A monument is in course of erection, but it proceeds very slowly for want of funds. It is characteristic of the people that funds should fall short for this object, while they abound on all occasions when they are required for charitable, religious, or literary uses. The glory of the Bunker Hill struggle is immortal in the hearts of the nation, and the granite obelisk is not felt to be wanted as an expression. When it will be finished no one knows, and few seem to care, while the interest in the achievement remains as enthusiastic as ever.
While we were surveying the ground a very old man joined us with his plan of the field. It was well worn, almost tattered; but he spread it out once more for us on a block of the monumental granite, and related once again, for our benefit, the thousand times told tale. He was in the battle with his musket, being then fifteen years old. Many were the boys who struck some of the first blows in that war; and of those boys one here and there still lives, and may be known by the air of serene triumph with which he paces the field of his enterprise, once soaked with blood, but now the centre of regions where peace and progress have followed upon the achievement of freedom.
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
"Hast thou entered the storehouses of the snow?"
Book of Job.
One of the charms of such travelling as that of the English in the United States is its variety. The stopping to rest for a month at a farmhouse after a few weeks of progress by stage, with irregular hours, great fatigues, and indifferent fare, is a luxury which those only can understand who have experienced it; and it is no less a luxury to hie away from a great city, leaving behind its bustle and formalities, and the fatigues of sightseeing and society, to plunge into the deepest mountain solitude. I have a vivid recollection of the dance of spirits amid which we passed the long bridge at Boston on our way out to New-Hampshire, on the bright morning of the 16th of September. Our party consisted of four, two Americans and two English. We were to employ eight or ten days in visiting the White Mountains of New-Hampshire, returning down the valley of the Connecticut. The weather was brilliant the whole time, and I well remember how gay the hedges looked this first morning, all starred over with purple, lilach, and white asters, and gay with golden rod; with which was intermixed, here and there, a late pale brier rose. The orchards were cheerful with their apple-cropping. There was scarcely one which had not its ladder against a laden tree, its array of baskets and troughs beneath, and its company of children picking up the fruit from the grass. What a contrast to the scenery we were about to enter upon!
Of the earlier part of this trip (our visit to Lake Winnipiseogee and the Red Mountain) I gave an account in my former work,[4] little supposing that I should ever return to the subject. My narrative must now be taken up from the point where I then dropped it.
From the summit of Red Mountain I had seen what kind of scenery we were to pass through on our road to Conway. It was first mountain and wild little valleys, and then dark pine scenery; barrens, with some autumnal copses, and intervals of lake and stream. Lake Ossippee looked like what I fancy the wildest parts of Norway to be; a dark blue expanse, slightly ruffled, with pine fringing all its ledges, and promontories, bristling with pines, jutting into it; no dwellings, and no sign of life but a pair of wildfowl, bobbing and ducking, and a hawk perched on the tiptop of a scraggy blighted tree.
In the steamboat on Lake Winnipiseogee there was a party whom we at once concluded to be bride, bridegroom, and bridemaid. They were very young, and the state of the case might not have occurred to us but for the obvious pride of the youth in having a lady to take care of. Our conjectures were confirmed by the peculiar tone in which he spoke of "my wife" to the people of the inn in giving orders. It had a droll mixture of pride and awkwardness; of novelty with an attempt to make the words appear quite familiar. For some days we were perpetually meeting this party, and this afternoon they introduced themselves to me, on the ground of their having expected to see me at Portsmouth on my way to the White Mountains. I imagine they would have been too busy with their wedding arrangements to have cared much about me if I had gone. I was glad we fell in with them, as it added an interest to the trip. We looked at the scenery with their eyes, and pleased ourselves with imagining what a paradise these landscapes must appear to the young people; what a sacred region it will be to them when they look back upon it in their old age, and tell the youth of those days what the White Mountains were when they towered in the midst of a wilderness.