With the name of Dartmouth College will always be associated that of Daniel Webster (Vol. 28, p. 460), not only because he was graduated there in 1801, but because the famous “Dartmouth College case,” in which Webster appeared for the college before the United States Supreme Court, was the first in which that august tribunal fully asserted its power to support the Federal constitution by nullifying any usurpatory statutes passed by state legislatures.
When you turn away from the Connecticut River to go up the valley of the Ammonoosuc, you are fairly in the White Mountain region, which the Britannica (Vol. 19, p. 490) describes in part as follows:
The White Mountains
“The White Mountains, a continuation of the Appalachian system, rise very abruptly in several short ranges and in outlying mountain masses from a base level of 700–1500 ft. to generally rounded summits, the heights of several of which are nowhere exceeded in the eastern part of the United States except in the Black and the Unaka mountains of North Carolina; seventy-four rise more than 3000 ft. above the sea, twelve more than 5000 ft., and the highest, Mount Washington, attains an elevation of 6293 ft.
The principal ranges, the Presidential, the Franconia and the Carter-Moriah, have a north-eastern and south-western trend. The Presidential, in the north-eastern part of the region, is separated from the Franconia on the south-west by the Crawford, or White Mountain Notch, about 2000 ft. in depth, in which the Ammonoosuc and Saco rivers find a passage, and from the Carter-Moriah, parallel to it on the east, by the Glen-Ellis and Peabody rivers, the former noted for its beautiful falls. On the Presidential range, which is about 20 m. in length, are Mount Washington and nine other peaks exceeding 5000 ft. in height: Mount Adams, 5805 ft.; Mount Jefferson, 5725 ft.; Mount Sam Adams, 5585 ft.; Mount Clay, 5554 ft.; Boot Spur, 5520 ft.; Mount Monroe, 5390 ft.; J. Q. Adams Peak, 5384 ft.; Mount Madison, 5380 ft.; and Mount Franklin, 5028 ft. On the Franconia, a much shorter range, are Mount Lafayette, 5269 ft.; Mount Lincoln, 5098 ft.; and four others exceeding 4000 ft. The highest peak on the Carter-Moriah range is Carter Dome, 4860 ft., but seven others exceed 4000 ft. Loftiest of the isolated mountains is Moosilauke noted for its magnificent view-point, 4810 ft. above the sea. Separating Franconia and Pemigewasset ranges is the romantic Franconia Notch, overlooking which from the upper cliffs of Profile Mountain is a remarkable human profile, The Great Stone Face, immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne; here, too, is the Franconia Flume, a narrow upright fissure, 60 ft. in height, with beautiful waterfalls.
The whole White Mountain region abounds in deep narrow valleys, romantic glens, ravines, flumes, waterfalls, brooks and lakes.... The headwaters of the rivers are for the most part mountain streams or elevated lakes; farther on their swift and winding currents—flowing sometimes between wide intervales, sometimes between rocky banks—are marked by numerous falls and fed by lakes.
The lakes and ponds, numbering several hundred, were formed by glacial action and the scenery of many of them is scarcely less attractive than that of the mountains. The largest and most widely known is Lake Winnepesaukee on the S. border of the White Mountain region; this is about 20 m. long and from 1 to 8 m. wide, is dotted by 274 islands, mostly verdant, and has clear water and a rather level shore, back of which hills or mountains rise on all sides. Among the more prominent of many others that are admired for their beauty are Squam, New Found, Sunapee and Ossipee, all within a radius of a few miles from Winnepesaukee; Massabesic farther S.; and Diamond Ponds, Umbagog and Connecticut lakes, N. of the White Mountains. The rivers with their numerous falls and the lakes with their high altitudes furnish a vast amount of water power for manufacturing, the Merrimac, in particular, into which many of the larger lakes, including Winnepesaukee, find an outlet, is one of the greatest power-yielding streams of the world.”
After exploring the country thus described in the Britannica, you can take for your return trip to New York, the route by Portland, Me., that by Lake Winnepesaukee and Portsmouth, or, that by Plymouth and Manchester, N. H. By any of these ways, you will visit Boston, and its famous suburbs, Concord, Lexington, Brookline, Salem and Marblehead, whose historical and literary associations are fully described in the Britannica.
Automobiles
The article Motor Vehicles (Vol. 18, p. 914), with 37 illustrations, is by the late C. S. Rolls, the famous builder and driver of motor cars, with a special section on commercial vehicles, by Edward Shrapnell Smith, editor of The Commercial Motor. The story of the development of the car, told at the beginning of the article, is full of human interest, for it shows how national characteristics affect industries. From 1802, when Richard Trevithick built, in England, the first practical road carriage, until 1885, all the most promising efforts to further mechanical road traffic were made by English inventors. As early as 1824 there was a regular motor-omnibus service between Cheltenham and Gloucester, at a speed that sometimes (perhaps down a hill) reached 14 miles an hour; and if inventors had been encouraged, the effort to lighten road engines would have produced the tubular boiler long before it actually appeared. But the influence of the landowning, horse-breeding, horse-loving English aristocracy was too strong, and one act of Parliament after another imposed destructive restrictions, culminating in the law passed in 1865, making 4 miles an hour the maximum speed, and requiring that a man showing a red flag should march ahead of the engine! Of course this drove every engine off the road except a steam roller or the heaviest type of traction engine. In 1885 Daimler invented the internal combustion engine, and for a moment Germany seemed likely to lead the world. But Daimler failed to hit upon a satisfactory system of transmission, and although his engine worked well in motor boats, the risk of starting a car on the road was too great. His boat, shown at the Paris Exposition of 1887, attracted the attention of the French firm of Panhard & Levassor, makers of wood-working machinery. They bought the French rights, and Levassor devised the clutch, the gear-box and the whole system of connecting the engine with its work, which, save for improvements in detail, are all in use to-day. In 1895 the French car which won the race from Paris to Bordeaux covered the 744 miles at a mean speed of 15 miles an hour, and the world realized that the motor car was a practical means of transportation. But it was not until 1896 that the English parliament gave cars the freedom of the roads, and that English manufacturers could see a future for themselves.