Of Helicon again.'
"Where it meets the sea is Plum Island, its sand ridges scalloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and its distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky. Standing at its mouth, looking up its sparkling stream to its source,—a silver cascade which falls all the way from the White Mountains to the sea,—and behold a city on each successive plateau, a busy colony of human beavers around every fall. Not to mention Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence and Lowell, and Nashua and Manchester and Concord, gleaming one above the other."
THE WHITE MOUNTAIN NOTCH.
The most remarkable pass in this attractive mountain district is the great White Mountain Notch, through the heart of the range. The valley of the Ammonoosuc, farther ascended from Bethlehem Junction, soon becomes an enormous chasm, cut deeply down, and sweeping grandly around from the south towards the east, disclosing in magnificent array the splendid galaxy of Presidential Peaks as it is carved along their western bases. This Notch is formed by the headwaters of the Ammonoosuc rising among the foothills of Mount Washington, flowing out towards the west, and by the Saco River, flowing southeast to the Atlantic. The Maine Central Railway avails of this remarkable pass to get through the White Mountains, and bring the traffic of northwestern New England and Canada down to the sea. To the northward arises the Owl's Head, around which this railway circles after emerging from the western portal of the Notch, and on the northern flanks of this mountain are the head-streams of Israel River, over beyond which is Mount Starr King. Here is Jefferson, another gathering of hotels and cottages, enjoying one of the finest views of the White Mountain range, a popular resort, from which there are grand drives around the northern side of the Presidential range, seventeen miles eastward to Gorham on the Androscoggin. It was on this route that the famous view of these mountains was painted by George L. Brown—the "Crown of New England," owned by the Prince of Wales. Jefferson Hill has been described by Starr King as "the ultima thule of grandeur in an artist's pilgrimage among the New Hampshire mountains." Seven miles northwest, down the Israel River, is Lancaster, with nearly four thousand people, another favorite resort, though with more distant mountain views.
Where the Ammonoosuc, now become so small, curves around from the east towards the south at the western portal of the Notch, is Fabyan's, and here are located some of the great hotels of the district, right in front of Mount Washington. Between Fabyan's and Crawford's, four miles southward, the Presidential Range is the eastern border of the Notch and is passed in grand review. The headspring of the Ammonoosuc is on the slope of the mountain alongside Crawford's, where the floor of the valley is at its highest elevation, nineteen hundred feet above the sea and three hundred and thirty feet above Fabyan's. Higher than this the massive walls of the Notch rise some two thousand feet farther, and then slope backward up to the mountain summits, which are much higher, but invisible from the bottom of the valley. In front of Crawford's, where there is a rather broader space, one looks southward at the little oval lake which is the source of Saco River. Just beyond is the "Gate of the Notch," where the rocky projections of the huge mountains on either hand come out and almost close the passage, leaving an opening of only a few feet width for the diminutive Saco, here a mere rill, to start on its career, soon becoming a vigorous mountain torrent, leaping and bounding down the canyon. Upon the left hand of the stream the rocks have been cut out to give the wagon-road room, and on the right hand the railroad has hewn its route through the granite, the three being closely compressed between the high cliffs towering above. The Elephant's Head, formed of dark rocks, with trunk and eye well fashioned, looks down upon this "Gate," and just beyond, another cliff presents the semblance of an Indian papoose clinging to its mother's back. The little Saco soon cuts the Notch deeply down, such is its steep descent, so that in a short distance it becomes a vast ravine. Thus, with the railway high up on a gallery upon the mountain side, and the road deep down by the Saco, the ravine is cleft between Mounts Webster and Willard, the latter, as the chasm bends, falling sharply off, a tremendous precipice of steep and bare rock, when Mount Willey appears beyond. Thus the Notch deepens and broadens, becoming an enormous chasm, with the rapid river down in the bottom, constantly increasing in volume. The Saco is said to have been thus named by the Indians because of the mass of water it brings down, the word meaning "pouring out."
About three miles below the "Gate," the Notch broadens into a sort of basin enclosed by the bare walls of Mount Willard to the westward and Mount Willey to the south, curving around the long crescent-shaped slope of Mount Webster, which makes the northern border. Here is the Willey House, the scene of the Willey Slide, the great tragedy of the Notch, a small and antiquated inn, now adjoined by a modern hotel. In August, 1826, there was a terrific landslide down the slope of Mount Willey behind the old house, then kept by Samuel Willey, from whom the mountain was afterwards named. A heavy storm after a long drouth had made a flood in the Saco, and Willey, fearing an overflow, deserted his house in the night, with his family of nine persons, to seek higher ground. Suddenly the slide came down the mountain and the flight was fatal, the avalanche of rocks and dirt overwhelming them all, while a convenient boulder behind the house so deviated it that, although almost covered with rubbish, the building was uninjured. A traveller who afterwards came through the Notch found the half-buried inn deserted, with the doors open, the supper-table spread, and a Bible lying open upon it, with a pair of spectacles on the page, evidently just as they had been left in the sudden flight. Owing to the bend in the Notch there is an unrivalled view down it from the summit of Mount Willard, which thus stands practically at the head of the deep pass. The southern face of this mountain is a vast and almost perpendicular precipice, out on the brow of which the observer stands to look down the deep valley stretching far away, and enclosed between mountains rising nearly two thousand feet above him on either hand, so that the view has a singular individuality, as if one were looking at it through a camera. The depth of the gorge and the precipitous front of the mountain make the Notch a tremendous gulf. The deeply concave chasm is scooped out like an immense cylinder, having the inside covered with dense green foliage, and grandly bending around to the left until lost afar off behind the distant projecting slope of Mount Webster. The railroad stretches, a streak of brown, along the right-hand wall of the valley, twisting in and out about the promontories. Down in the bottom the thick forest hides the wagon-road and the bed of the Saco until they come out in a flat cleared green spot in front of the Willey House. The towering mountain slopes are scratched and scarred where slides have come down, and two or three bright little ribbons of white water are suspended on their sides, making cascades that help fill the river beneath. Beyond the outlet of the Notch, the eastern background is a vast sea of mountain ranges and billowy peaks, having the bold, white, pyramidal crown of proud Chocorua rising behind them. This splendid scene, regarded by many as the finest in the White Mountains, had a peculiar charm for Anthony Trollope on his American visit. He did not usually view America with favor, but he emphatically wrote: "Much of this scenery, I say, is superior to the famed and classic lands of Europe," adding "I know nothing, for instance, on the Rhine equal to the view from Mount Willard and the mountain Pass called the Notch." Most experienced observers are convinced that as an impressive exhibition of a deep mountain canyon with an enchanting background, this is not surpassed in Switzerland.
MOUNT WASHINGTON.
The Fabyan House, in front of Mount Washington, stands upon the location of the "Giant's Grave," which was an elongated mound of sand and gravel formed by the waves of an ancient lake, reacting from the adjacent mountain slopes, and rising about fifty feet. Being high, long and wide, it was just the place for a house. The tradition is that once a fierce-looking Indian stood upon this mound at night, waving a flaming torch and shouting "No paleface shall take root here; this the Great Spirit whispered in my ear." The successive burnings of hotels on this site would seem to indicate this as prophetic, and in fact no hotel did stand there any length of time until the projectors of the present large building, after the last one was burnt, as if to avoid fate, had the mound making the "Giant's Grave" levelled and obliterated. Here was built the earliest inn of the White Mountains in 1803 by a sawmill owner on the Ammonoosuc River, named Crawford. His grandson, Ethan Allen Crawford, the famous "White Mountain Giant," was the noted guide who made the first path to ascend Mount Washington and built the first house on its summit. Now, the mountain is ascended from this western side by an inclined-plane railway, reached by an ordinary railway extending from Fabyan's five miles across to the base of the mountain. The railway to the summit is about three miles long, with an average gradient of thirteen hundred feet to the mile, the maximum being thirteen and one-half inches in the yard. It is worked by a cog-wheel locomotive acting upon a central cogged rail, and the ascent is accomplished in about ninety minutes. It is an exhilarating ride up the slope, for, as the car is elevated, the horizon of view widens decidedly to the west and northwest, while the trees of the forest get smaller and smaller, and their character changes. The sugar-maples, yellow birches and mossy-trunked beeches, with an occasional aspen or mountain ash, are gradually left behind in the valley, being replaced on the higher slope by white pine and hemlock, white birch, and dark spruces and firs hung with gray moss. These gradually becoming smaller, soon the only trees left are a sort of dwarf fir intertangled with moss. Then, rising above the limit of trees, there is only a stunted arctic vegetation, and this permits a grand and unobstructed view all around the western horizon.
The route of the railway goes over and up various steep trestles, the most startling of all being "Jacob's Ladder," elevated about thirty feet and having the steepest gradient. Here is a perfect arctic desolation, the surface being broken blocks and rough stones of schist and granite, cracked, honeycombed and moss-grown, having endured the storms and frosts of centuries. There is a little vegetation where it may get root, the reindeer-moss, saxifrage clumps and sandwort of dreary Labrador or Greenland. The view covers a wide expanse far away westward to the Green Mountains, the landscape being everywhere dark forests and peaks, with the massive slopes of Mount Clay nearer to the northward, and the whole Presidential range, Mounts Jefferson, Adams and Madison, stretching beyond. As one looks over the vast, dark, undulating wilderness of peaks, it can be realized how the flood of emotion made an entranced observer exclaim, in the hearing of Mr. Starr King, "See the tumultuous bombast of the landscape." Nearing the summit, the railway gradient is less steep, and here an opportunity is given to peer over the edge of the "Great Gulf," a profound abyss on the eastern mountain slope between Washington, Clay and Jefferson. This hollow gulf, its sides and bottom covered with dark trees, relieved by a little glistening pond at the bottom, stretches out to the narrow valley along the eastern base of the range, known as the Glen, down into which one can look at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Rounding the mountain summit, the train halts at a broad platform in front of the Summit Hotel.
The top of Mount Washington is the highest elevation in the United States east of the Rockies and north of the Carolinas. It is what may be described as an arctic island, elevated sixty-two hundred and ninety feet, in the temperate zone, and displaying both arctic vegetation and temperature, the flora and climate being alike that of Greenland. An observatory gives a higher view over the tops of the buildings, and the first great impression of it is that the view seems to be all around the world, limited only by the horizon. In every direction are oceans of billowy peaks, the whole enormous circuit of almost a thousand miles, embracing New England, New York, Canada and the sea. The grand scene is at the same time gloomy. The almost universal forests overspread everything with a mournful pall of sombre green. The summit is spacious, and the contour of the mountain can on all sides be plainly seen. Its slope to the westward, like all of the Presidential range, is steeper than to the eastward, down which a wagon-road zigzags into the Glen. Upon the eastern side, two long spurs seem to brace the mountain, though profound ravines are there cut into it. The southern slope of the summit pitches off suddenly, while to the north there is a more gradual descent, both the railway and wagon-road approaching that way. The original Tip-Top House, the first inn erected, is preserved as a curiosity, a low and damp structure built of the rough stones gathered on the mountain. The newer hotel is of wood, with a steep roof, and is chained down to the rocks to prevent the gales from blowing it over. There is a weather-signal station at the summit, one of the most important posts in the country.