Gala-Days

by Gail Hamilton

Berlin Falls is hardly a wet-day resource, but the day on which we saw it changed its mind after we left the hotel, and from clouds and promise of sunshine turned into clouds and certainty of rain. For all that, the drive along the river, within sound of its roaring and gurgling and rippling and laughing overflow of joy, with occasional glimpses of it through the trees, with gray cloud-curtains constantly dropping, then suddenly lifting, and gray sheets of rain fringing down before us, and the thirsty, parched leaves, intoxicated with their much mead of the mountains, slapping us saucily on the check, or in mad revel flinging into our faces their goblets of honey-dew,—ah! it was a carnival of tricksy delight, making the blood glow like wine. The falls, which chanced to be indeed no falls, but shower-swollen into rapids, are one of the most wonderful presentations of Nature's masonry that I have ever seen. It is not the water, but the rock, that amazes. The whole Androscoggin River gathers up its strength and plunges through a gorge,—a gateway in the solid rock is regular, as upright, as if man had brought in the whole force of his geometry and gunpowder to the admeasurement and excavation,—plunges, conscious of imprisonment and the insult to its slighted majesty,—plunges with fierce protest and frenzy of rage, breaks against a grim, unyielding rock to dash itself into a thousand whirling waves; then rushes on to be again imprisoned between the pillars of another gorge, only less regular, not less inexorable, than the first; then, leaping and surging, it beats against its banks, and is hurled wrathfully back in jets of spray and wreaths of foam; or, soothed into gentler mood by the soft touch of mosses on the brown old rocks, it leaps lightly up their dripping sides, and trickles back from the green, wet, overhanging spray, and so, all passion sobbed away, it babbles down to its bed of Lincoln green, where Robin Hood and Maid Marian wait under the oaken boughs.

In the leaden, heavy air the scene was sombre,—tragic. In sunshine and shadows it must have other moods, perhaps a different character; I did not see the sunshine play upon it.

But the day of days you shall give to the mountain. The mountain, Washington, king of all this Atlantic coast,—at least till but just now, when some designing Warwick comes forward to press the claims of an ignoble Carolinian upstart, with, of course, a due and formidable array of feet and figures: but if they have such a mountain, where, I should like to know, has he been all these years? A mountain is not a thing that you can put away in your pocket, or hide under the eaves till an accident reveals its whereabouts. Verily our misguided brethren have much to do to make out a case; and, in the firm belief that I am climbing up the highest point of land this side the Rocky Mountains, I begin my journey.

Time was when the ascent of Mount Washington could be justly considered a difficult and dangerous feat; but the Spirit of the Age who has many worse things than this to answer for, has struck in and felled and graded and curbed, till now one can ascend the mountain as safely as he goes to market. I consider this road one of the greatest triumphs of that heavily responsible spirit. Loquacious lovers of the "romantic" lament the absence of danger and its excitements, and the road does indeed lie open to that objection. He who in these latter days would earn a reputation for enterprise—and I fancy the love of adventure to be far less common than the love of being thought adventurous—must have recourse to some such forlorn hope as going up the mountain on the ice in midwinter, or coasting down on a hand-sled. But I have no inclination in that direction. I am willing to encounter risks, if there is no other way of attaining objects. But risks in and of themselves are a nuisance. If there is no more excellent way, of course you must clamber along steep, rugged stairways of bridle-paths, where a single misstep will send you plunging upon a cruel and bloody death; but so far as choice goes, one would much more wisely ride over a civilized road, where he can have his whole mind for the mountain, and not be continually hampered with fears and watchfulness for his own personal safety. It is a great mistake to suppose that discomfort is necessarily heroism. Besides, to have opened a carriage-way up the mountain is to have brought the mountain with all its possessions down to the cradle of the young and the crutch of the old,—almost to the couch of the invalid. I saw recorded against one name in the books of the Tip-top House the significant item, "aged eight months." Probably the youngster was not directly much benefited by his excursion, but you are to remember that perhaps his mother could not have come without him, and therein lay the benefit. The day before our ascent, a lady over seventy years old ascended without extreme fatigue or any injury. Several days after, a lady with apparently but a few weeks of earth before her, made the ascent to satisfy the longings of her heart, and gaze upon the expanses of this, before the radiance of another world should burst upon her view. If people insist upon encountering danger, they can find a swift river and ford it, or pile up a heap of stones and climb them, or volunteer to serve their country in the army: meanwhile, let us rejoice that thousands who have been shut away from the feast may now sit down to the table of the Lord.

This road, we were told, was begun about eight years ago, but by disastrous circumstances its completion was delayed until within a year or two. Looking at the country through which it lies, the only wonder is that it ever reached completion. As it is, I believe its proprietors do not consider it quite finished, and are continually working upon its improvement. Good or bad, it seems to me to be much the best road anywhere in the region. The pitches and holes that would fain make coaching on the common roads so precarious are entirely left out here. The ascent is continuous. Not a step but leads upward. The rise was directed never to exceed one foot in six, and it does not; the average is one foot in eight. Of course, to accomplish this there must be a great deal of winding and turning. In one place you can look down upon what seem to be three roads running nearly parallel along a ridge, but what is really the one road twisting to its ascent. Some idea of the skill and science required to engineer it may be gathered by looking into the tangled wilderness and rocky roughness that lie still each side the way. Through such a gnarled, knotted, interlaced jungle of big trees and little trees, and all manner of tangled twining undergrowths, lining the sides of precipices, or hanging with bare roots over them, concealing dangers till the shuddering soul almost plunges into them, the road-men carefully and painfully sought and fought their way. Up on rocky heights it was comparatively easy, for, as one very expressively phrased it, every stone which they pried up left a hole and made a hole. The stone wrenched from above rolled below, and go lowered the height and raised the depth, and constantly tended to levelness. Besides, there were no huge tree-trunks to be extracted from the unwilling jaws of the mountain by forest-dentists, with much sweat and toil and pain of dentist if not of jaws. Since, also, the rise of one foot in six was considered as great as was compatible with the well-being and well-doing of horses, whenever the way came upon a knob or a breastwork that refused to be brought down within the orthodox dimensions, it must turn. If the knob would not yield, the way must, and, in consequence, its lengthened bitterness is long drawn out. A line that continually doubles on itself is naturally longer than one which goes straight to the mark. Mount Washington is little more than a mile high; the road that creeps up its surly sides is eight miles long. Frost and freshet are constant foes; the one heaves and cracks, and the other tears down through the cracks to undermine and destroy. Twenty-seven new culverts, we were told, had been made, within the space of a mile and a half, since last year; and these culverts are no child's play, but durable works,—aqueducts lined with stone and bridged with plank, large enough for a man to pass through with a wheelbarrow, and laid diagonally across the road, so that the torrents pouring down the gutter shall not have to turn a right angle, which they would gladly evade doing, but a very obtuse one, which they cannot in conscience refuse; and, as the road all the way is built a little higher on the precipice side than on the mountain side, the water naturally runs into the gutter on that side, and so is easily beguiled into leaving the road, which it would delight to destroy, and, roaring through the culvert, tumbles unwarily down the precipice before it knows what it is about.

I have heard it said, that the man who originated this road has since become insane. More likely he was insane at the time. Surely, no man in his senses would ever have projected a scheme so wild and chimerical, so evidently impossible of fulfilment. Projected it was, however, not only in fancy, but in fact, to our great content; and so, tamely but comfortably, an untiring cavalcade, we leave the peaceful glen set at the mountain's base, and wind through the lovely, lively woods, tremulous with sunshine and shadows, musical with the manifold songs of its pregnant solitudes, out from the woods, up from the woods, into the wild, cold, shrieking winds among the blenched rocks and the pale ghosts of dead forests stiff and stark, up and up among the caverns, and the gorges, and the dreadful chasms, piny ravines black and bottomless, steeps bare and rocky leading down to awful depths; on and on, fighting with maddened winds and the startled, wrathful wraiths, onward and upward till we stand on the bleak and shivering, the stony and soulless summit.

Desolation of desolations! Desolation of desolations! How terrible is this place! The shining mountain that flashed back to the sun his radiance is become a bald and frowning desert that appalls us with its barrenness. The sweet and sylvan approach gave no sign of such a goal, but the war between life and death was even then begun. The slant sunlight glinted through the jungle and bathed us with its glory of golden-green. The shining boles of the silvery gray birch shot up straight, and the white birch unrolled its patches of dead pallor in the sombre, untrodden depths. The spruces quivered like pure jellies tipped with light, sunshine prisoned in every green crystal. Myrtle-vines ran along the ground, the bunch-berry hung out its white banner, and you scarcely saw the trees that lay faint and fallen in the arms of their mates. The damp, soft earth nourished its numerous brood, Terrae omni parentis alumnos, its own thirsty soul continually refreshed from springs whose sparkle we could not see, though the gurgle and ripple of their march sung out from so many hiding-places that we seemed to be

"Seated in hearing of a hundred streams."

Whole settlements of the slender, stately brakes filled the openings, and the mountain-ash drooped in graceful curves over our heads, but gradually the fine tall trees dwindled into dwarfs, chilled to the heart by the silent, pitiless cold. Others battled bravely with the bowling winds, which have stripped them bare on one side, while they seem to toss out their arms wildly on the other, imploring protection and aid from the valley-dwellers below. Up and up, and you come suddenly upon the "Silver Forest," a grove of dead white trees, naked of leaf and fruit and bud, bare of color, dry of sap and juice and life, retaining only their form,—cold set outline of their hale and hearty vigor; a skeleton plantation, bleaching in the frosty sun, yet mindful of its past existence, sturdy, and defiant of the woodman's axe; a frostwork mimicry of nature, a phantom forest. On and on, turning to overlook the path you have trodden, at every retrospect the struggle between life and death becomes more and more palpable. The Destroyer has hurled his winds, his frosts, his fires; and gray wastes, broken wastes, black wastes, attest with what signal power. But life follows closely, planting his seeds in the very footprints of death. Where blankness and bleakness seem to reign, a tiny life springs in mosses, rich with promise of better things. Long forked tongues of green are lapping up the dreary wastes, and will presently overpower them with its vivid tints. Even amid the blanched petrifaction of the Silver Grove fresh growths are creeping, and the day is not far distant that shall see those pale statues overtopped, submerged, lost in an emerald sea. Even among the rocks, the strife rages. Some mysterious principle inheres in the insensate rock, whose loss makes this crumbling, discolored, inert debris. Up you go, up and up, and life dies out. Chaos and ruin reign supreme. Headlong steeps yawn beside your path, losing their depths in darkness. Great fragments of rock cover all the ground, lie heaped, pile upon pile, jagged, gray, tilted into a thousand sharp angles, refusing a foothold, or offering it treacherously. Wild work has been here; and these gigantic wrecks bear silent witness of the uproar. It seems but a pause, not a peace. Agiocochook, Great Mountain of Spirits, rendezvous of departed souls, clothed with the strength and fired with the passions of the gods,—in what caverns under the cliffs do the wearied Titans rest? From what dungeons of gloom emerging shall they renew their elemental strife? What shall be the sign of their awaking to darken the earth with their missiles and deafen the skies with their thunder? And what daring of man is this to scorn his smiling valleys and adventure up into these realms of storm? No Titan he, yet the truest Titan of all, for he wrestled and overcame. No giant he, yet grander than the giants, since without Pelion or Ossa he has scaled heaven. Through uncounted aeons the mountain has been gathering its forces. Frost and snow and ice and the willing winds have been its sworn retainers. Cold and famine and death it flaunted in the face of the besieger. Man is of a day, and the elements are but slippery allies. A spade and a compass are his meagre weapons; yet man has conquered. The struggle was long, with many a reconnaissance and partial triumph, but at length the victory is complete. Man has placed his hand on the monarch's mane. He has pierced leviathan with a hook. The secrets of the mountain are uncovered. His fastnesses conceal no treasures that shall not be spread out to the day. His bolts and bars of ice can no longer press back the foot of the invader. Yon gray and slender ribbon, that floats down his defiles, disappearing now over his ledges to reappear on some lower range, and he lightly across the plateau,—that is his bridle of submission, his badge of servitude. Obedient to that, he yields up his hoarded wealth and pays tribute, a vassal to his lord. Men and women and little children climb up his rugged sides, and the crown upon his beetling brows is set in the circle of humanity.

In the first depression of abandonment one loses heart, and sees only the abomination of desolation; but gradually the soul lifts itself from the barren earth, and floats out upon the ocean, in which one stands islanded on a gray rock, fixed in seas of sunshine.