Down East Latch Strings/Chapter 17
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ith a lurch of the wagon, a rush of four eager horses, and a chorus of "good-byes," we were off for the drive over the carriage-road from the Glen House to the summit of Mount Washington.
With the sunrise a few wreaths of mist, woven among the tree-tops, had risen slowly half-way up the naked shoulders of the range, only to be shorn of their wings and disappear, like the learian birds that typified them in the classic fable; and ragged fragments of clouds, hiding from both wind and sunshine, still lurked about the heads of the ravines; but the summits themselves, all five of them, towered sharp and clear into a marvellously blue sky, and had a coppery glow under the fierce sunlight which was reflected from a thousand million mica-points and polished edges in their broken rocks. It is a needless exaggeration to speak of these mountains glittering or sparkling, as thoughtless writers frequently do. Brilliant color is often present, nevertheless, and makes one of the chief charms of the landscape, especially at dawn and sunset. "More than once," Mr. Oakes remarks, "late in autumn, after the sun had set, and the mountains were becoming dark below, I have seen the whole snowy pyramid of Mt. Washington glowing like a furnace with a bright and intense rose color, fiery and brilliant, but still soft and most beautiful." How glorious are these manifestations of color in the tall, icy and varied peaks of the Rockies, I myself, have heretofore tried to tell in my Crest of the Continent.
There was not much to see until we had driven up beyond the line of forests, from which we emerged suddenly, only a few scraggy spruces accompanying us out beyond the crowd of big trees. In the midst of the forest, our road was entered by a new road, lately opened, and connecting by a short cut with the Pinkham Notch road, which effects a long saving both in distance and climbing to travellers from the southward. Wagons are sent to the summit daily on this new cut-off from both Jackson and North Conway, besides private driving parties. We passed many pedestrians, also, going up or coming down.
This carriage-road was begun in 1855, but not finished till 1861. It takes an average grade of only twelve feet in one hundred, and hence winds about a good deal, so that it is twice as long as the old bridle-path whose general direction it follows. The road is well constructed, and whenever the ground falls away steeply beside it, walls have been built, so that it is wholly safe to drive or walk upon, even in foggy weather. A gang of workmen, who live at the half-way house, near the edge of the timber, keep the road in repair, storing up earth and rock-dust for this purpose along the upper part with great care, since anything like soil on the top of the range is about as rare as figs from thistles. The stage-fare from the Glen House is $5 to ascend, or to go up and back, and $3 for the descent alone; but railway excursion tickets include this route. All persons except stage passengers, are required to pay tolls, whether driving or walking. Early in October, when the Summit House closes, the stages are withdrawn, all the bridges (mere culverts over drainage channels) are taken up and stored away, and the road is closed, so far as the responsibility of the company is concerned. This road is visible as a sinuous light line from many of the mountain tops whence Washington is viewed; and it overlooks, in return, a vast area of country in the direction of the Androscoggin, so that to omit it from one's itinerary would be to leave out one of the best prospects open to the tourist; and the very best in its reward, compared with labor involved.
Timber-line, on this flank of Mt. Washington, is about 4,000 feet above the sea, and 2,500 above the Glen House, nearly five miles, by the road, distant. It is marked on this range, by "the spectral forest," as King calls it,—a skirmish-line of gnarled and stunted trees, now dead and bleached to the hardness and appearance of antlers. Sweetzer states that this alpine forest-edge was probably killed during the cold season of 1812-16, "through the latter of which gears the trees were frozen all the time, 1816 being known as 'the year without a summer.'"
In escaping the forest upon the carriage-road we make a long detour northward, around a subsidiary summit, the end of which (at the fourth milestone) brings us out upon the Ledge (3,900 feet) at the brink of that vast excavation separating Washington from Jefferson, Adams and Madison, called the Great Gulf, (or, at its head, where the railway touches it, the Gulf of Mexico), which at this narrowest point shows all its 2,000 feet of shuddering depth. This chasm balances Tuckerman's on the south side of the spur we are ascending, but is more capacious; whether it is equally interesting is another question. Mr. King thought that looking upward from the bottom (as comparatively few people have done) Tuckerman's was superior, but that seen from the top the Gulf seemed more terrible; and he calls this sight from the Ledge "one of the grandest spectacles which the summit of Mt. Washington affords." Its shadowy trough is carpeted with a dark moquette difficult to realize as a full-grown forest, and the further walls, gashed and broken, soar upward to the ashy dome of Jefferson, behind which stand the spire of Adams and Madison's angular combing. "All around was unutterable desolation. Crevassed with wide splits, encompassed round by lofty mountain walls, the gorge was at once fascinating and forbidding, grand yet terrible. The high, encircling steeps of Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison, enclosing it with one mighty sweep, ascended out of its depths and stretched along the sky, which seemed receding before their daring advance. Peering down into the abyss, where the tallest pines were shrubs and their trunks needles, the earth seemed split to its centre, and the feet of these mountains rooted in the midst. To confront such a spectacle unmoved, one should be more, or less, than human."
The view from here is of the Androscoggin and Peabody valleys, in which the Glen House is a mere speck. Gorham is just out of sight behind Pine mountain, which shows beyond and below Madison. Moriah and Carter mountains stop the outlook in their direction, but within this quadrant vision reaches far over the wrinkled tops of Mts. Hayes and Baldcap to the peaks clustered at the Grafton notch. For some distance the road lies upon the edge of the Great Gulf, then turns sharply to the left and works its way, always upward, across toward the head of Huntington's ravine,—a side cañon from Tuckerman's, and one well worth a visit. The slopes that fall away from the road are here very precipitous, and the sense of height and isolation impresses itself strongly on the beholder. The Carter range is now upon the left,—huge forested knolls and ridges. "A sharp turn around a ledge," writes Mr. Drake, in an account of a walk up this road in May, "and the southeast wall of Tuckerman's ravine rose up, like a wraith, out of the forest. Near at hand was the head of Huntington's, while to the right the cone of Washington loomed grandly more than a thousand feet higher. A little to the left you look down into the gloomy depths of the Pinkham defile, the valley of Ellis river, the Saco valley and North Conway where the familiar figure of Kiarsage is the presiding genius. The blue course of the Ellis, which is nothing but a long cascade, the rich green of the Conway intervales, the blanched peak of Chocorua, the sapphire summits of the Ossipee mountains, were presented in conjunction with the black and humid walls of the ravine, and the iron-gray mass of the great dome. The crag on which I stood leans out over the mountain like a bastion, from which the spectator sees the deeply intrenched valleys, the rivers which wash the feet of the monarch, and the long line of summits which partake his grandeur, while making it more impressive."
Huntington's ravine, to which allusion is made, is a branch of Tuckerman's, near its head, which Prof. J. H. Huntington supposed he had discovered, and which, in 1871, was named after him by a party of "explorers." It was well known long before either of these "discoveries," however, by one, at least, of the Pinkham Notch farmers,—a man named Doloph,—who conducted Prof. Oscar D. Allen, now in the faculty of Yale University, into its almost impenetrable depths and through its whole length.
As the road swings to the right from the head of this ravine, and points more directly up the mountain, splendid landscapes unroll, changing and growing more amazing at every step. Presently, we attain such a height that we can look off eastward to blue heights around Lancaster, seen between the great northern peaks, whose full, fierce majesty is now revealed. All the rents and gashes which frost has hewn and the waters have worn in their ancient forms, can be counted by the eye and explored upon wings of fancy. "The rocks themselves, tormented, formidable, impending, astound by their vivid portrayal of the formless, their suggestions of the agony in which these mountains were brought forth." The seventh mile-post is near the knob where Mr. Chandler died during a storm in August, 1856, and here the view over Mt. Clay, from which the Great Gulf sinks profoundly, reaches the hills of northern Vermont; Lancaster village, embosomed in fine mountains, is framed between Clay and Jefferson; the Pilot range and neighboring peaks are glimpsed in the gaps between Jefferson and Adams, and between Adams and Madison; and to the right of Madison the whole Androscoggin region toward Umbagog is spread before you, whence you swing around past the Grafton peaks to the nearer Moriah, Imp, Carter and Wildcat, and then to Washington's own flanks and the contiguous table-lands of Mt. Pleasant and Boot's spur.
The ride had not seemed nearly as long as the mile-stones measured it, because so exciting; but a chilly breeze was blowing about this "windy cone," and we were all very cold, in spite of the clear sunshine. It was with much satisfaction, therefore, that we came to the stables and station of the stage company, just below the summit, stiffly crawled out of our seats, and, hastening up some flights of wooden steps, presently stood upon the tiptop and very pinnacle of New England.
Fully impressed with this great fact, we yet turned to one another and voiced our common, albeit prosaic, thought—Dinner! The scenery could wait; our mortal frames were another matter.
The top of Mt. Washington, in common with all the rest of the Presidential range, and some other mountains, consists of a micaceous gneiss. This is a greenish-gray, somewhat stratified rock, knit together by innumerable little plates, rosettes and spicules of mica, so that it is exceeding tough and durable. The thin layers, however, let the moisture penetrate it, and the incessant freezing and thawing incident to the weather of this pinnacle, reared out of the temperate zone into an arctic climate, pry the rock to pieces and topple the fragments down. Thus the solid rock-mass forming that rounded summit, which ages ago must have held its peaked head many hundreds of feet higher in the air than now, began at once to crumble at its edges and start that rain of falling blocks which never has ceased, nor ever will, as long as cold and heat ply their elfin tools.
Our pedestal is, therefore, an irregular and ragged heap, like a dump of building-stone thrown down here ready for the Titans to erect their palace, when Olympus should have capitulated; and that must have been long ago, to judge by the weather-stains and lichen-growths on the rocks. These pieces are in size from a band-box to a log-cabin, of all the sharp-edged and slippery shapes imaginable, and set in every position save one comfortable to stand or sit upon. I can think of but one thing in rocks worse to travel over, and that is such a steep slide of small stones, caving under your tread at every step, as Prue and I have more than once toiled for hours upon, in the Rockies.
Of course no vegetation, except the cryptogamous stuff which pastes itself flat down upon the rock, can exist in such a place, while lower down only a scanty herbage finds foothold; and it is to these utterly naked stones, to whose paleness the reflecting particles of mica may lend some additional pallor, that the White Hills are supposed to owe their name. They certainly have a blanched, diluted quality (even when seen so far away as to be dimly blue) which belongs to no other Appalachian range, while close at hand, especially as seen from Fabyan's, they become coldly, mistily gray in tone, under the noonday light, even in the clearest weather.
It was out upon these rocks, with wraps belted tightly about us and hats tied to our heads (for here the winds blow up and the winds blow down without stint or intermission), we carefully adjusted ourselves to see what we should see.
"It strikes me you gentlemen are taking this thing coolly," Prue remarks, referring to lack of emotion rather than bodily temperature.
"Why shouldn't we? Have we endured the trouble of climbing this huge pile to waste ourselves in Ohs! and Ahs!” I retort. "It is more respectful to this majestic privilege that we take it calmly, as befits those who feel their obligations. The presence of such space and glory as this ought to suppress frivolity. If you had a little of the fear and reverence the simple-hearted natives felt for this noble peak and its invisible divinities, it would do you good."
Prue listens with intent face and anxious eyes, as though she felt my rebuke; but she is an incorrigible fraud, for when I stop, instead of expressing contrition, she asks:—
"Have you a match? Mr. Baily's cigar seems to have gone out."
It hasn't, but he is busy with a map, which he has loaded down with stones at the four corners to keep it from blowing away.
"Gad! this is immense!" he exclaims, looking up from his map "If I had a pair of compasses that would stretch a hundred miles or so, I could stick one point among these rocks, and see where to plant the other away beyond Moosehead. Then I could swing it round through the ocean and Massachusetts to the Green mountains, and sweep on through Quebec until I had completed the circle back across the Maine woods."
"Do you mean to say that you could guide with your eye the further point of your compasses, in inscribing such a gigantic circle as that?" Prue queries.
"Touching the highest points along the circumference,—yes."
"Why, that embraces the whole extent of our tour in the east, and as much more toward the west!"
"Yes,—nearly as large an area as the whole of Great Britain."
"Baily is not far wrong. Hear how Eastman sums up the spaciousness of what we are gazing upon, more in amazement, so far as I am concerned, at least, than with intelligence, as yet." And I read the following paragraphs:—
"What a stupendous view! A horizon of nearly six hundred miles bounds the prospect! The mountain peaks stand on every side as sentinels over the furrowed valleys of New England.
"If the day is clear, one can see Monadnock loom, as a pale blue film, a hundred miles off on the south-west. Far in the east, Katahdin is driven like a wedge into the sky. Westward, the eye roams almost to the Catskills; northward, into Canada, far beyond the sources of the Connecticut; southward, to the month of the Saco. In a clear morning or evening, if there is a silvery gleam on the south-eastern horizon, it tells that the sun is shining on the sea off Portland. Nearer to us on the west, towers the gloomy ridge of Franconia, subsiding towards the Merrimac. That flash now and then through the opaline southern air is from Winnipesaukee, the most exquisite jewel in the necklace of New England. On the near north the twin-domed Stratford mountains tower. Their barren pallor, seen through the uncertain air, counterfeits snow. The cloven Pinkham pass lies directly beneath us, bending around to lovely North Conway. Over this last village we observe the drooping shoulders of Kiarsage, whose northern sides flow from the summit as softly as full folds of drapery fall from a ring. Mt. Crawford attracts attention by his singular knoblike crest; and near him, all the winding Bartlett hills stand up, guarding the shy beauty of the intervales. The long and solid Pleasant mountain draws the eye, set so squarely near the still silver of Lovewell's pond. And farther south the dim, level, leopard-spotted land stretches wide to the horizon haze.
But in the very breadth of the landscape was its defect, as a picture. We were looking down upon everything, and this forshortened and flattened each feature. Only the most distant peaks, eighty or one hundred miles away, cut the sky, and thus showed to better advantage than did those in the middle distance. The line of the Green mountains was quite plain, enabling us to count the separate peaks, and see Mansfield and one or two others on Lake Champlain looming behind them. Mr. Eastman puts Katahdin as a visible point in the east. I wish it were so; but the best opinion decides that the turquoise mark set so firmly upon Maine's outermost horizon, as though it were the very last thing in the world, is not that lone sentinel of the cast, but Ebeeme mountain, near Millinoket pond, 135 miles distant in an air-line. Whether Mt. Desert, or even Megunticook, is visible is a question.
In the south and west a few sharp and well-marked peaks, like "steel-hooded" Chocorua, and massive Carrigan and Moosilauke, stand boldly out; but in general, the eye is bewildered there by a great wilderness of land-swells, dull indigo or dark olive near at hand, and paling into blue beyond, which after a short time grows oppressive to the sight. We want something more tangible and mobile, and we find it northward, looking over the shoulders of Clay and Jefferson, where roads, villages, rivers, and some human interest occurs. It is terribly lonesome, still, and remote up here. We are glad to get a glimpse of active life down on the earth. Therefore we like to trace rivers,—they are going somewhere,—doing something. "The line of the Connecticut we can follow from its birth near Canada, to the point where it is hidden by the great Franconia wall. Its water is not visible, but often, in the morning, a line of fog lies for miles over the lower lands, counterfeiting the serpentine path of its blue water that bounds two states. Two large curves of the Androscoggin we can sec. Broken portions of the Saco lie like lumps of light upon the open valley to the west of Pequawket. The sources of the Merrimac are on the farther slope of a mountain that seems to be not more than the distance of a rifle-shot. Directly under our feet lies the cold Lake of the Clouds, whose water plunges down the wild path of the Amonoosuc."
"How did people come up here before the carriage-road and railway were built,—I mean what were the paths?" is an enquiry by our lady.
"There was a path from the Glen along the general course of the carriage-road, but much shorter, and, of course, steeper," Baily volunteers in reply; and another from Fabyan's came up the general line now followed by the railway. The steep place where it zigzagged up the spur was called Jacob's Ladder long before any rails were laid there. So much of this path as leads to the summit of Mt. Pleasant, at least, is still preserved."
"Some other routes," I continue, "have been almost or quite lost sight of. The earliest ascents seem to have been made from the Ellis valley. Probably Darby Field came up that way,—he who, in 1642, was the first to reach the peak, in company with two coast Indians,—for the local redskins were too much in terror of the fierce gods reasonably supposed to be enthroned upon these storm-panoplied heights to accompany him. The Gorges party, a few weeks later, certainly ascended through Tuckerman's ravine. But a century and a half elapsed before any real exploration of the range was made, the Indian or other wars making these woods and waters by no means comfortable to pre-revolutionary sojourners. Traditions of diamonds in masses, carbuncles as big as your hat, with silver and gold galore, still kept substance enough to make the mountains alluring, however; and as soon as the Revolution had been accomplished, an expedition was organized by Cutler and Belknap, which reached the summit in July of 1784, by the way of Tuckerman’s ravine. They stayed all night, probably the first experience of that sort. Their quaintly written record still exists in manuscript in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and it is said, contains the first use of the name Mt. Washington.
"After that, I suppose, climbers were common."
"Yes. The Jackson people had paths which came up over the New River cliffs and along the eastern side of Monroe and over Boot's spur. Another ancient route for ascent in this direction was by following up the half-dry ravine of the Mt. Washington river into Oakes' gulf, where it arises, and where legend located a ledge of diamonds. Nobody found the gems, but everybody could catch lots of trout there, and can yet. The 'pastures' on the slope of Monroe along the rim of Oakes' gulf, have always been favorite picking-places for alpine botanists, after one of the earliest of whom (in the United States) the gorge is named. Forty years ago, a proprietor of the Mt. Crawford House constructed a route from his hotel, at the foot of Mt. Crawford, up the Giant's Stairs and then seven miles northward through dense woods upon the Montalban ridge to Boot's spur, and thence pretty straightly up the great cone; but it never became popular, and has almost disappeared. He built it after great discouragement, and Mt. Resolution takes its name in commemoration of his persistence.
"Meanwhile, the farmers who had settled north of the range in the Connecticut and Androscoggin valleys, had marked out routes of ascent over the western flanks of the mountains on their side, not only to Washington, but to the summits of Adams, Jefferson and Madison; and there was even a wagon-route, used in carrying up the lumber for the old buildings. Latterly, several good paths have been blazed by guides to the northern summits, and along their crests to Mt. Washington. This is said to form one of the grandest excursions in all New Hampshire, but it is very arduous, ought not to be attempted without efficient guides, and cannot be done without camping out one or two nights."
"Let's do it next year!" cries the sanguine Baily. "We'll buy some simple camping equipments and take a whole week to it."
“All right. I agree to that. And if we can get two or three donkeys or small mules to 'pack' our luggage, as we used to do in Wyoming, we can have a grand time."
"Then I should think I might go," says Prue.
"So you might,—it would be something for a lady to boast of."
"But I haven't spoken yet of the Crawford path, which is the best-known and most often used of any, nowadays. This is about eight miles long, and passes over the four great summits southward, and then down the flank of Mt. Clinton to the Crawford notch. It is called a bridle-path, but a hundred persons walk over it every season for one that rides, and it is more commonly walked down than up, tourists coming to the summit by rail and then descending in two or three hours of moderate travel. This path is plainly marked and in good condition everywhere above the timber, but within the Mt. Clinton forests is likely to be muddy and rough, since it has been little attended to of late years. Henry Ward Beecher and many other eloquent writers have discoursed of their experiences and delight along this route. One of the most thrilling mountain stories in point, is Drake's account of his wrestle for life with a snow storm on the summits of Franklin and Monroe, just such a storm as has been the death of those poor fellows whose lives have gone out on the awful summit of this merciless peak. When we go home we must look these stories up and re-read them. They will be ten times as real to us as before."
A few white clouds had been forming in the sky, and dappling the hills with their moving shadows, one of the strangest spectacles to the person who stands upon a lofty height for the first time and a feature of the scene in which an old mountaineer never loses his interest and joy. "People in cities," Starr King declares, "who never see the extent and outline of a cloud-shadow, can have no idea of the beauty of a range of hills upon which the lights and shades 'march and counter-march in glorious apparition.' But this is nothing to the excitement, we may almost say the intoxication, of seeing from a mountain-top a huge cloud, miles in breadth, spanning a valley, shedding twilight upon half a dozen villages at once, sweeping along, chased by a broader flood of splendor, to darken for a moment the whole ridge on whose crown you stand, and still flying on before the west wind, to pour its fleet gloom over range after range, till it pauses in the warmer and peaceful spaces near the eastern horizon."
Our eyes had been feasting upon these spectral caprices while we talked, and now and then we had shivered as one of these ethereal mantles had been cast over our own station, intercepting the warmth of the sun. Bryant (whose poetry is not so interesting to the real student of Nature as to the recluse who loves to think he loves it) must nevertheless have been sometime on a mountain-top, or he never could have drawn the picture in these lines of which we are now reminded :—
Suddenly the whole landscape faded out of sight, like a dissolving view, and we found ourselves shrouded in a mass of cold and whirling vapor, which enveloped us in an icy clasp, and wrapped its chilly wreaths about us like numbing arms. The scores of excursionists who had, a little while ago, arrived by the train from the base, and had scattered here and there in a more or less picturesque and entertaining array, vanished as do faces in a dream, though we could hear their voices, sounding unnaturally slight and far away in the thin air. Even the great buildings and the top of the cone itself, only a few rods distant, were completely lost to view; and we realized, as guided by the slope and the noises, we slowly picked our way over the rocks, how perilous it is to be caught in a long-continued and perhaps denser fog,—or worse than all, in a blinding snow storm,—on the freezing wastes of these shelterless uplands. But we were in no danger or serious discomfort, and five minutes later had ensconced ourselves in the warm parlor of the hotel.
As long ago as 1821, a hospice was built upon the summit by Ethan Allen Crawford, but this cabin was swept away in 1826. In 1852, the Summit House was built, and in 1853 the Tip Top House, owned by rival landlords, representing contending claimants to the ownership of the peak. They were low structures, massively built of great stones bolted together and held to their place by cables which passed over their roofs. The latter yet stands unoccupied, and everybody peers curiously into its cave-like interior, where entertainment and romance more fitting the mood of a true mountain climber were formerly met, than the every-day luxury and formality of the large modern hotel can supply, in spite of (or on account of) its magnified comfort. The new Summit House, opened in 1873, is a long, three-story, wooden building, devoid of any architectural pretence, but strongly constructed, and having bedrooms sufficient for 150 guests. There are post and telegraph offices in the building, and the "proper thing" is to write a letter on the hotel paper with its big picture-head, and mail it from the Summit. The railway trains stop on the plank walk in front of the hotel, and a few yards distant is an engine-house. Behind the hotel, on the very highest point, has been erected an observatory, for admittance to which a small fee is charged; and near its base is the editorial sanctum of the bright little daily paper Among the Clouds, copies of which are bought by visitors as souvenirs. A few rods distant stands the snug station of the U. S. Weather Service, where two or three observers remain the year round, exposed to those terrific storms of which we occasionally read accounts, and connected with the world for half the year, only by their telegraph and the irregular descents of one member for the station's mail. The station is open to visitors only at certain hours, and the observers are very polite in showing their instruments, etc.; but there is little else to reward curiosity, and nothing to justify the impertinence with which tourists sometimes question these gentlemen and scrutinize their home. The Government's line is the small cable which may be noticed pinned to the ties of the railway track out of reach of the gales; while the ordinary telegraph wire is strung over the mountains on poles,—which Prue thought exemplified the well-known decrease in size of trees with altitude, because toward the summit these poles happen to be very short. This line is taken down on the approach of winter.
Everyone should, if possible, spend a night upon the top of the mountain, to see the setting and rising of the sun, not only, but the wonderful spectacle of the heavens at night, by which many a thoughtful man has been deeply moved, as he gazed into the ebon and star-pricked canopy from this solitary observatory amid the chambers of limitless darkness, vacancy and silence that encompass him. To behold the march of the great peak's shadow, at sunset, upon the slopes of the Carter range, and out upon the plains of Maine like a pointed phalanx; and to see it, undaunted even at the horizon, mount into a mighty pyramid of shadow upon the eastern sky,—such a sight as that, is reward enough for any inconvenience in staying over night, were there no evening or auroral glories to be added into the scale.
Nevertheless, we did not stay over night, but made ready to take the afternoon train down to Fabyan's, amusing ourselves meanwhile by looking over an immense stock of knickknacks, photographs, etc., more or less remotely connected with the summit, which are bought as souvenirs by tourists, regardless of cost compared with earthly market rates. Baily explains it by saying that anything but extra high prices would be out of keeping with the supreme elevation of the locality. Prue tells him she supposes that accounts for his high spirits, which is a malicious sarcasm, since our comrade has been taciturn and scowling all day. He openly declares that this prodigious, stony-hearted, tempest-nourishing, old king of mountains intimidates and oppresses him, and that he shall be glad to get down. And he goes on to announce, in a vigorous way, his belief,—in which there is no little truth,—that no lofty mountain, and most of all, the loftiest, looks half as beautiful or imposing to the man on top as to the man at its base.
"That may well be," I assent, "all laws of perspective are against the fellow looking down and in favor of the fellow at a distance; but the man himself who stands upon the apex of a hard-won height is the bigger for having done so, and that's more to the purpose."
This doctrine Prue reinforces with a bit of the Lover's Tale:—
"Bosh!" ejaculates Baily, unable to contain himself; then picks up his coat and cane, and strides out of the door, whither we follow.
What a surprise awaits us! The fog has gone and the sun blazes down upon our cone, which is one little island sticking up like an atoll in a boundless Pacific of milky billows. On every side, just below us, stretches a vast expanse of snowy, sunlit, purely-washed fleeces of vapor, heaving and boiling, surging and tossing, bulging upward into rounded volumes or feathery geysers, pressed down by some diving gust, whirling in the dance of an eddy. We stand upon a lone rock in the centre of a shoreless sea. We see the waves rise and sweep, we can feel the dampness, as of spray, flung in our faces, we watch huge rollers dash against the cliffs that bound our islet and sink below that heaving surface. But we hear no sound,—catch no color but the flashing whiteness of snow or silk. It is the ⟨top⟩ of a mass of clouds, hung a little lower than our peak and overspreading the whole visible earth. The sunshine is brilliant up here, but powerless to penetrate that dense and boiling vapor. Suddenly, there is torn a rent in the veil,—a crack in the cover of the world,—and we get one enchanting glimpse, in blue and green and gold, of the Connecticut valley. Then the gap closes, and again an unsubstantial waste of white, the breadth and absolute level of which is appalling, surrounds us like an ice-pack, and we shudder in the wind that sweeps over it.
"This is sitting on the edge of a damp cloud with a vengeance," mutters Baily, entering a railway car and turning his back on the sight; but Prue and I go forward and seat ourselves on the tender of the locomotive (which goes rear-foremost on the downward trip), fascinated by the wizardly sight and anxious to see every phase of it.
Just as we are ready to start, as if now the exhibition ought to begin, the shining curtains roll up, and under our eyes is spread again the familiar landscape in the west, with the valley of the Amonoosuc directly beneath our feet:—
The Mt. Washington inclined railway has been operated so long, and so often described, that surely I need say little about it here. Its inventor was Sylvester Marsh, of Littleton, N. H., and its building began in 1866, but was not completed until 1869. The road has rails to bear the weight of, and guide its cars, laid in a narrow-guage track, like any other road, upon a continuous low trestle-work carrying it evenly over the inequalities of the rocks; nor do the grades seem astonishingly steep, except in Jacob's Ladder and at some other points, where they amount to something over one foot rise in each three feet advance. The total length of the line is two and thirteen-sixteenths miles, and the time of ascent about one and a half hours; but it takes much less time to come down.
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Jacob's Ladder, Mount Washington. The little locomotives, with their oddly tilted boilers and smoke-stacks, are able to drag the cars up this hill-track by a mechanism which is complicated enough, when it is remembered that many parts of the ordinary locomotive had to be readapted to meet the novel arrangement, yet is simple in its main principle. This is, the laying down between the rails a third broad rail, which is studded with cleats or cogs, into which there fit the cogs of powerful driving wheels underneath both engine and cars. As these wheels are turned by the locomotive's machinery they at once cling to and advance upon the inclined cog-rail, and step by step (or cog by cog) the machine literally climbs the iron ladder, supported and guided by the outside T-rails upon which the wheels rest. In going down no steam is required, the speed being entirely regulated by the brakes, of which there are several independent sets,—each able to hold the train. There is, in fact, no occasion for fear at all; and persons who come prepared to be panic stricken are almost disappointed, I have sometimes thought, because there is not even a decent appearance of danger. It is probable that a quarter of a million passengers have been carried up and down this road since its origin, of whom not a single one has been injured; nor has an accident happened upon the Rigi, in Switzerland, nor at Mt. Desert, where similar railroads, copied from this one, have been constructed.
With entirely easy minds, therefore, and in the midst of a merry party, we ride down to the base, reviewing with entranced eyes, and storing away in our memories, all the landscape westward and northward which we had seen from the top, but now looked at from constantly altering and novel points of view; and we alight at the end of the too-short journey, filled to the very lips with material for joyful reflection hereafter.
There we take our places in open "observation" cars on the branch railway to the base of Mt. Washington, and in half an hour are whirled down the noisy-going Amonoosuc to Fabyan's, where ends this chapter of our tour.