"I should like a cup of coffee, if you please."
There was no appearance of the observation having taken effect, so my friend spoke again:
"Will you be so good as to give me a cup of coffee?"
No answer. After a third appeal, the young lady burst out with,
"Never saw such manners! To sit down to table before the other folks come!"
I hope she was pacified by seeing that our friends, when they at length appeared, did not resent our not having waited for them.
We set out early in an open wagon for a day's excursion to Franconia Defile, a gorge in the mountains which is too frequently neglected by travellers who pass through this region. Before we reached Franconia some part of our vehicle gave way. While it was in the hands of the blacksmith we visited the large ironworks at Franconia, and sat in a boat on the sweet Ammonoosuc, watching the waters as they fell over the dam by the ironworks. When we set off again our umbrellas were forgotten; and as we entered upon the mountain region, the misty, variegated peaks told that storm was coming. The mountain sides were more precipitous than any we had seen, and Mount Lafayette towered darkly above us to the right of our winding road. We passed some beautiful tarns, fringed with trees, and brimming up so close to the foot of the precipices as to leave scarcely a footpath on their margin. A pelting rain came on, which made us glad to reach the solitary dwelling of the pass, called the Lafayette Hotel. This house had been growing in the woods thirteen weeks before, and yet we were far from being among its first guests. The host, two boys, and a nice-looking, obliging girl, wearing a string of gold beads, did their best to make us comfortable. They kindled a blazing wood fire, and the girl then prepared a dinner of hot bread and butter, broiled ham, custards, and good tea. When the shower ceased we went out and made ourselves acquainted with the principal features of the pass, sketching, reciting, and watching how the mists drove up and around the tremendous peaks, smoked out of the fissures, and wreathed about the woods on the ledges. The scene could not have been more remarkable, and scarcely more beautiful in the brightest sunshine. It was not various; its unity was its charm. It consisted of a narrow rocky road, winding between mountains which almost overhung the path, except at intervals, where there were recesses filled with woods.
After dinner our host brought in the album of the house, for even this new house had already its album. When we had given an account of ourselves, we set out, in defiance of the clouds, for the Whirlpool, four miles at least farther on. On the way we passed a beautiful lake, overhung by ash, beech, birch, and pine, with towering heights behind. Hereabout the rain came on heavily, and continued for three hours. The Whirlpool is the grand object of this pass, and it is a place in which to spend many a long summer's day. A full mountain stream, issuing from the lake we had left behind, and brawling all along our road, here gushes through a crevice into a wide basin, singularly overhung by a projecting rock, rounded and smoothed as if by art. Here the eddying water, green as the Niagara floods, carries leaves and twigs round and round, in perpetual swift motion, a portion of the waters brimming over the lower edge of the great basin at each revolution, and the pool being replenished from above. I found a shelter under a ledge of rocks, and here I could have stood for hours, listening to the splash and hiss, and watching the busy whirl. The weather, however, grew worse every moment; the driver could not keep the seats of the wagon dry any longer; and after finding, to our surprise, that we had stayed half an hour by the pool, we jumped into our vehicle and returned without delay. There were no more wandering gleams among the mountains; but, just as we descended to the plain, we saw the watery sun for a moment, and were cheered by a bright amber streak of sky above the western summits. By the time we recovered our umbrellas there was no farther need of them.
It soon became totally dark; and, if there had been any choice, the driver would have been as glad as ourselves to have stopped. But we were wet, and there were no habitations along the road; so we amused ourselves with watching one or two fireflies, the last of the season, and the driver left the horses to find their own way, as he was unable to see a yard in any direction. At last the lights of Littleton appeared, the horses put new spirit into their work, and we arrived at Gibb's door before eight o'clock. The ladies of the house were kind in their assistance to get us dried and warmed, and to provide us with tea.
Our course was subsequently to Montpelier (Vermont), and along the White River till we joined the Connecticut, along whose banks we travelled to Brattleborough, Deerfield, and Northampton. The scenery of New-Hampshire and Vermont is that to which the attention of travellers will hereafter be directed, perhaps more emphatically than to the renowned beauties of Virginia. I certainly think the Franconia Defile the noblest mountain-pass I saw in the United States.