THE HEART
OF THE
WHITE MOUNTAINS
THEIR LEGEND AND SCENERY
BY
SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE
AUTHOR OF “NOOKS AND CORNERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST” “CAPTAIN NELSON” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
W. HAMILTON GIBSON
“Eyes loose: thoughts close”
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE
1882
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All rights reserved.
To JOHN G. WHITTIER:
An illustrious and venerated bard, who shares with you the love and honor of his countrymen, tells us that the poets are the best travelling companions. Like Orlando in the forest of Arden, they “hang odes on hawthorns and elegies on thistles.”
In the spirit of that delightful companionship, so graciously announced, it is to you, who have kindled on our aged summits
The consecration and the poet’s dream.”
that this volume is affectionately dedicated by
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
THE very flattering reception which the sumptuous holiday edition of “The Heart of the White Mountains” received on its début has decided the Messrs. Harper to re-issue it in a more convenient and less expensive form, with the addition of a Tourist’s Appendix, and an Index farther adapting it for the use of actual travellers. While all the original features remain intact, these additions serve to render the references in the text intelligible to the uninstructed reader, and at the same time help to make a practical working manual. One or two new maps contribute to the same end.
I take the opportunity thus afforded me to say that, when “The Heart of the White Mountains” was originally prepared, I hoped it might go into the hands of those who, making the journey for the first time, feel the need of something different from the conventional guide-book of the day, and for whom it would also be, during the hours of travel or of leisure among the mountains, to some extent an entertaining as well as a useful companion. So far as author and publisher are concerned, that purpose is now realized.
Finally, I wrote the book because I could not help it.
Samuel Adams Drake.
Melrose, January, 1882.
GENERAL CONTENTS.
FIRST JOURNEY. PAGE I. My Travelling Companions 1 II. Incomparable Winnipiseogee: Voyage from Wolfborough to Centre Harbor.—The Indians.—Centre Harbor.—Legendary.—Ascent of Red Hill.—Sunset on the Lake 8 III. Chocorua: Stage Journey to Tamworth.—Scramble for Places.—Valley of the Bear Camp.—Legend of Chocorua.—Sandwich Mountains.—Chocorua Lake.—Ascent of Mount Chocorua 18 IV. Lovewell: Fryeburg.—Lovewell’s Fight.—Desperate Encounter with the Pigwackets.—Death of Paugus 33 V. North Conway: The Antechamber of the Mountains.—White Horse Ledge.—Fording the Saco.—Indian Custom.—Echo Lake.—The Cathedral.—Diana’s Baths.—Artists’ Falls.—The Moats.—Winter Ascent of Mount Kearsarge 39 VI. From Kearsarge to Carrigain: Conway Intervales.—Bartlett Bowlder.—Singular Homicide.—Bartlett.—A Lost Village.—Ascent of Mount Carrigain.—A Shaggy Wilderness 55 VII. Valley of the Saco: Autumnal Foliage.—The Story of Nancy.—Doctor Bemis.—Abel Crawford, the Veteran Guide.—Ethan A. Crawford.—The Mount Crawford Glen.—Giant’s Stairs.—Frankenstein Cliff.—Superb View of Mount Washington.—Mount Willey 66 VIII. Through the Notch: Great Notch of the White Mountains.—The Willey House, and Slide of 1826.—“Colonizing” Voters.—Mount Willard.—Mount Webster, and its Cascades.—GateIllustrations.
These Illustrations, excepting those marked *, were designed by W. Hamilton Gibson.
SUBJECT. ENGRAVER. PAGE. Travellers in a Storm, Mount Washington R. Hoskin Frontispiece Winnipiseogee, From Red Hill J. Tinkey 15 *“Alone With All Those Men!” V. Bernstrom 20 Designed by W. A. Rogers. Passaconnaway, From the Bear-camp River Smithwick and French 24 Chocorua R. Hoskin 26 Lovewell’s Pond J. P. DavisFIRST JOURNEY.
PAGE I. MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS 1 II. INCOMPARABLE WINNIPISEOGEE 8 III. CHOCORUA 18 IV. LOVEWELL 33 V. NORTH CONWAY 39 VI. KEARSARGE TO CARRIGAIN 55 VII. VALLEY OF THE SACO 66 VIII. THROUGH THE NOTCH 76 IX. CRAWFORD’S 87 X. ASCENT FROM CRAWFORD’S 95
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THE
HEART OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
FIRST JOURNEY.
I.
MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS.
“Si jeunesse savait! si viellesse pouvait!”
ONE morning in September I was sauntering up and down the railway-station waiting for the slow hands of the clock to reach the hour fixed for the departure of the train. The fact that these hands never move backward did not in the least seem to restrain the impatience of the travellers thronging into the station, some with happy, some with anxious faces, some without trace of either emotion, yet all betraying the same eagerness and haste of manner. All at once I heard my name pronounced, and felt a heavy hand upon my shoulder.
“What!” I exclaimed, in genuine surprise, “is it you, colonel?”
“Myself,” affirmed the speaker, offering his cigar-case.
“And where did you drop from”—accepting an Havana; “the Blue Grass?”
“I reckon.”
“But what are you doing in New England, when you should be in Kentucky?”
“Doing, I? oh, well,” said my friend, with a shade of constraint; then with a quizzical smile, “You are a Yankee; guess.”
“Take care.”
“Guess.”
“Running away from your creditors?”
The colonel’s chin cut the air contemptuously.
“Running after a woman, perhaps?”
My companion quickly took the cigar from his lips, looked at me with mouth half opened, then stammered, “What in blue brimstone put that into your head?”
“Evidently you are going on a journey, but are dressed for an evening party,” I replied, comprising with a glance the colonel’s black suit, lavender gloves, and white cravat.
“Why,” said the colonel, glancing rather complacently at himself—“why we Kentuckians always travel so at home. But it’s now your turn; where are you going yourself?”
“To the mountains.”
“Good; so am I: White Mountains, Green Mountains, Rocky Mountains, or Mountains of the Moon, I care not.”
“What is your route?”
“I’m not at all familiar with the topography of your mountains. What is yours?”
“By the Eastern to Lake Winnipiseogee, thence to Centre Harbor, thence by stage and rail to North Conway and the White Mountain Notch.”
My friend purchased his ticket by the indicated route, and the train was soon rumbling over the bridges which span the Charles and Mystic. Farewell, Boston, city where, like thy railways, all extremes meet, but where I would still rather live on a crust moistened with east wind than cast my lot elsewhere.
When we had fairly emerged into the light and sunshine of the open country, I recognized my old
George Brentwood was a blond young man of thirty-four or thirty-five, with brown hair, full reddish beard, shrewdish blue eyes, a robust frame, and a general air of negligent repose. In a word, he was the antipodes of my companion, whose hair, eyebrows, and mustache were coal-black, eyes dark and sparkling, manner nervous, and his attitudes careless and unconstrained, though not destitute of a certain natural grace. Both were men to be remarked in a crowd.
“George,” said I, “permit me to introduce my friend Colonel Swords.”
After a few civil questions and answers, George declared his destination to be ours, and was cordially welcomed to join us. By way of breaking the ice, he observed,
“Apropos of your title, colonel, I presume you served in the Rebellion?”
The colonel hitched a little on his seat before replying. Knowing him to be a very modest man, I came to his assistance. “Yes,” said I, “the colonel fought hard and bled freely. Let me see, where were you wounded?”
“Through the chest.”
“No, I mean in what battle?”
“Spottsylvania.”
“Left on the field for dead, and taken prisoner,” I finished.
George is a fellow of very generous impulses. “My dear sir,” said he, effusively, grasping the colonel’s hand, “after what you have suffered for the old flag, you can need no other passport to the gratitude and friendship of a New-Englander. Count me as one of your debtors. During the war it was my fortune—my misfortune, I should say—to be in a distant country; otherwise we should have been found fighting shoulder to shoulder under Grant, or Sherman, or Sheridan, or Thomas.
The colonel’s color rose. He drew himself proudly up, cleared his throat, and said, laconically, “Hardly, stranger, seeing that I had the honor to fight under the Confederate flag.”
You have seen a tortoise suddenly draw back into his shell. Well, George as suddenly retreated into his. For an instant he looked at the Southron as one might at a confessed murderer; then stammered out a few random and unmeaning words about mistaken sense of duty—gallant but useless struggle, you know—drew a newspaper from his pocket, and hid his confusion behind it.
Fearing my fiery Kentuckian might let fall some unlucky word that would act like a live coal dropped on the tortoise’s back, I hastened to interpose. “But really, colonel,” I urged, returning to the charge, “with the Blue Ridge always at your back, I wager you did not come a thousand miles merely to see our mountains. Come, what takes you from Lexington?”
“A truant disposition.”
“Nothing else?”
His dark face grew swarthy, then pale. He looked at me doubtfully a moment, and then leaned close to my ear. “You guessed it,” he whispered.
“A woman?”
“Yes; you know that I was taken prisoner and sent North. Through the influence of a friend who had known my family before the war, I was allowed to pass my first days of convalescence in a beautiful little village in Berkshire. There I was cured of the bullet, but received a more mortal wound.”
“What a misfortune!”
“Yes; no; confound you, let me finish.”
“Helen, the daughter of the gentleman who procured my transfer from the hospital to his pleasant home” (the proud Southerner would not say his benefactor), “was a beautiful creature. Let me describe her to you.”
“Oh,” I hastened to say, “I know her.” Like all lovers, that subject might have a beginning but no ending.
“You?”
“Of course. Listen. Yellow hair, rippling ravishingly from an alabaster forehead, pink cheeks, pouting lips, dimpled chin, snowy throat—”
The colonel made a gesture of impatience. “Pshaw, that’s a type, not a portrait. Well, the upshot of it was that I was exchanged, and ordered to report at Baltimore for transportation to our lines. Imagine my dismay. No, you can’t, for I was beginning to think she cared for me, and I was every day getting deeper and deeper in love. But to tell her! That posed me. When alone with her, my cowardly tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. Once or twice I came very near bawling out, ‘I love you!’ just as I would have given an order to a squadron to charge a battery.”
“Well; but you did propose at last?”
“Oh yes.”
“And was accepted.”
The colonel lowered his head, and his face grew pinched.
“Refused gently, but positively refused.”
“Come,” I hazarded, thinking the story ended, “I do not like your Helen.”
“Why?”
“Because either you are mistaken, or she seems just a little of a coquette.”
“Oh, you don’t know her,” said the colonel, warmly; “when we parted she betrayed unusual agitation—for her; but I was cut to the quick by her refusal, and determined not to let her see how deeply I felt it. After the Deluge—you know what I mean—after the tragedy at Appomattox, I went back to the old home. Couldn’t stay there. I tried New Orleans, Cuba. No use.”
Something rose in the colonel’s throat, but he gulped it down and went on:
“The image of that girl pursues me. Did you ever try running away from yourself? Well, after fighting it out with myself until I could endure it no longer, I put pride in my pocket, came straight to Berkshire, only to find Helen gone.”
“That was unlucky; where?”
“To the mountains, of course. Everybody seems to be going there; but I shall find her.”
“Don’t be too sanguine. It will be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack. The mountains are a perfect Dædalian labyrinth,” I could not help saying, in my vexation. Instead of an ardent lover of nature, I had picked up the “baby of a girl.” But there was George Brentwood. I went over and sat by George.
It was generally understood that George was deeply enamored of a young and beautiful widow who had long ceased to count her love affairs, who all the world, except George, knew loved only herself, and who had therefore nothing left worth mentioning to bestow upon another. By nature a coquette, passionately fond of admiration, her self-love was flattered by the attentions of such a man as George, and he, poor fellow, driven one day to the verge of despair, the next intoxicated with the crumbs she threw him, was the victim of a species of slavery which was fast undermining his buoyant and generous disposition. The colonel was in hot pursuit of his adored Helen. Two words sufficed to acquaint me that George was escaping from his beautiful tormentor. At all events, I was sure of him.
“How charming the country is! What a delightful sense of freedom!” George drew a deep breath, and stretched his limbs luxuriously. “Shall we have an old-fashioned tramp together?” He continued, with assumed vivacity, “The deuce take me if I go back to town for a twelve-month. How we creep along! I feel exultation in putting the long miles between me and the accursed city,” said George, at last.
“You experience no regret, then, at leaving the city?”
George merely looked at me; but he could not have spoken more eloquently.
The train had just left Portsmouth, when the conductor entered the car holding aloft a yellow envelope. Every eye was instantly riveted upon it. Conversation ceased. For whom of the fifty or sixty occupants of the car had this flash overtaken the express train? In that moment the criminal realized the futility of flight, the merchant the uncertainty of his investments, the man of leisure all the ordinary contingencies of life. The conductor put an end to the suspense by demanding,
“Is Mr. George Brentwood in this car?”
In spite of an heroic effort at self-control, George’s hand trembled as he tore open the envelope; but as he read his face became radiant.
“Your news is not bad?” I ventured to ask, seeing him relapse into a fit of musing, and noting the smile that came and went like a ripple on still water.
“Thank you, quite the contrary; but it is important that I should immediately return to Boston.”
“How unfortunate!”
George turned on me a fixed and questioning look, but made no reply.
“And the mountains?” I persisted.
“Oh, sink the mountains!”
I last saw George striding impatiently up and down the platform of the Rochester station, watch in hand. Without doubt he had received his recall. However, there was still the lovelorn colonel.
Never have I seen a man more thoroughly enraptured with the growing beauty of the scenery. I promised myself much enjoyment in his society, for his comments were both original and picturesque; so that by the time we arrived at Wolfborough I had already forgotten George and his widow.
There was the usual throng of idlers lounging about the pier with their noses in the air, and their hands in their pockets; perhaps more than the usual confusion, for the steamer merely touched to take and leave passengers. We went on board. As the bell tolled the colonel uttered an exclamation. He became all on a sudden transformed from a passive spectator into an excited and prominent actor in the scene. He gesticulated wildly, swung his hat, and shouted in a frantic way, apparently to attract the attention of some one in the crowd; failing in which he seized his luggage, took the stairs in two steps, and darting like a rocket among the astonished spectators, who divided to the right and left before his impetuous onset, was in the act of vigorously shaking hands with a hale old gentleman of fifty odd when the boat swung clear. He waved his unoccupied hand, and I saw his face wreathed in smiles. I could not fail to interpret the gesture as an adieu.
“Halloo!” I shouted, “what of the mountains?”
“Burn the mountains!” was his reply. The steamer glided swiftly down the little bay, and I was left to continue my journey alone.