THE GRAND MOUNTAIN VIEW.
The Indians always held the White Mountains in reverent awe. They were the religious shrine of the Pennacooks, who roamed over the region between the mountains and the sea. The early historian Josselyn in the seventeenth century recorded, of these Indians: "Ask them whither they go when they dye; they will tell you, pointing with their finger, to Heaven, beyond the White Mountains." Passaconaway, the great wizard-chief of the Pennacooks, who was finally converted to Christianity by the Apostle Eliot, is said to have lived to the great age of one hundred and twenty years, and then to have been translated. The Pennacook tradition was that in the cold of mid-winter he was carried away from them in a weird sleigh drawn by wolves, that took him to the summit of Mount Washington, whence he was straightway received into Heaven:
"Far o'er Winnepiseogee's ice,
With brindled wolves all harnessed then and there,
High seated on a sledge made in a trice
On Mount Agiochook of hickory,
He lashed and reeled and sang right jollily,
And once upon a car of flaming fire,
The dreadful Indian shook with fear to see
The King of Pennacook, his chief, his sire,