Old Shag is not high enough to rival Chocorua or Passaconaway with its views, but it affords the only really satisfactory chance of studying those two mountains from a point between them. Chocorua varies strangely in its outlines from different points of view. From the south it looks like a huge lion couchant; from the Albany intervale it is an irregular ridge resembling a breaking wave; from Paugus it seems more like a giant fortress, with battered ramparts lifted high against the sky. A slide, invisible from other points, is seen to extend from the western foot of the peak far down into the forests of the Paugus valley. North of it a ridge densely grown with old spruce runs from the peak northwestward. It is one of the few parts of Chocorua not given up to deciduous trees. Beyond it rises the Champney Falls brook which flows northward into Swift River.
Passaconaway from the Bearcamp valley is one of the most perfect of pyramids; from Paugus it is a rough hump of sinister outline and color. The spruces upon it grow so thickly that it is hard to force a way through them, yet they spring from sides so steep that it seems a marvel that any soil or vegetation can cling to the rocks. A slide of great length shows its scar upon the eastern face, and serves to emphasize the fact that this side of Passaconaway is really less of a slope than of a continuous precipice nearly three thousand feet from summit to plain. In these almost inaccessible forests several birds from the Canadian fauna are occasionally found. I have seen there in summer both kinds of the three-toed woodpeckers; Canada grouse or spruce partridges have been shot there this autumn, and the moose-bird, or Canada jay, is occasionally seen near the lumber camps.
WHITEFACE AND PASSACONAWAY FROM PAUGUS
In descending a mountain in the afternoon which has been climbed in the morning, many new effects of light and shade, color, and even of outline, are observable. This may be puzzling to the guide who does not thoroughly know his path, but it is the one redeeming feature in a homeward scramble to those who are weary enough to regard their second view of a mountain-side as an anti-climax to the triumphant ascent of a new peak. Paugus Falls were more beautiful with the pallor of the afternoon around them, than they were with the southeastern sun shining into their rushing bubbles. They were whiter and the water consequently looked greater in volume. Again we wondered how such rare beauty could have been hidden so long in an untrodden forest, and, wondering, we blazed the trees so that those who might come after us could follow without perplexity the easy and beautiful way which we had been fortunate enough to find.
When we reached the old trail, about five o’clock, the woods seemed dark and the penetrating coolness of an autumn night was in the air. Twenty minutes later we emerged in the blackberry tangle by the abandoned saw-mill, and found wagons and warm wraps waiting for us. As we looked back towards the golden sunset, the dark dome of Old Shag stood boldly out against the sky. Fire and wind had left scars upon its face, and nature originally made it so rough in outline that “Toadback” is tellingly descriptive of its shape. Toads have their jewels, and so has Paugus, hidden in the shadows of its eastern flank.
MY HEART’S IN THE HIGHLANDS.
No matter how tightly the body may be chained to the wheel of daily duties, the spirit is free, if it so pleases, to cancel space and to bear itself away from noise and vexation into the secret places of the mountains. Well it is for him who labors early and late at the desk, if his soul can thus spread its wings and soar to deep forests, clear lakes, and rugged mountain peaks, drawing from memory, imagination, and sweet forecast, something to inspire itself to patient action, and something to strengthen the heart in its wish to do its appointed task manfully. As these bright October days slip by and my wheel of daily duties spins round and round in that granite prison called University Hall, my memory takes me back to fair Chocorua. I remember the 6th of October in the year 1884. The sun struggled through soft gray clouds and gazed upon a world of magical opposites. Every maple in a hundred townships blazed with scarlet or gold; yet soft and cold, wrapping the earth from Chocorua’s horn to the sand at the lake shore, the first snow of autumn sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. Skies of blue, forests of fire, fields of snow,—those were the delights of that matchless October dawning.
If the wheel grows too noisy I come back from these visions to my desk and its papers, and open dozens of letters from all over our broad country, from Europe, Japan, Mexico, and from distant India, whence some Harvard soldier of the Cross writes to ask tidings of his alma mater. In his day every John knew every William, and the roll of the University never climbed beyond the hundreds. Now the questioner at my side wonders how near we shall come to having three thousand students this year; while the prophet declares that in five years or less Harvard will have distanced Cambridge and Oxford, and become the greatest English-speaking University in the world. Even now her students do not all speak English. Aside from the scores of American youths who hear only light-weight silver dollar English at home, and who learn little that is better at school, there are many who come to Harvard from far-away foreign homes. The tall Bulgarian with his dark eyes full of poetry and fire; the patient Russian Jew, exiled from a cruel land, and struggling night and day to win an education and a fortune in the home of the free; the dashing young Norwegian, with winning, deferential manners and a light in his blue eyes which speaks of his own glaciers and dark fjords; the gifted Japanese, absorbing philosophy or science with such readiness as to make his slower American competitor blush with shame; the angular Armenian, with his keen, thin face and nervous hands; the self-possessed Costa Rican, the moody Icelander and his taciturn but clear-headed neighbor from Newfoundland,—all are beside me taking turns with their American fellow-students in hurrying my wheel until the day is done.
