Your topography is entirely dislocated. You must begin your acquaintance anew. Fresh lines and curves, new forms and faces and chameleon tints, thrust you off from the secrets of the Storm-Kings. While you fancy yourself to be battering down the citadel, you are but knocking feebly at the out-works. You have caught a single phase, and their name is legion. Infinite as light, infinite as form, infinite as motion, so infinite are the mountains. Purple and intense against the glowing sunset sky, the Pilot range curves its strong outlines, or shimmers steely-blue in the noonday haze. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge of their ever-vanishing and ever-returning splendors. New every morning, fresh every evening, we fancy each pageant fairer and finer than the last. Every summer hour, a messenger from heaven, is charged with the waiting landscape, and drapes it with its own garment of woven light, celestial broidery. Sunshine crowns the crests, and stamps their kinship to the skies. Shadows nestle in the dells, flit over the ridges, hide under the overhanging cliffs, to be chased out in gleeful frolic by the slant sunbeams of the mellow afternoon. Clouds and vapors and unseen hands of heaven flood the hills with beauty. They have drunk in the warmth and life of the sun, they quiver beneath his burning glance, they lie steeped in color, gorgeous, tremulous, passionate, rosy red dropping away into pale gold, emeralds dim and sullen where they ripple down towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sitteth still and at rest.
On such an evening, never to be forgotten, we stood alone with the night. Day had gone softly, evening came slowly. There was no speech nor language, only hope and passion and purpose died gently out. Individualities were not, and we stood at one with the universe, hand in hand with the immortals, silent, listening. It was as if the heavens should give up their secret, and smite us with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and darkling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from sight of human face or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive the incense of the world.
Multifold mists join hands with the light to play fantastic tricks upon these mighty monarchs. The closing day is tender, bringing sacrifice and oblation; but the day of flitting clouds and frequent showers riots in changing joys. Every subordinate eminence that has arrogated to itself the sublimity of the distant mountain, against whose rocky sides it lay lost, is unmasked by the vapors that gather behind it and reveal its low-lying outlines. Every little dimple of the hills has its chalice of mountain wine. The mist stretches above the ridge, a long, low, level causeway, solid as the mountains themselves, which buttress its farther side, a via triumpha, meet highway for the returning chariot of an emperor. It rears itself from the valleys, a dragon rampant and with horrid jaws. It flings itself with smothering caresses about the burly mountains, and stifles them in its close embrace. It trails along the hills, floating in filmy, parting gauze, scattering little flecks of pearl, fringing itself over the hollows, and hustling against a rocky breastwork that bars its onward going. It wreathes upward, curling around the peaks and veiling summits, whose slopes shine white in the unclouded sun. It shuts down gray, dense, sombre, with moody monotone. It opens roguishly one little loop-hole, through which—cloud above, cloud below, cloud on this side and on that—you see a sweet, violet-hued mountain-dome, lying against a background of brilliant blue sky,—just for one heart-beat, and it closes again, gray, sheeted, monotonous.
Leaving the valley, and driving along the Jefferson road, you have the mountains under an entirely new aspect. Before, they stood, as it were, endwise. Now you have them at broadside. Mile after mile you pass under their solid ramparts, but far enough to receive the idea of their height and breadth, their vast material greatness,—far enough to let the broad green levels of the intervale slide between, with here and there a graceful elm, towering and protective, and here and there a brown farm-house. But man's works show puny and mean beside nature, which seems spontaneous as a thought. Man's work is a toil; nature's is a relief. Man labors to attain abundance; nature, to throw off superabundance. The mountain-sides bristle with forests; man drags himself from his valley, and slowly and painfully levels an inch or two for his use; just a little way here and there a green field has crept up into the forest. The mountain-chin has one or two shaven spots; but for the greater part his beard is still unshorn. All along he sends down his boon to men. Everywhere you hear the scurrying feet of little brooks, tumbling pell-mell down the rocks in their frantic haste to reach a goal;—often a pleasant cottage-door, to lighten the burden and cool the brow of toil; often to pour through a hollow log by the wayside,—a never-failing beneficence and joy to the wearied, trusty horses. From the piazza of the Waumbeck House—a quiet, pleasant, home-like little hotel in Jefferson, and the only one, so far as I know, that has had the grace to take to itself one of the old Indian names in which the region abounds, Waumbeck, Waumbeck-Methna, Mountains of Snowy-Foreheads—a very panorama of magnificence unfolds itself. The whole horizon is rimmed with mountain-ranges. The White Mountain chain stands out bold and firm, sending greeting to his peers afar. Franconia answers clear and bright from the south-west; and from beyond the Connecticut the Green hills make response. Loth to leave, we turn away from these grand out-lying bulwarks to front on our return bulwarks as grand and massive, behind whose impregnable walls we seem shut in from the world forever.
A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side-journey to Bethel,—a village which no one ever heard of, at least I never did, till now; but when we did hear, we heard so much and so well that we at once started on a tour of exploration, and found—as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen of Sheba—there was more of it than we expected. The ride down in the train, if you are willing and able to stand on the rear platform of the rear car, is of surpassing beauty. The mountains seem to rise and approach in dumb, reluctant farewell. The river bends and insinuates, spreading out to you all its islands of delight. Molten in its depths, golden in its shallows, it meanders through its meadows, a joy forever. Bethel sits on its banks, loveliest of rural villages, and gently unfolds its beauties to your longing eyes. The Bethel House,—a large old-fashioned country-house, with one of those broad, social second-story piazzas, and a well bubbling up in the middle of the dining-room—think of that, Master Brooke!—a hotel whose landlord welcomes you with lemonade and roses (perhaps he wouldn't YOU!),—a hotel terrible to evil-doers, but a praise to them that do well, inasmuch as it is conducted on the millennial principle of quietly frightening away disagreeable people with high rates, and fascinating amiable people with reasonable ones, so that, of course, you have the wheat without the chaff,—a hotel where people go to rest and enjoy, and wear morning-dresses all day, and are fine only when they choose—indeed, you can do that anywhere, if you only think so. The idea that you must lug all your best clothes through the wilderness is absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of bisection, a muslin spencer for warm evenings, and a velvet bodice when you design to be gorgeous, will take you through with all the honors of war. Besides, there are always sure to be plenty of people in every drawing-room who will be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your eyes luxuriously on them, and gratefully feel that the work is so well done as to need no co-operation of yours, and that you can be comfortable with an easy conscience. Where was I? O, on the top, of Paradise Hill, I believe, surveying Paradise, a little indistinct and quavering in the sheen of a summer noon, but clear enough to reveal its Pison, its Gilton, its Hiddekel, and Euphrates, compassing the whole land of Havilah; or perhaps I was on Sparrowhawk, beholding Paradise from another point, dotted with homes and church-spires, rich and fertile, fair still, with compassing river and tranquil lake; or, more probable than either, I was driving along the highland that skirts the golden meadows through which the river purls, ruddy in the setting sun, and rejoicing in the beauty amid which he lives and moves and has his being. Lovely Bethel, fairest ornament of the sturdy mountain-land, tender and smiling as if no storm had ever swept, no sin ever marred,—in Arcadia that no one would ever leave but for the magic of the drive back to Gorham through piny woods, under frowning mountains, circled with all the glories of sky and river,—a drive so enticing, that, when you reach Gorham, straight back again you will go to Bethel, and so forever oscillate, unless some stronger magnet interpose.
A rainy day among the mountains is generally considered rather dismal, but I find that I like it. Apart from the fact that you wish, or ought to wish, to see Nature in all her aspects, it is a very beneficent arrangement of Providence, that, when eyes and brain and heart are weary with looking and receiving, an impenetrable barrier is noiselessly let down, and you are forced to rest. Besides, there are many things which it is not absolutely essential to see, but which, nevertheless, are very interesting in the sight. You would not think of turning away from a mountain or a waterfall to visit them, but when you are forcibly shut out from both, you condescend to homelier sights. For instance, I wonder how many frequenters of the Alpine house ever saw or know that there is a dairy in its Plutonian regions. A rainy day discovered it to us, and, with many an injunction touching possible dust, we were bidden into those mysterious precincts. A carpet, laid loose over the steps, forestalled every atom of defilement, and, descending cautiously and fearfully through portals and outer courts, we trod presently the adytum. It was a dark, cool, silent place. The floors were white, spotless, and actually fragrant with cleanliness. The sides of the room were lined with shelves, the shelves begemmed with bright pans, and the bright pans filled with milk,—I don't know how many pans there were, but I should think about a million,—and there was a mound of pails piled up to be washed, and cosy little colonies of butter, pleasant to eyes, nose, and mouth, and a curious machine to work butter over, consisting of something like a table in the shape of the letter V, the flat part a trough, with a wooden handle to push back and forth, and the buttermilk running out at the apex of the V. If the principle on which it is constructed is a secret, I don't believe I have divulged it; but I do not aim to let you know precisely what it is, only that there is such a thing. I hope now that every one will not flock down cellar the moment he alights from the Gorham train. I should be very sorry to divert the stream of travel into Mr. Hitchcock's dairy, for I am sure any great influx of visitors would sorely disconcert the good genius who presides there, and would be an ill requital for her kindness to us; but it was so novel and pleasant a sight that I am sure she will pardon me for speaking of it just this once.
Another mild entertainment during an intermittent rain is a run of about a mile up to the "hennery," which buds and blossoms with the dearest little ducks of ducks, broad-billed, downy, toddling, tumbling in and out of a trough of water, and getting continually lost on the bluff outside; little chickens and turkeys, and great turkeys, not pleasant to the eye, but good for food, and turkey-gobblers, stiffest-mannered of all the feathered creation; and geese, sailing in the creek majestic, or waddling on the grass dumpy; and two or three wild geese, tolled down from the sky, and clipped away from it forever; and guinea-hens, speckled and spheral; and, most magnificent of all, a pea cock, who stands in a corner and unfolds the magnificence of his tail. Watching his movements, I could not but reflect upon the superior advantages which a peacock has over a woman. The gorgeousness of his apparel is such that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed in the like; yet so admirable is the contrivance for its management that no suspicion of mud or moisture stains its brilliancy. A woman must have recourse to clumsy contrivances of india-rubber and gutta-percha if her silken skirts shall not trail ignobly in the dust. The peacock at will rears his train in a graceful curve, and defies defilement.
Besides abundance of food and parade-ground, these happy fowls have a very agreeable prospect. Their abrupt knoll commands a respectable section of the Androscoggin Valley,—rich meadow-lands, the humanities of church-spire and cottage, the low green sweep of the intervale through which the river croons its quiet way under shadows of rock and tree, answering softly to the hum of bee and song of bird,—answering just as softly to the snort and shriek of its hot-breathed rival, the railroad. Doubtless the railroad, swift, energetic, prompt, gives itself many an air over the slow-going, calm-souled water-way, but let Monsieur Chemin de Fer look to his laurels,—a thing of yesterday and tomorrow,—a thing of iron and oil and accidents. I, the River, descend from the everlasting mountains. I was born of the perpetual hills. I fear no more the heat o' the sun, nor the furious winter's rages; no obstacle daunts me. Time cannot terrify. My power shall never faint, my foundations never shrink, my fountains never fail.
"Men may come, and men may go,
But I go on forever."
And the railroad, pertinacious, intrusive, aggressive, is, after all, the dependent follower, the abject copyist of the river. Toss and scorn as it may, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes and ages almost would have been necessary to tunnel those mountains, if indeed tunnelling had been possible, but the river winds at its own sweet will. Without sound of hammer or axe, by force of its own heaven-born instincts, it has levelled its lovely way unerring, and wherever it goes, thither goes the railroad, to its own infinite gain. Railroads are not generally considered picturesque, but from the standpoint of that hennery, and from several other standpoints, I had no fault to find. Unable to go straight on, as the manner of railroads is, it bends to all the wayward little fancies of the river, piercing the wild wood, curling around the base of the granite hills, now let loose a space to shoot across the glade, joyful of the permission to indulge its railroad instinct of straightness; and, amid so much irregularity and headlong wilfulness, a straight line is really refreshing. Up the sides of its embankment wild vines have twisted and climbed, and wild-flowers have budded into bloom.