The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery

It was still early when I descended the carriage-road on my way to Mount Adams. The usual way is to keep the railway as far as the old Gulf Tank, near which is a house of refuge, provided with a cooking-stove, fuel, and beds. I continued, however, to coast the upper crags of the Great Gulf, until compelled to make directly for the southern peak of Mount Clay. The view from this col is imposing, embracing at once, and without turning the head, all the southern summits of the chain. Here I was joined by two travellers fresh from Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.

Each choosing a route for himself, we pushed on to the high summit of Clay, from which we looked down into the deep gap dividing this mountain from Jefferson. Arrived there, we resolutely attacked the eastern slopes of this fine peak, whose notched summit rose more than seven hundred and fifty feet above our heads. Patches of Alpine grasses, of reindeer-moss, interspersed with irregular ridges of stones, extended quite up to the summit, which was a mere elongated stone-heap crowning the apex of its cone. Those undulating masses encircling its bulk, half hid among the grass, were like an immense python crushing the mountain in its deadly folds. We picked our way carefully among this chaotic débris, which the Swiss aptly call “cemeteries of the devil,” tripping now and then in the long, wiry grass, or burying our feet among the hummocks of dry moss, which were so many impediments to rapid progress. This appearance and this experience were common to the whole route.

At each summit we threw ourselves upon the ground, to feast upon the landscape while regaining breath. Each halt developed more and more the grand and stupendous mass of Washington receding from the depths of the Great Gulf, along whose edge the carriage-road serpentined and finally disappeared. We saw, a little softened by distance, the horribly mutilated crags of the head wall stripped bare of all verdure, presenting on its knobbed agglomerates of tempest-gnawed granite a thousand eye-catching points and detaining as many shadows. Nothing – not even the glittering leagues of mountains and valleys shooting or slumbering above, beneath – so riveted the attention as this apparently bottomless pit of the five mountains. It was a continued wonder. It drew us by a strange magnetism to its dizzy brink, chained us there, and then abandoned us to a physical and moral vertigo, in which the power of critical investigation was lost. An invisible force seemed always dragging us toward it. Whence comes this horrible, this uncontrollable desire to throw ourselves in?

Out of the death-like torpor which eternally shrouds the ravine the smiling valley seems escaping. The crystal air of the heights grows thick in its depths. Beasts and birds of prey haunt its gloomy solitudes. An immense grave seems yawning to receive the mountains. The aged mountains seem standing with one foot in the grave.

This gulf makes an impression altogether different from the others. It is an immense ravine. Each of the five mountains pushes down into it massive buttresses of granite, forming lesser ravines between of considerable extent. Through these streams trickle down from invisible sources. But these buttresses, which fall lightly and gracefully as folds of velvet from summit to base of the highest mountains, these ravines, are hardly noticed. The insatiable maw of the gulf swallows them as easily as an anaconda a rabbit. In immensity, which you do not easily grasp, in grandeur, which you do not know how to measure, this has no partakers here. Even the great Carter Mountain, rising from the Peabody Valley, seems no more than a stone rolled away from the entrance of this enormous sepulchre.

Our first difficulties were encountered upon the reverse of Mount Jefferson, from whose side rocky spurs detached themselves, and, jutting out from the side of the mountain, formed an irregular line of cliffs of varying height, in the way we had selected for the descent. But these were no great affair. We now had the Ravine of the Castles upon our left, the stately pyramid of Adams in front, and, beneath, the deep hollow between this mountain and the one we were descending. We had the little hamlet of East Jefferson at the mouth of the ravine, and that crowd of peaks, tightly wedged between the waters of the Connecticut and the Androscoggin, looming above it.

A deviation to the left enabled us to approach the Castellated Ridge, which is, beyond dispute, the most extraordinary rock-formation the whole extent of the range can show. As it is then fully before you, it is seen to much better advantage when approached from Mount Adams. I do not know who gave it this name, but none could be more felicitous or expressive. It is a sloping ridge of red-brown granite, broken at its summit into a long line of picturesque towers and battlements, rising threateningly over an escarpment of débris. Such an illusion is too rarely encountered to be easily forgotten. It is hardly possible to doubt you are really looking at an antique ruin. One would like to wander among these pre-Adamite fortifications, which curiously remind him of the old Spanish fortresses among the Pyrenees. From the opposite side of the ravine – for I had not the time requisite for a closer examination – the rock composing the most elevated portion of the ridge appears to have been split perpendicularly down, probably by frost, allowing these broken columns and shafts to stand erect upon the verge of the abyss. In the warm afternoon light, when the shadows fall, it is hardly possible to conceive a finer picture of a crumbling but still formidable mountain fortress. Bastions and turrets stand boldly out. Each broken shaft sends a long shadow streaming down into the ravine, whose high and deeply-furrowed sides are thus beautifully striped with dusk-purple, while the sunlit parts retain a greenish-gray.

At the foot of Jefferson we found, concealed among rushes, a spring, which refreshed us like wells of the desert the parched and fainting Arab. From here two routes offered themselves. One was by keeping the curved ridge, rising gradually to a subordinate peak (Samuel Adams),[44 - Samuel Adams at the feet of John Adams is not the exact order that we have been accustomed to seeing these men. Better leave Samuel Adams where he stands in history – alone.] and to the foot of the summit itself; a second was by crossing the ground sloping downward from this ridge into the Great Gulf. We chose the latter, notwithstanding the dwarf-spruce, advancing well up to the foot of the ridge, promised a warm reception.

At last, after sustaining a vigorous tussle with the scrub-firs, and stopping to unearth a brook whose waters purred underneath stones, I stood at the foot of the pointed shaft I had so often seen wedged into the sky. Five hundred feet or more of the apex of this pyramid is apparently formed of broken rocks, dropped one by one into place. Nothing like a ledge or a cliff is to be seen: only these ponderous, sharp-edged masses of cold gray stone, lifted one above another to the tapering point. Up this mutilated pyramid we began a slow advance. It was necessary to carefully choose one step before taking another, in order to avoid plunging into the deep crevasses traversing the peak in every direction. At last I placed my foot upon the topmost crag.

No one can help regarding this peak with the open admiration which is its due. You conceive that every mountain ought to have a pinnacle. Well, here it is. We could easily have stood astride the culminating point. But how came these rocks here? and what was the primitive structure, if these fragments we see are its relics? One hardly believes that an ice-raft could have first transported and then deposited such misshapen masses in their present symmetrical form. Still less does he admit that the original shaft, crushed in a thousand pieces by the glacier itself, fell with such grace as to rise again, as he now sees it, from its own ruins. If, again, it proceeds from the eternal hammering of King Frost, what was the antique edifice that first rose so proudly above the frozen seas of the great primeval void? But to science the things which belong to science. We have a book describing heaven, but not one that resolves the problems of earth. The “Veni, vidi, vici,” of the Book of Genesis leaves us at the beginning. We are still staring, still questioning, still vacillating between this theory and that hypothesis.[45 - It is only forty years since Agassiz advanced his now generally adopted theory of the Glacial Period. The Indians believed that the world was originally covered with water, and that their god created the dry land from a grain of sand.]

We had from the summit an inspiring though not an extensive view. A bank of dun-colored smoke smirched the fair western sky as high as the summits of the Green Mountains. At fifty miles mountains and valleys melted confusedly into each other. Water emitted only a dull glimmer. Here a peak and there a summit surveyed us from afar. All else was intangible; almost imaginary. At twenty-five miles the land, resuming its ordinary appearance, was bathed in the soft brilliance caused by the sun shining through an atmosphere only half transparent.

Upon this obscure mass we traced once more the well-known objects environing the great mountain. To the south Mount Washington divided the landscape in two. For some time we stood admiring its magnificent torso, its amplitude of rock-land, its easy preponderance over every other summit. Again we followed the road down the great north-east spur. Once more we caught the white specks which denote the line of the railway. We plunged our eyes down into the Great Gulf, and lifted them to the shattered protuberances of Clay, which seemed to mark the route where the glacier crushed and ground its way through the very centre of the chain. A second time we descended Jefferson to the deep dip, opening like a trough between two enormous sea-waves, where we first saw the little Storm Lake glistening. Following now the long, rocky ridge, rolling downward toward the hamlets of Jefferson and Randolph, the mountains yawned wide at our feet. We were looking over into King’s Ravine – to its very bottom. We peered curiously into its remotest depths, traced the difficult and breathless ascent through the remarkable natural gateway at its head out upon a second ridge, on which a little pond (Star Lake) lies hid. We then crossed the gap communicating with Mount Madison, whose summit, last and lowest of the great northern peaks, dominates the Androscoggin Valley with undisputed sway. To-day it made on us scarcely an impression. Its peak, which from the valley holds a rough similitude with that of Adams, is dwarfed here. You look down upon it.

More applicable to Adams than to any other, for our eyes grow dazzled with the glitter and sparkle of countless mica-flakes incrusting the hard granite with clear brilliancy as from the facets of a diamond; more applicable, again, from the stern, unconquerable attitude of the great gray shaft itself, lifted in such conscious pride beyond the confines of the vast ethereal vault of blue – a tower of darkness invading the bright realms of light; a defiance flung by earth in the face of high heaven – is the magnificent description of the Matterhorn from the pen of Ruskin:

“If one of these little flakes of mica-sand, hurried in tremulous spangling along the bottom of the ancient river, too light to sink, too faint to float, almost too small for sight, could have had a mind given to it as it was at last borne down with its kindred dust into the abysses of the stream, and laid (would it not have thought?) for a hopeless eternity in the dark ooze, the most despised, forgotten, and feeble of all earth’s atoms; incapable of any use or change; not fit, down there in the diluvial darkness, so much as to help an earth-wasp to build its nest, or feed the first fibre of a lichen – what would it have thought had it been told that one day, knitted into a strength as of imperishable iron, rustless by the air, infusible by the flame, out of the substance of it, with its fellows, the axe of God should hew that Alpine tower; – that against it– poor, helpless mica-flake! – the snowy hills should lie bowed like flocks of sheep, and the kingdoms of the earth fade away in unregarded blue; and around it – weak, wave-drifted mica-flake! – the great war of the firmament should burst in thunder, and yet stir it not; and the fiery arrows and angry meteors of the night fall blunted back from it into the air; and all the stars in the clear heaven should light, one by one, as they rose, new cressets upon the points of snow that fringed its abiding-place on the imperishable spire!”

Myself and my companions set out on our return to the Summit House early in the afternoon, choosing this time the ridge in preference to the scrubby slope. From this we turned away, at the end of half an hour, by an obscure path leading to a boggy pool, sunk in a mossy hollow underneath it, crossed the area of scattered bowlders, strewn all around like the relics of a petrified tempest, and, filling our cups at the spring, drank to Mount Adams, the paragon of mountain peaks.

As we again approached the brow of Mount Washington the sun resembled a red-hot globe of iron flying through the west and spreading a conflagration through the heavens. Again the colossal shadow of the mountain began its stately ascension in the east. One moment the burning eye of the great luminary interrogated this phantom, sprung from the loins of the hoary peak. Then it dropped heavily down behind the Green Mountains, as it has done for thousands of years, the landscape fading, fading into one vast, shadowy abyss, out of which arose the star-lit dome of the august summit.

TOURIST’S APPENDIX. PREPARED FOR “THE HEART OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.”

GEOGRAPHY. – The White Mountains are in the northern central part of the State of New Hampshire. They occupy the whole area of the State between Maine and Vermont, and between Lake Winnipiseogee and the head-streams of the Connecticut and Androscoggin rivers.

Two principal chains, having a general direction from south-west to north-east, constitute this great water-shed of New England. These are the Franconia and the White Mountains proper, sometimes called the “Presidential Range.”

Grouped on all sides of the higher summits are a great number of inferior ridges, among which, as in the Sandwich Range, rise some very fine peaks, widely extending the mountainous area, and diversifying it with numerous valleys, lakes, and streams.

Two principal rivers, the Saco and Merrimack, flowing from these two chief clusters, form the two great valleys of the White Mountain system; and by these valleys the railways enter the mountains from the seaboard. Lake Winnipiseogee, which washes the southern foot of the mountains, is also a thoroughfare, as are the valleys of the Connecticut and Androscoggin rivers.

DISTANCES. – It is 430 miles from Philadelphia to Fabyan’s; 340 from New York, via Springfield; 190 from Montreal, via Newport; 208 via Groveton; 169 from Boston, via North Conway (Eastern R.R.); 208 via Concord (B., C., & M. R.R.); 91 from Portland, via North Conway (P. & O. R.R.); 91 from Portland to Gorham (G. T. R.); 199 from Boston to Gorham, via Eastern and Grand Trunk roads; and 206 via Boston and Maine and Grand Trunk roads.

ROUTES. – Procure, before starting, the official time-tables of the railroads running to the mountains or making direct connection with them, by application to local agents, by writing to the ticket-agents of the roads, or by consulting a railway guide-book. The roads reaching the mountains are —

From Washington: The Pennsylvania, and New York & New England.

From Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania, and New York & New England.

From Montreal: The Grand Trunk, and The South-eastern.

From Quebec: The Grand Trunk Railway.

From Saratoga: The Delaware & Hudson Canal Co.

From New York: New York, New Haven, & Hartford (all rail via Springfield, White River Junction, and Wells River to Fabyan’s; or all rail via Springfield, Worcester, Nashua, and Concord, N. H.; or all rail via “Shore Line,” Boston & Albany, or New York & New England roads to Boston); or by Fall River, Norwich, or Stonington “Sound Lines” to Boston; thence by either of the following railroads:

From Boston: Eastern R.R., via Beverly (18 miles, branch to Cape Ann); Hampton (46 miles, Boar’s Head and Rye Beaches); Portsmouth (56 miles, Newcastle and Isles of Shoals and York Beach); Kittery (57 miles); Wolfborough Junction (98 miles, branch to Lake Winnipiseogee); North Conway (138 miles; connects with Portland and Ogdensburg); Intervale (139 miles); Glen Station (144 miles, for Jackson and Glen House); Crawford’s (165 miles); Fabyan’s (169 miles; connects with B., C., & M. for Summit of Mount Washington, Bethlehem, Profile House, and Jefferson; or by same route to Portland, thence by P. & O. R.R. to North Conway, or Grand Trunk Railway to Gorham).

Boston, Lowell & Concord, and Boston, Concord & Montreal Railroads, via Lowell (26 miles); Nashua, Manchester, Concord (75 miles); Plymouth (123 miles); Woodsville (166 miles, Wells River); Littleton (185 miles, for Sugar Hill); Wing Road (192 miles, branch to Jefferson); Bethlehem (196 miles, branch road to Profile House, also to “Maplewood,” and Bethlehem Street); Twin Mountain House, Fabyan’s (208 miles, branch to Summit of Mount Washington, 217 miles); connects at Fabyan’s with P. & O. and Eastern roads for North Conway, Portland, and Boston.

Boston & Maine R.R. via Lawrence (26 miles); Haverhill, Exeter (50 miles); Dover (68 miles); Rochester (78 miles); Alton Bay (96 miles), connecting with steamer for Wolfborough and Centre Harbor, on Lake Winnipiseogee; or by the same road to Portland, thence by P. & O. to North Conway and Fabyan’s, or Grand Trunk to Gorham and Glen House.

From Portland: Portland & Ogdensburg R.R. via Sebago Lake (17 miles); Fryeburg (49 miles); Conway Centre, North Conway (60 miles); Glen Station (66 miles, Jackson and Glen House); Bartlett (72 miles); Crawford’s (87 miles); Fabyan’s (91 miles; connects with B., C., & M. R.R. for Summit of Mount Washington, Bethlehem, Profile House, Sugar Hill, Jefferson, etc.).

Grand Trunk Railway: Danville Junction (27 miles); Bethel (70 miles); Shelburne (86 miles); Gorham (91 miles, for Glen House).

A good way to do the mountains by rail is to buy an excursion-ticket over the route entering on the west, and, passing through, leave them by the roads on the east side via Boston or Portland, or vice versa. At Fabyan’s, where the two great routes meet, the traveller coming from either direction may pursue his journey without delay. From Boston to Boston, Portland to Portland, there is continuous rail without going twice over the same line.

Lake Winnipiseogee.– At Alton Bay, Wolfborough, and Weirs steamer is taken for Centre Harbor, at the head of the lake. Here the traveller may either take the daily stages for West Ossipee (E. R.R.) or steamer to Weirs (B., C., & M.), and thus be again on the direct rail routes.

HOW TO CHOOSE A LOCATION. – Do you wish a quiet retreat, off the travelled routes, where you may have rest and seclusion, or do you desire to fix yourself in a position favorable to exploring the whole mountain region?

In either case consult (1) some friend who has visited the mountains; (2), consult the maps in this volume; (3), consult the landlord in any place you may fancy for a limited or a lengthened residence; (4), apply to the agents of the Eastern, Portland, & Ogdensburg, Boston, Concord, & Montreal, Boston & Maine, or Grand Trunk Railways, for books or folders containing a list of the mountain hotels reached by their lines, and the charge for board by the day and week. (The Eastern, and B., C., & M. print revised lists every year, for gratuitous distribution.)

Wolfborough, Weirs, Centre Harbor, and Sandwich (all on or near Lake Winnipiseogee); Blair’s, Sanborn’s, Campton Village, Thornton, and Woodstock, in the Pemigewasset Valley; Tamworth, Conway Corner, Fryeburg, the Intervale (North Conway), Jackson, the Glen House, Bethel (Me.), Shelburne, Randolph, East Jefferson, Jefferson Hill, Lancaster, Littleton, Franconia, Sugar Hill, Haverhill, and Newbury (Vt.) – all come within the category first named; while the second want will be supplied at such points as North Conway, Crawford’s, Fabyan’s, Twin Mountain House, Bethlehem, and the Profile House. North Conway and Bethlehem are the keys to the whole mountain region. Fabyan’s and the Glen House are the proper points from which to ascend Mount Washington.

To aid in locating these places on the map, refer constantly to the Index at the end of the volume.

Leaving Boston or Portland in the morning, any of the points named may be reached in from four to eight hours.

HINTS FOR TOURISTS. – Select your destination, if possible, in advance; and if you require apartments, telegraph to the hotel where you mean to stop, giving the number of persons in your party, thus avoiding the disappointment of arriving, at the end of a long journey, at an over-crowded hotel.

Should you fix upon a particular locality for a long or short stay, write to one (or more) of the landlords for terms, etc.; and if his house is off the line of railway, inform him of the day and train you mean to take, so that he may meet you with a carriage at the nearest station. But if you do not go upon the day named, remember to notify the landlord.

Always take some warm woollen clothing (inside and outside) for mountain ascensions. It is unsafe to be without it in any season, as the nights are usually cool even in midsummer.

From the middle of June to the middle of October is the season of mountain travel. The best views are obtained in June, September, and October. From the middle of September to the middle of October the air is pure and invigorating, the mountain forests are then in a blaze of autumnal splendor, the cascades are finer, and out-of-door jaunts are less fatiguing than in July and August.

Should you wish merely to make a rapid tour of the mountain region, it will be best so to arrange your route before starting that the first day will bring you where there is something to be seen, to a comfortable hotel, and from which your journey may be continued with an economy of time and money.

The three journeys described in this volume will enable you to see all that is most desirable to be seen; but the excellent facilities for traversing the mountains render it immaterial whether these routes are precisely followed, taken in their reverse order, or adopted as a general plan, with such modifications as the tourist’s time or inclination may suggest.

Upon arriving at his destination the traveller naturally desires to use his time to the best advantage possible. But he is ignorant how to do this. “What shall I do?” “Where shall I go?” are the two questions that confront him. Let us suppose him arrived, first, at North Conway.

As he stands gazing up the Saco Valley, Moat Mountain is on his left, Kearsarge at his right, and Mount Washington in front. (Refer to the Chapter and Index articles on North Conway.) The high cliffs on the side of Moat are called the Ledges. This glorious view may be improved by going a mile up the railroad, or highway, to the Intervale. The Ledges contain the local celebrities. Taking a carriage, or walking, one may visit them in an afternoon, seeing in turn Echo Lake, the Devil’s Den, the Cathedral, and Diana’s Baths. The picturesque bits of river, meadow, and mountain seen going and returning will make the way seem short, and are certain to detain the artistic traveller. Artists’ Falls, on the opposite side of the valley, will repay a visit, if the stream is in good condition. Artists’ Brook, on which these falls are, runs from the hills east of the village. A carriage-road leads to the Artists’ Falls House, from which a short walk brings one to the falls. This excursion will require not more than two hours. Then there are the drives to Kearsarge village, under the mountain, and back by the Intervale; to Jackson, over Thorn Hill, and back by Goodrich Falls (three to four hours each); to Bartlett Bowlder, by the west, and back by the east side of the valley; to Fryeburg and Mount Chocorua – the last two requiring each half a day at least. The ascent of Kearsarge (from Kearsarge village) or of the Moats (from Diana’s Baths) each demands a day to itself. But by starting early in the morning a good climber may ascend and descend Kearsarge, getting back to the village by two o’clock in the afternoon.

At the Intervale he can easily repeat all these experiences, as this is a suburb of North Conway. Let him take his first stroll over the meadows to the river, or among the grand old pines in the forest near the railway station, while preparing for more extended excursions.