WHITE MOUNTAINS.
“Knock! knock! knock!” W-e-l-l. “Thump! thump! thump!” Who’s there? What do you want? “Passengers for the White Mountains, Sir, time to get up,—stage ready.” Is it possible? three o’clock already? W-e-l-l, I’ll get up. Call the gentleman in the next room. Well, my friend, how are you, after your trip of yesterday to Mount Holyoke?—a little stiff in the knees and ancles, eh!—but come, the stage is at the door. Waiter, hold the light. How forlorn look the heavy muddy vehicle, and half-waked horses by the dim light of the stage lamps. That’s right, my good fellow; throw those carpet-bags in the inside. Shut the door. All ready. Driver, go ahead! “Aye, aye, sir.” Hey!—Tchk! tchk!—Crack! crack! crack! off we go. The steady clatter of the horses’ hoofs, the jingling of the harness, the occasional roll, as we pass over the boards of some bridge, and the intejectional whistle of the driver as he encourages them, are the only things that break the silence for the next hour. The morning light begins to dawn. Whom have we here? Only two fellow travellers. An honest, clean-looking countryman, snugly fixed in one corner, with his night-cap pulled over his eyes, and hismouth wide open, as if admiring the melody that his nose in bugle strain is enacting just above it; and opposite to him a gross fat man, of rubicund visage, his eyes ensconced in goggles. See! he nods—and nods—and nods, and now his head bobs forward into his neighbour’s lap. How foolishly he looks, as he awakes to consciousness. It is broad day-light. Let us get up with the driver on the outside, and enjoy our cigars and the scenery together.
Here we go, through the Connecticut River Valley, famous for its scenery and its legends—the region of bright eyes and strong arms—the land of quiltings and huskings—of house-raisings and militia trainings, and the home of savory roast pigs and stuffed turkeys, of fat geese, of apple sauce, and pumpkin pies; the Ultima Thule to the Yankee’s imagination. Now we are at Deerfield. While they are about our breakfast, we will run across the road, and see the old Williams Mansion. A hundred years since, it was surrounded by Indians, and its occupant, the clergyman, with his family, carried off captives to Canada. Here is the very hole cut in the front door by their tomahawks, and here the hacks of the hatchets. Through this hole they ran their rifles, and fired into the house, killing a man confined to his bed by sickness, and here is the ball lodging to this day in the side of the wall—and this occurred one hundred years ago! Say you, that the people that treasure up these legends, and retain these memorialsuntouched, have no poetry in their souls? But there goes the stageman’s horn! Our breakfast finished, we resume our places at the side of the good-natured driver, and on we roll. We pass Brattleboro’, snugly ensconced in its mountain eyrie, and Hanover, with its broad parade, its flourishing colleges, and its inhabitants that never die,—save from old age.
With teams of six and eight horses, we speed over hill, over dale, over mountain, over valley, ascending and descending the mountains in full run; our gallant horses almost with human instinct, guiding themselves. Snorting leaders, swerve not aside in your career—linch-pins, do your duty—traces and breeching, hold on toughly, or “happy men be our dole.” Hah! Wild Amonoosac, we greet thy indeed wild roar.—How it sweeps the fallen timber in its boiling eddies! The huge logs slide dancing onwards with the velocity of the canoes of the Indian; or caught by envious projection, or uplifting rock, form dams and cascades, till the increasing and cumbrous masses, gathering momentum, plunge forward, sweeping all before them,—and—but whist! Step into the shade of this tree—look into the dark pool beneath those gnarled roots—how beautifully the gold and purple colours glitter—how motionlessly still is the head—how slight and tremulous the movement of that fin—the wavy motion of the tail. A two pounder, as I am a Christian! Whist! whist! See that dragon-fly, gentlysailing o’er the surface—he rests a moment on it. Watch! the head slowly turns—the fins move decidedly—ay—now—one rapid whirl of the tail—an electric leap to the surface—Poor fly, thy history is written; and well for thee, thou greedy trout, that no barbed hook suspends thee in mid air—struggling in beauty, though in death, the prize of exulting angler. And thou, too, art there, savageMount Franconia, with thy fantastic and human outline! Old Man of the Mountain!—with what grim stoicism thou lookest down upon the busy miners, as with picks and powder-blast they rive the sullen mineral from thy vitals. Ay! watch thou by the lurid glare the sweating, half-naked forgemen, as they feed with thy forests the roaring furnaces. Watch the molten ore, slowly running in glittering streams, with fiery showers of scintillations into the dark earth-troughs below; while with ceaseless din, the ponderous trip-hammers, and clanking machinery, break the till now Sabbath stillness of thy dwelling place. But fare thee well, thou imperturbable old man; fare thee well, for now, we enter the dense continuous forest, through which the busy hand of man has with unwearied industry cut the avenue. How deliciously the aroma of the gigantic pines, mingles with the pure elastic air of the mountains. See the thick undergrowth; the dogwood with its snowy blossoms—the scarlet sumac—the waving green briar, profuse with delicate roses,—the crimsonraspberry, loaded with its fruit—the yellow sensitive plant—the dancing blue-bell; and, rising through the entangled mass of verdure and beauty, see the luxuriant wild grape, and clinging ivy, joyously climbing the patriarchs of the forest, encircling their trunks, and hanging their branches in graceful festoons and umbrageous bowers.—No human foot, save with the aid of pioneer, can penetrate its matted wildness—nought save those huge patriarchs rising above it as they grow old and die, and fall with crashing uproar, as into flowery sepulchre, intrude upon its solitude. Then, indeed, in heavy booming plunge and rush, they seem to wildly sing, like their painted children, their death song. But hark!—whence that wild and dissonant shriek, that rings upon the ear? Ah—yonder, erect and motionless, he sits upon the towering oak with haughty eye and talons of iron, screaming his call of warning to his partner, slowly circling in graceful curves high, high in the blue ether above him. Ay! proud bird, our nation’s emblem, would that thy wild scream could warn from us, the accursed spirit of Mammon, which, spreading like an incubus, blights and destroys with its mildew the virtues and energies of her sons.
But see, where, as the dense forest stretches onward, the casual spark dropped by the hand of the woodman, spreading into flame, and gathering in mighty volumes of fire, has swept onwards in its roaring, crackling, destroyingprogress, leaving nought behind it, save these grim and blackened skeletons, and dead plains of ashes. See what darkness and desolation, and apparent annihilation, extend around you—but yet, silently and quietly, ere long, shall the germ of life which can never die, rise from these ashes, and verdure and beauty reign again, as was their wont. Even so the solitary mourner, when death strikes down at his side his dearest ones, stands helplessly encircled by solitude and desolation; but soon all-pervading benevolence causes the green germ of the soul to rise from the ashes, and his heart again expands with tenderness and sympathy.
The scene of desolation is passed! and now, lest the Lord of fire should reign uncontrolled, lo! where the spirit of the whirlwind has swept in his wild tornado. Lo! far as your vision can command the circle—where, rushing from the mountain gorges his chariots have whirled along in their fierce career of destruction. In mid height, the lofty trees are snapped like pipe-stems, and prone like the field of grain laid by the hand of the reaper, huge trunks with the moss of centuries,—not here and there one solitary,—but for miles, the whole vast forest—prostrate, never again to rise.
But speed! speed! the mountain passes are before us! See—see their huge walls tower in chaotic wildness above us. Rocks on rocks—ledge on ledge—cliffon cliff—plunged upon each other in frantic disorder. See—
“See the giant snouted crags, ho! ho!How they snort, how they blow.”
“See the giant snouted crags, ho! ho!How they snort, how they blow.”
“See the giant snouted crags, ho! ho!How they snort, how they blow.”
“See the giant snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort, how they blow.”
See the huge rock ramparts shooting their wild peaks and jagged pinnacles upwards, piercing the very sky above us! their frowning and gashed sides trickling and discoloured with the corroding minerals in their bowels; the stunted pines and evergreens clinging like dwarf shrubs in their crevices. Take heed! beware you fall not. See the huge slides—they have swept whole torrents of rocks, of earth, in promiscuous destruction, from their summits, upon the valley below—the rivers filled, and turned from their courses, in their path,—the very forest itself—the loftiest trees torn up, their branches, their trunks, their upturned roots ground and intermixed with rock and earth, and splintered timber, swept on in wild, inextricable confusion—and here! where starting from their slumbers, the devoted family rushed naked and horror-stricken to meet it in mid career. Ay! hold on by the sides of the steep precipice—cling to the ledge as the wild wind rushes by in furious gust—a slip were your passport to eternity. Look down! How awful the precipice, thousands of feet below you—how the blood curdles and rushes back upon the heart, as you imagine the fatal plunge. Well might the Puritans of old, deem these ghastly deserts the abode and haunts of the evil one.
But, on—on—how toilsome the ascent.—That was a fearful blast; hold tightly the wild roots in thy grasp as it passes. Long since have we passed the region of vegetation: the dry and arid moss clinging to rock and stone, is alone around us. Ay! drink of that spring—but beware its icy coldness—nor winter, nor summer, alters its temperature. Behold, in the clefts and gorges below, the never-melting snow-wreaths. The flaming suns of summer pass over, and leave them undiminished. Courage! we climb, we climb. The witches of the Brocken ne’er had such wild chaos for their orgies. Courage, my friend! We ascend—we ascend—we reach the top—now panting—breathless—exhausted, we throw ourselves upon the extreme summit.
Gather your faculties—press hard your throbbing heart. Catch a view of the scene of grandeur around you, before the wild clouds, like dense volumes of steam, enclose us in their embrace, shutting it from our vision;—mountains—mountains—rolling off as far as eye can reach in untiring vastness—a huge sea of mountains held motionless in mid career. How sublime! how grand! what awful solitude! what chilling, stern, inexorable silence! It seems as if an expectant world were awaiting in palpitating stillness the visible advent of the Almighty—mountain and valley in expectant awe. Oh! man—strutting in thy little sphere, thinkest thou that adoration is confined alone to thy cushioned seats—thyaisles of marble; that for devotion, the Almighty looks to nought but thee? Why, look thou there!—beneath—around—millions—millions—millions of acres teeming with life, yet hushed in silence to thy ear—each grain the integer and composite of a world—the minutest portion, a study—a wonder in itself—lie before thee in awful adoration of their Almighty Founder. Well did the Seers of old go into the mountains to worship. Oh! my brother-man—thou that dost toil, and groan, and labour, in continual conflict with what appears to thee unrelenting fate—thou to whom the brow-sweat appears to bring nought but the bitter bread, and contumely, and shame;—thou on whom the Sysiphean rock of misfortune seems remorselessly to recoil—ascend thou hither. Here, on this mountain-peak, nor King, nor Emperor are thy superior. Here, thouarta man. Stand thou here; and while with thy faculties thou canst command, in instant comprehension, the scene sublime before thee, elevate thee in thy self-respect, and calmly, bravely throw thyself into the all-sheltering arms of Him, who watches with like benevolence and protection, the young bird in its grassy nest, and the majestic spheres, chiming eternal music in their circling courses!