty of books, the station being well furnished from voluntary gifts of the considerate-benevolent. At nine Doyle went out, but immediately returned and said he had something to show me. I followed him out to the platform behind the house. A forest fire had been seen all day in the direction of Fabyan’s, but at night it looked like a burning lake sunk in depths of infernal blackness. I had never seen anything so nearly realizing my idea of hell. No other object was visible – only this red glare as of a sun in partial eclipse shining at the bottom of an immense hole. We watched it a few minutes and then went in. I attempted to be cheerful, but how was one to rise above such surroundings? Alternately the storm roared and whined for admittance. Worn out with the tension, physical and moral, of this day, I crept into bed and tried to shut the storm out. The poor exile in the next room murmured to himself, “Ah, this horrible solitude!”

The next morning, while looking down from this eagle’s nest upon the southern peaks to where the bridle path could be distinctly traced across the plateau, and still winding on around the peaked crest of Monroe, I was seized with a longing to explore the route which on a former occasion proved so difficult, but to-day presenting apparently nothing more serious than a fatiguing scramble up and down the cone. Accordingly, taking leave of my companion, I began to feel my way down that cataract of granite, fallen, it would seem, from the skies.[28 - It was for a long time believed that the summit of Mount Washington bore no marks of the great Glacial Period, which the lamented Agassiz was the first to present in his great work on the glaciers of the Alps. Such was the opinion of Dr. C. T. Jackson, State Geologist of New Hampshire. It is now announced that Professor C. H. Hitchcock has detected the presence of transported bowlders not identical with the rocks in place.]

In proportion as I descended, the mountain ridge below regained, little by little, its actual character. Except where patches of snow mottled it with white, it displayed one uniform and universal tinge of faded orange where the soft sunshine fell full upon it, toned into rusty brown when overshadowed, gradually deepening to an intense blue-black in the ravines. But so insignificant did the summits look, when far below, that I hardly recognized them for the same I had seen from Fabyan’s and had traversed from Crawford’s. Monroe, the nearest, has, however, a most striking resemblance to an enormous petrified wave on the eve of dashing itself down into the valley. The lower you descend the stronger this impression becomes; but from the summit of Mount Washington this peak is so belittled that the mountains seemed saying to each other, “Good-morning, Mole-hill!” “Good-morning, Big Bully!”

When I reached the stone-corral, the ground, if ground it can be called, descended less abruptly, over successive stony terraces, to a comparative level, haired over with a coarse, wiry, and tangled grass, strewed with bowlders, and inundated along its upper margin by torrents of stones. Upon closer inspection these stones arranged themselves in irregular semicircular ridges. In the eyes of the botanist and entomologist this seemingly arid region is more attractive than the most beautiful gardens of the valley. Among these grasses and these stones lie hid the beautiful Alpine flowers of which no species exist in the lowlands. Only the arbutus, which puts forth its pink-and-white flowers earliest of all, and is warmed into life by the snows, at all resembles them in its habits. Over this grassy plain the wind swept continually and roughly; but on putting the grass aside with the hand, the tiny blossoms greet you with a smile of bewitching sweetness.

These areas, extending between and sometimes surrounding the high peaks, or even approaching their summits, are the “lawns” of the botanist, and his most interesting field of research. Within its scope about fifty species of strictly Alpine plants vegetate. As we ascend the mountain, after the dwarf trees come the Lapland rhododendron, Labrador tea, dwarf birch, and Alpine willows, which, in turn, give place to the Greenland sandwort, diapensia, cassiope, and other plants, with arctic rushes, sedges, and lichens, which flourish on the very summit.

To the left, this plain, on which the grass mournfully rustled, sloped gently for, I should guess, half a mile, and then rolled heavily off, over a grass-grown rim, into Tuckerman’s Ravine. In this direction the Carter Mountains appeared. Beyond, stretching away out of the plain, extended the long Boott’s Spur, over which the Davis path formerly ascended from the valley of the Saco, but which is now, from long disuse, traced with difficulty. Between this headland and Monroe opened the valley of Mount Washington River, the old Dry River of the carbuncle hunters, which the eye followed to its junction with the Saco, beyond which the precipices of Frankenstein glistened in the sun, like a corselet of steel. Oakes’s Gulf cuts deeply into the head of the gorge. The plain, the ravine, the spur, and the gulf transmit the names of those indefatigable botanists, Bigelow, Tuckerman, Boott, and Oakes.

On the other side of the ridge – for of course this plain has its ridge – the ground was more broken in its rapid descent toward the Ammonoosuc Valley, into which I looked over the right shoulder of Monroe.

But what a sight for the rock-wearied eye was the little Lake of the Clouds, cuddled close to the hairy breast of this mountain! On the instant the prevailing gloom was lighted as if by magic by this dainty nursling of the clouds, which seemed innocently smiling in the face of the hideous mountain. And the stooping monster seemed to regard the little waif, lying there in its rocky cradle, with astonishment, and to forego his first impulse to strangle it where it lay. Lion and lamb were lying down together.

Casting an eye upward, and finding the houses on the summit were hidden by the retreating curvature of the cone, I saw, with chagrin, light mists scudding over my head. It was a notice to hasten my movements idle to disregard here. Crossing as rapidly as possible Bigelow’s Lawn – the half-mile of grass ground referred to, where I sunk ankle-deep in moss, or stumbled twenty times in as many rods over concealed stones – I skirted the head of the chasm for some distance. But from above the ravine does not make a startling impression. I, however, discovered, lodged underneath its walls, a bank of snow. All around I heard water gurgling under my feet in rock-worn channels while making its way tranquilly to the brow of the ravine. These little underground runlets are the same that glide over the head-wall, and are the head tributaries of the Ellis.[29 - In going to and returning from the ravine, I must have walked over the very spot which has since derived a tragical interest from the discovery, in July, 1880, of a human skeleton among the rocks. Three students, who had climbed up through the ravine on the way to the summit, stumbled upon the remains. Some fragments of clothing remained, and in a pocket were articles identifying the lost man as Harry W. Hunter, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. This was the same person whom I had seen placarded as missing, in 1875, and who is referred to in the chapter on the ascent from Crawford’s. A cairn and tablet, similar to those erected on the spot where Miss Bourne perished, had already been placed here when I last visited the locality, where the remains had so long lain undiscovered in their solitary tomb. An inscription upon the tablet gives the following details: “Henry W. Hunter, aged twenty-two years, perished in a storm, September 3d, 1874, while walking from the Willey House to the summit. Remains found July 14th, 1880, by a party of Amherst students.” The place is conspicuous from the plain, and is between the Crawford Path and Tuckerman’s. By going a few rods to the left, the Summit House, one mile distant, is in full view. This makes the third person known to have perished on or near the summit of Mount Washington. Young Hunter died without a witness to the agony of his last moments. No search was made until nearly a year had elapsed. It proved ineffectual, and was abandoned. Thus, strangely and by chance, was brought to light the fact that he sunk exhausted and lifeless at the foot of the cone itself. I can fully appreciate the nature of the situation in which this too adventurous but truly unfortunate climber was placed.]