Читать книгу The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery - Drake Samuel Adams - Страница 8

AFTER the storm, we had a fine lunar bow. The corona in the centre was a clear silver, the outer circle composed of pale green and orange fires. Over the moon’s disk clouds swept a continuous stormy flight. The great planet resembled a splendid decoration hung high in the heavens.

Having now progressed to terms of easy familiarity with the village, it was decided to pay our respects to the Intervale, which unites it with the neighboring town of Bartlett.

The road up the valley first skirts a wood, and through this wood are delicious glimpses of Mount Adams. During the heat of the day or cool of the evening this extensive and beautiful forest has always been a favorite haunt. Tall, athletic pines, that bend in the breeze like whalebone, lift their immense clusters of impenetrable foliage on high. The sighs of lovers are softly echoed in their green tops; voices and laughter issue from it. We, too, will swing our hammock here, and breathe the healing fragrance that is so grateful.

In a little enclosure of rough stone, on the Bigelow place, lie the remains of the ill-fated Willey family, who were destroyed by the memorable slide of 1826. The inscription closes with this not too lucid figure:

Where the high terrace, making one grand sweep to the right, again unveils the same superb view of the great summits, now wholly unobstructed by houses or groves, we halt before that picture, unrivalled in these mountains, not surpassed, perhaps, upon earth, and which we never tire of gazing upon. Its most salient features have already been described; but here in their very midst, from their very heart, nature seems to have snatched a garden-spot from the haggard mountains arrested in their advance by the command, “Thus far, and no farther!” The elms, all grace, all refinement of form, bend before the fierce blasts of winter, but stir not. The frozen east wind flies shrieking through, as if to tear them limb from limb. The ground is littered with their branches. They bow meekly before its rage, but stir not. Really, they seem so many sentinels jealously guarding that repose of which the vale is so eloquently the expression. The vale regards the stormy summits around with the unconcern of perfect security. It is rest to look at it.

Again we scan the great peaks which in clear days come boldly down and stand at our very doors, but on hazy ones remove to a vast distance, keeping vaguely aloof day in and day out. Sometimes they are in the sulks, sometimes bold and forward. By turns they are graciously condescending, or tantalizingly incomprehensible. One time they muffle themselves in clouds from head to foot, so we cannot detect a suggestive line or a contour; another, throwing off all disguise, they expose their most secret beauties to the free gaze of the multitude. This is to set the beholder’s blood on fire with the passion to climb as high as those gray shafts of everlasting rock that so proudly survey the creeping leagues beneath them.

Nowhere is the unapproachable grandeur of Mount Washington more fully manifested than here. This large and impressive view is at once suggestive of that glorious pre-eminence always associated with high mountains. There are mountains, respectable ones too, in the middle distance; but over these the great peak lords it with undisputed sway. The bold and firm, though gradual, lines of ascent culminating at the apex, extend over leagues of sky. After a clear sunset, Mount Washington takes the same dull lead-color of the clouds hovering like enormous night-birds over its head.

North Conway permits, to the tourist, a choice of two very agreeable excursions, either of which may be made in a day, although they could profitably occupy a week. One is to follow the course of the Saco, through the great Notch, to Fabyans, where you are on the westward side of the great range, and where you take the rail to the summit of Mount Washington. The other excursion is to diverge from the Saco Valley three or four miles from North Conway, ascending the valley of Ellis River – one of the lame affluents of the Saco – through the Pinkham Notch to the Glen House, where you are exactly under the eastern foot of Mount Washington, and may ascend it, by the carriage-road, in a coach-and-four. We had already chosen the first route, and as soon as the roads were a little settled we began our march.

The storm was over. The keen north wind drove the mists in utter rout before it. Peak after peak started out of the clouds, glowered on us a moment, and then muffled his enormous head in fleecy vapor. The clouds seemed thronged with monstrous apparitions, struggling fiercely with the gale, which in pure wantonness tore aside the magic drapery that rendered them invisible, scattering its tattered rags far and wide over the valley.

Now the sun entered upon the work begun by the wind. Quicker than thought, a ray of liquid flame transfixed the vapors, flashed upon the vale, and, flying from summit to summit, kindled them with newborn splendor. One would have said a flaming javelin, hurled from high heaven, had just cleft its dazzling way to earth. The mists slunk away and hid themselves. The valley was inundated with golden light. Even the dark faces of the cliffs brightened and beamed upon the vale, where the bronzed foliage fluttered, and the river leaped for joy. In a little time nothing was left but scattered clouds winging their way toward the lowlands.

Near Glen Station is one of those curiosities – a transported boulder – which was undoubtedly left while on its travels through the mountains, poised upon four smaller ones, in the position seen in the engraving.

Three miles below the village of Bartlett we stopped before a farm-house, with the gable-end toward the road, to inquire the distance to the next tavern, where we meant to pass the night. A gruff voice from the inside growled something by way of reply; but as its owner, whoever he might be, did not take the trouble to open his door, the answer was unintelligible.

“The churl!” muttered the colonel. “I have a great mind to teach him to open when a gentleman knocks.”

“And I advise you not to try it,” said the voice from the inside.

The one thing a Kentuckian never shrinks from is a challenge. He only said, “Wait a minute,” while putting his broad shoulder against the door; but now George and I interfered. Neither of us had any desire to signalize our entry into the village by a brawl, and after some trouble we succeeded in pacifying our fire-eater with the promise to stop at this house on our way back.

“I shall know it again,” said the colonel, looking back, and nibbling his long mustache with suppressed wrath; “something has been spilled on the threshold – something like blood.”

We laughed heartily. The blood, we concluded, was in the colonel’s eyes.

Some time after nightfall we arrived in the village, having put thirteen miles of road behind us without fatigue. Our host received us with a blazing fire – what fires they do have in the mountains, to be sure! – a pitcher of cider, and the remark, “Don’t be afraid of it, gentlemen.”

All three hastened to reassure him on this point. The colonel began with a loud smack, and George finished the jug with a deep sigh.

“Don’t be afraid of it,” repeated the landlord, returning presently with a fresh pitcher. “There are five barrels more like it in the cellar.”

“Landlord,” quoth George, “let one of your boys take a mattress, two blankets, and a pillow to the cellar. I intend to pass the night there.”

“I only wish your well was full of it,” said the colonel, taking a second pull at the jug, and making a second explosion with his lips.

“Gentlemen,” said I, “we have surely entered a land of milk and honey.”

“You shall have as much of both as you desire,” said our host, very affably. “Supper is ready, gentlemen.”

After supper a man came in for whom I felt, upon the instant, one of those secret antipathies which are natural to me. The man was an utter stranger. No matter: the repugnance seized me all the same.

After a tour of the tap-room, and some words with our landlord in an undertone, the stranger went out with the look of a man who had asked for something and had been refused.

“Where have I heard that man’s voice?” said the colonel, thoughtfully.

Our landlord is one of the most genial to be found among the mountains. While sitting over the fire during the evening, the conversation turned upon the primitive simplicity of manners remarked among mountaineers in general; and our host illustrated it with this incident:

“You noticed, perhaps, a man who left here a few moments ago?” he began.

We replied affirmatively. It was my antipathy.

“Well, that man killed a traveller a few years back.”

We instinctively recoiled. The air seemed tainted with the murderer’s presence.

“Yes; dead as a mutton,” continued the landlord, punching the logs reflectively, and filling the chimney with sparks. “The man came to his house one dark and stormy night, and asked to be admitted. The man of the house flatly refused. The stranger pleaded hard, but the fellow ordered him away with threats. Finding entreaties useless, the traveller began to grow angry, and attempted to push open the door, which was only fastened by a button, as the custom is. The man of the house said nothing, but took his gun from a corner, and when the intruder crossed the threshold he put three slugs through him. The wounded man expired on the threshold, covering it with his blood.”

“Murdered him, and for that? Come, come, you are joking!” ejaculated George, with a half smile of incredulity.

“Blowed him right through, just as I tell you,” reiterated the narrator, without heeding the doubt George’s question implied.

“That sounds a little like Old Kentuck,” observed the colonel, coolly.

“Yes; but listen to the sequel, gentlemen,” resumed the landlord. “The murderer took the dead body in his arms, finding, to his horror, that it was an acquaintance with whom he had been drinking the day before; he took up the body, as I was saying, laid it out upon a table, and then went quietly to bed. In the morning he very honestly exhibited the corpse to all who passed his door, and told his story as I tell it to you. I had it from his own lips.”

“That beats Kentucky,” asseverated the colonel. For my own part, I believed the landlord was amusing himself at our expense.

“I don’t know about Kentucky,” observed the landlord; “I was never there in my life; but I do know that, when the dead man was buried, the man who killed him went to the funeral like any curious or indifferent spectator.”

This was too much. George rose from his chair, and began to be interested in a placard on the wall. “And you say this happened near here?” he slowly inquired; “perhaps, now, you could show us the very house?” he finished, dryly.

“Nothing easier. It’s only three miles back on the road you came. The blood-stain is plain, or was, on the threshold.”

We exchanged glances. This was the house where we halted to inquire our way. The colonel’s eyes dilated, but he said nothing.

“But was there no trial?” I asked.

“Trial? oh yes. After several days had run by, somebody thought of that; so one morning the slayer saddled his horse and rode over to the county-seat to inquire about it. He was tried at the next sessions, and acquitted. The judge charged justifiable homicide; that a man’s house is his fort; the jury did not leave their benches. By-the-bye, gentlemen, that is some of the man’s cider you are drinking.”

I felt decided symptoms of revolt in my stomach; George made a grimace, and the colonel threw his unfinished glass in the fire. During the remainder of the evening he rallied us a good deal on the subject of New England hospitality, but said no more about going back to chastise the man of the red house.5

The sun rose clear over the right shoulder of Kearsarge. After breakfast the landlord took us out and introduced us to his neighbors, the mountains. While he was making the presentation in due form, I jotted down the following, which has, at least, the merit of conciseness:

Upper Bartlett: an ellipse of fertile land; three Lombardy poplars; a river murmuring unseen; a wall of mountains, with Kearsarge looking up, and Carrigain looking down the intervale. Item: the cider is excellent.

We had before us the range extending between Swift River and the Saco, over which I looked from the summit of Chocorua straight to Mount Washington. To the east this range is joined with the out-works of Moat. Then come Table, Bear, Silver Spring (Bartlett Haystack), and Tremont, in the order named. Then comes the valley of Sawyer’s River, with Carrigain rising between its walls; then, crossing to the north side of the Saco, the most conspicuous object is the bold Hart’s Ledge, between which and Sawyer’s Rock, on the opposite bank, the river is crowded into a narrow channel. The mountain behind the hotel is Mount Langdon, with Crawford more distant. Observe closely the curious configuration of this peak. Whether we go up or down, it nods familiarly to us from every point of approach.

But Kearsarge and Carrigain are the grand features here. One gives his adieu, the other his welcome. One is the perfection of symmetry, of grace; the other simply demands our homage. His snowy crown, dazzling white against the pure blue, was the badge of an incontestable superiority. These two mountains are the presiding genii of this charming intervale. You look first at the massive lineaments of one, then at the flowing lines of the other, as at celebrated men, whose features you would strongly impress upon the memory.

From the village street we saw the sun go down behind Mount Carrigain, and touch with his glittering sceptre the crest of Hancock. We looked up the valley dominated by the giant of the Pemigewasset wilderness with feelings of high respect for this illustrious hermit, who only deigns to show himself from this single point, and whose peak long yielded only to the most persevering and determined climbers.

Two days were formerly required for the ascent of this mountain, but a long day will now suffice, thanks to the path constructed under the direction of the Appalachian Club. The mountain is four thousand six hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, and is wooded to its summit. The valley of Sawyer’s River drains the deep basin between Carrigain and Hancock, entering the Saco near the railroad station called Livermore. The lumbermen have now penetrated this valley to the foot of the mountain, with their rude logging roads, offering a way soon, it is hoped, to be made plainer for future climbers than it was our lot to find it.

Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the mountains, we now regarded distances with disdain, and fatigue with indifference. We had learned to make our toilets in the stream, and our beds in the fragrant groves. Truly, the bronzed faces that peered at us as we bent over some solemn, pine-shaded pool were not those we had been accustomed to seeing at home; but having solved the problem of man’s true existence, we only laughed at each other’s tawny countenances while shouldering our packs and tightening our belts for the day’s march.

Leaving Bartlett at an early hour, we turned aside from the highway a little beyond the bridge which spans Sawyer’s River, and were soon following a rough and stony cart-way ascending the banks of this stream, which thundered along its rocky bed, making the woods echo with its roar. The road grew rapidly worse, the river wilder, the forest gloomier, until, at the end of two miles, coming suddenly out into the sun, we entered a rude street of unpainted cabins, terminating at some saw-mills. This hamlet, which to the artistic eye so disadvantageously replaces the original forest, is the only settlement in the large township of Livermore. Its mission is to ravage and lay waste the adjacent mountains. Notwithstanding the occupation is legitimate, one instinctively rebels at the waste around him, where the splendid natural forest, literally hewed and hacked in pieces, exposes rudely all the deformities of the mountains. But this lost hamlet is the first in which a genuine emotion of any kind awaits the traveller. Ten to one it is like nothing he ever dreamed of; his surprise is, therefore, extreme. The men were rough, hardy-looking fellows; the women appeared contented, but as if hard work had destroyed their good looks prematurely. Both announced, by their looks and their manner, that the life they led was no child’s play; the men spoke only when addressed; the women stole furtive glances at us; the half-dressed children stopped their play to stare at the strangers. Here was neither spire nor bell. One cow furnished all the milk for the commonalty. The mills being shut, there was no sound except the river plashing over the rocks far down in the gorge below; and had I encountered such a place on the sea-coast or the frontier, I should at once have said I had stumbled upon the secret hold of outlaws and smugglers, into which signs, grips, and passwords were necessary to procure admission. To me, therefore, the hamlet of Livermore was a wholly new experience.

From this hamlet to the foot of the mountain is a long and uninteresting tramp of five miles through the woods. We found the walking good, and strode rapidly on, coming first to a wood-cutter’s camp pitched on the banks of Carrigain Brook, and next to the clearing they had made at the mountain’s foot. Here the actual work of the ascent began in earnest.

Carrigain is solid, compact, massive. It is covered from head to foot with forest. No incident of the way diverts the attention for a single moment from the severe exertion required to overcome its steeply inclined side; no breathing levels, no restful outlooks, no gorges, no precipices, no cascades break the monotony of the escalade. We conquer, as Napoleon’s grenadiers did, by our legs. It is the most inexorable of mountains, and the most exasperating. From base to summit you cannot obtain a cup of water to slake your thirst.

Two hours of this brought us out upon the bare summit of the great northern spur, beyond which the true peak rose a few hundred feet higher. Carrigain, at once the desire and the bugbear of climbers, was beneath our feet.

We have already examined, from the rocks of Chocorua, the situation of this peak. We then entitled it the Hub of the White Mountains. It reveals all the magnitude, unfolds the topography of the woody wilderness stretching between the Saco and the Pemigewasset valleys. As nearly as possible, it exhibits the same amazing profusion of unbroken forest, here and there darkly streaked by hidden watercourses, as when the daring foot of the first climber pressed the unviolated crest of the august peak of Washington. In all its length and breadth there is not one object that suggests, even remotely, the presence of man. We saw not even the smoke of a hunter’s camp. All was just as created; an absolute, savage, unkempt wilderness.

Heavens, what a bristling array of dark and shaggy mountains! Now and then, where water gleamed out of their hideous depths, a great brilliant eye seemed watching us from afar. We knew that we had only to look up to see a dazzling circlet of lofty peaks drawn around the horizon, chains set with glittering stones, clusters sparkling with antique crests; still we could not withdraw our eyes from the profound abysses sunk deep in the bowels of the land, typical of the uncovered bed of the primeval ocean, sad and terrible, from which that ocean seemed only to have just receded.

But who shall describe all this solitary, this oppressive grandeur? and what language portray the awfulness of these untrodden mountains? Now and then, high up their bleak summits, a patch of forest had been plucked up by the roots, or shaken from its hold in the throes of the mountain, laid bare a long and glittering scar, red as a half-closed wound. Such is the appearance of Mount Lowell, on the other side of the gap dividing Carrigain from the Notch mountains. We saw where the dark slope of Mount Willey gives birth to the infant Merrimack. We saw the confluent waters of this stream, so light of foot, speeding through the gloomy defiles, as if fear had given them wings. We saw the huge mass of Mount Hancock force itself slowly upward out of the press. Unutterable lawlessness stamped the whole region as its own.

That I have thus dwelt upon its most extraordinary feature, instead of examining the landscape in detail, must suffice for the intelligent reader. I have not the temerity to coolly put the dissecting-knife into its heart. To science the things which belong to science. Besides, to the man of feeling all this is but secondary. We are not here to make a chart.

After a visit to the high summit, where some work was done in the interest of future climbers, we set out at four in the afternoon, on our return down the mountain. A second time we halted on the spur to glance upward at the heap of summits over which Mount Washington lifts a regular dome. The long line of peaks, ascending from Crawford’s, seems approaching it by a succession of huge steps. It was after dark when we saw the lights of the village before us, and were again warmly welcomed by the rousing fire and smoking viands of mine host.