Down East Latch Strings/Chapter 18

by Ernest Ingersoll

Chapter III.

The Nashua Valley.

A single coal does not burn well. A companionless traveller finds the journey tedious.—Bedage Proverb.

 

abyan's is the pivot around which all White Mountain touring must revolve. Jackson and the Conways, Mt. Washington, the Glen and Gorham, Jefferson and Lancaster, Bethlehem and the Profile, are about equidistant. It is the Rome of the mountains, toward which all roads lead, and it has been a station on the main avenue of travel through this rugged part of the state as long as the passes have been known.

The mountains stand back at this point, leaving a valley which may be called spacious and level compared with the ordinary openings among these crowded hills, where the main Amonoosuc, coming from the Lake of the Clouds, receives its South branch, draining the rear roofs of the Crawford House. At the junction of these two streams is the Fabyan House, a big, square, dun-colored hotel, of no more architectural presence than a cotton factory; in fact, it does not serve the purpose of a residence to anything like an equal extent with the other great houses we shall visit, but is, for the most part, adopted as a headquarters for excursions—a stopping-place between whiles—a point of going and coming crowds.

Here concentrate all the railways of the White Mountain region, and all travel must filter through this narrow station, after the manner of the sand in an hour-glass. More stir and movement occur at Fabyan's, therefore, than anywhere else, and the great office and bazaar of the hotel are crowded and lively all day long, but especially so at night. The morning trains bring in crowds of people from distant places bound for Mount Washington, or changing cars for some other resort. The expresses whirl away, and one or two of the short accommodation trains, which in summer ply hourly back and forth between Fabyan's and Crawford's, North Conway, the Twin Mountain House, Bethlehem and the Profile House, back up, receive their merry contingents and glide off. Meanwhile, on a side-track, the Mt. Washington train of open cars has been filling with passengers, accumulated from the earlier arrivals, or in waiting over night at the hotel. Here and there, among a motley throng of tourists bubbling over with good nature, careless of how they may look in the eyes of others, eager only to enjoy themselves, or perhaps bent on improvement of mind, will be seen a group whose stylish attire and sedate deportment stamp them as "swells" who have consented to go up the mountain "as a lark, don't you know." These people would feel greatly hurt if anyone were to speak of their party as an excursion, and still more so, if you were to intimate that they, too, had "a good time," for it is a part of their religion not to confess to enjoyment in what is really enjoyable, nor to put themselves in any position likely to stir their hearts with vulgar emotion. This is an artificial mood exceedingly difficult to maintain in the free and bracing air of the mountains, and the few who do sustain it ought to meet with a more respectful consideration, in view of their self-denial, than they usually do.

Often a real excursion, unabashed by that name, sheds its light and its half dollars upon Fabyan's for a few brief moments, or perchance for a whole night, and then rushes off somewhere else. These are the comets in the solar system of summer pleasure, which has its fixed stars, in the "regular boarders"; its planets swinging in defined orbits from perigee in Winnipesaukee to apogee at Umbagog; its meteoric showers of pedestrians and chance visitors; and, beyond all these, cometary bodies of excursionists, who invade the other orbits at all sorts of unexpected angles and seasons, and whirl with amazing swiftness through a path whose returning curve no man can foretell, only to vanish as mysteriously as they came.

Sometimes these excursions are splendid affairs, not "coming," but arriving, in Pullman cars, heralded with pomp and ceremony. Sometimes they are military, march by platoons and columns of fours to view the scenery with heads erect and eyes right, while the band plays and the staff appropriates, ex-officio, the best point of view. Sometimes they are clerical and benevolent, uniformed in alpaca dusters, and distinguished on the part of the men by shaven upper lips, and on the part of the women by precise curls and gold spectacles. But generally an excursion consists of hundreds of well-to-do farmers and villagers from the rural regions of New England and Canada, or of smart townspeople out for a hard-earned holiday, arranged for them by some Sunday school or social club, and bubbling over with unrestricted Christmas-comes-but-once-a-year gayety which is good to see. Whoever they are, wherever they come from, they tumble out of their cars here, scramble with much struggling of family groups to keep together into the train to the base of the great mountain—that Mecca of all pilgrims—and sit impatiently waiting for the start. The train is pulled out of the side-track and drawn up alongside the station platform, where the amused guests from the hotel are watching the fun; the passenger agents run up and down to see that nobody gets left; tell each other in a loud tone that this is the handsomest party that has gone up this year, and finally the excursion train rolls vociferously away.

At Fabyan's the central group of the Presidential peaks are all in plain view, but the range on this side is so whole and smooth that no aspect is more uninteresting. In other directions the hills are tame, and there is little in the immediate vicinity to reward walking or driving, compared with other centres of pleasure-taking. Half a mile southward the large Mt. Pleasant House is more favorably situated for rambling, and is a favorite stopping-place with many. The White Mountain House, erected as long ago as 1845, stands one mile northward, at the divergence of the road to Bethlehem from that to Cherry mountain and Jefferson. From this hotel, in the old days, a carriage-road extended some distance up the base of Mt. Washington, at the end of which visitors could go upon horseback or walk up a path now abandoned. The views from the tops of the foothills in that neighborhood are very interesting. The Lower falls of the Amonoosuc, of which the old writers were so fond, are only a mile farther down, but have been ruined by sawmills. The Upper falls, two miles above Fabyan's, are still well worth a visit.

Where the Fabyan House now stands there was formerly a long moraine-ridge of gravel, called the Giant's Grave, and identified with the earliest history of the hardy people who took possession of these glens and the valleys, to which the Notch road was the gateway a century ago. Starr King writes at length, and most interestingly, upon these early times and the hardships and privations they had to undergo. The histories, gazetteers and guide-books will enable the reader to learn the adventurous story in detail. The prominent figure of the locality in history is Ethan Allen Crawford, whose monument is seen on the bluff opposite the Fabyan House near the useful "Tourists' Cottage" of the Boston & Maine Railroad.

"Eleazar Rosebrook was one of the earliest of the Pioneers, having removed in 1772 from Grafton, Mass., to Lancaster, N. H., and thence to Colebrook. In 1792, he settled on Nash & Sawyer's location, and built an extensive pile of mills, stables, etc., at the base of the Giant's Grave. Here he died, 25 years later, and was succeeded by his grandson, E. A. Crawford. Ethan Allen Crawford, the White-Mountain Giant,' is almost the only resident of the hill-country in whom any interest centres. He was born at Guildhall, Vermont, in 1792, and was carried to the mountains when a child, afterwards inheriting and occupying the house at the Giant's Grave. He was of large stature and powerful frame, and became famous for skill in hunting and woodcraft. His singular adventures with hears, deer, and wildcats are even now remembered and chronicled. He was one of the first and best of the mountain-guides, and made the Crawford-House bridle-path and the first summit-house. In 1803 the first public-house was erected here, and it was burnt in 1819, when occupied by Ethan Allen Crawford. Two other hotels on this site have since been destroyed by fire, helping to confirm (or perhaps giving rise to) the old tradition that an Indian once stood on the mound at night, waving a torch and crying, 'No pale-face shall take deep root here; this the Great Spirit whispered in my ear.' Some time afterward a new hotel containing 100 rooms was erected on this site, and was kept by Mr. Fabyan until its destruction by fire about 20 years since. The present Fabyan House was erected in 1872-3, and its constructors committed a needless act of vandalism in levelling the mound of the Giant's Grave." (Ticknor's Guide.)

Five miles down the once-romantic Amonoosuc all of whose devious windings are, of necessity, followed by the railroad, stands another one of the "great hotels," the Twin Mountain House,—none the worse for its seventeen years of age. This hotel is reared upon a terrace, facing cast, and in the midst of ornamental grounds. Wooded hills closely engird it behind, so that the only view from the piazzas is over the two Baby Twins or the Sugar Loaf hills, in front, to the lofty summits of the North Twin and Lafayette, with Agassiz and Round Hill at the right, near Bethlehem. By mounting the knoll in front of the house where the flag-staff is planted, the Presidential range and other peaks become visible. It is to its mill-pond, where boating can be enjoyed; to its widely celebrated table; and to the brilliant social play which goes on here in the season, that this hotel owes the favor it has long met with.

The Twin mountains, after which it is named, are two neighboring summits nearly 5,000 feet in height, at the sources of the Merrimac and on the northern edge of the great Pemigewasset wilderness. An observer standing upon the northern summit would overlook, north and east, the whole region embraced between the upper part of the Androscoggin and Lake Champlain, with its green valleys, highways and villages. Westward, the whole Presidential range would be paraded before him; and eastward, the valley of the Connecticut. Southward, there would be nothing visible but an almost boundless stretch of craggy and wooded mountains, limited by the angular crest of the Sandwich range, and unrelieved by any village or clearing, except, possibly, some glimpses of Woodstock. Until recently, however, it would have been a matter of the greatest difficulty for anyone to reach even the base of these forest-guarded mountains; and a pioneer party of the Appalachian Club which marked out a path from the Twin Mountain House, spent four days in the work, although the distance is only six miles.