Ride flaming up to Heaven, than any mountain higher."
The first house on the mountain, built by Ethan Allen Crawford in 1821, was a small stone cabin having the floor covered with moss for bedding, the only furniture being a chest to contain blankets, and a stove; a roll of sheet-lead serving as the "register," on which the guests scratched their names and the date of visit. This cabin was swept away by a terrific storm in August, 1826. Some time later an eccentric individual took possession of the summit, naming it "Trinity Height," and called himself the modern "Israel of Jerusalem," proposing to inaugurate in this exalted place a new Order, styled "The Christian or Purple and Royal Democracy." With an eye to business, he put toll-gates on the bridlepaths and taxed each visitor a dollar. There were bitter quarrels about the ownership for years afterwards, and the first winter ascent was made by a sheriff, who went up to serve a writ in 1858, and found frost over a foot thick enveloping everything. The lawsuits, however, were ultimately fought out and settled, and the present owners have been undisturbed for years.
The view from the summit is widespread. The most distant objects that have been recognized are Mount Beloeil, northwest in Canada, and Mount Ebeeme, northeast beyond the Moosehead Lake in Maine, each one hundred and thirty-five miles away. These distant mountain tops are said to be brought into view only by the aid of atmospheric refraction, in raising them, as they are actually below the horizon. Also northeast is Mount Abraham, sixty-eight miles away; and were it not for this, Maine's greatest mountain, Katahdin, in the wilderness of the upper Penobscot, might be seen, but Abraham obstructs the view. Katahdin, rising nearly fifty-four hundred feet, is one hundred and sixty-five miles northeast. Saddleback, at the head of the Rangeley Lakes, is seen sixty miles away, and Bald Mountain, to the right, one hundred miles off in Maine. To the eastward is seen Mount Megunticook, in the Camden range, on Penobscot Bay, one hundred and fifteen miles off. To the east and southeast for many miles is the ocean between Casco Bay and Cape Ann. The sea, however, is never well viewed from Mount Washington, because it is so nearly the color of the sky at the horizon as to be difficult of acute discernment. The moving vessels, however, can be readily seen by the aid of a glass. The bright waters of Sebago Lake are to the southeast, and beyond are the shores of Casco Bay and the city of Portland, sixty-seven miles off. The low round swell of Mount Agamenticus shows faintly above the horizon, seventy-nine miles south-southeast, and to the right there is also a faint trace of the Isles of Shoals, ninety-six miles off. To the southeast, twenty-two miles, is the sharpest and noblest peak of all in the galaxy of view, the high, white, pyramidal top of Chocorua, having the broad island-studded Lake Winnepesaukee to the right, with the distant double peak of Mount Belknap seen over its clear waters. Just to the west of south, and one hundred and four miles distant, is the faint rounded summit of Mount Monadnock, near the southwest corner of New Hampshire, and nearer is Mount Kearsarge, seventy miles off, and appearing much similar. The Nelson Pinnacle, farther away, is to the right of Kearsarge. The most distant mountain discernible in that direction is Mount Wachusett, one hundred and twenty-six miles off. To the southwest are seen Ascutney and the twin Killington Peaks, near Rutland, Vermont, eighty-eight miles away. To the west are seen plainly the two Green Mountain peaks of Mansfield and the Camel's Hump, seventy-eight miles off, and over the northern slope of the latter can be faintly detected the great Adirondack Mount Whiteface, one hundred and thirty miles distant. Such is the splendid circuit of mountains forming the horizon for Mount Washington. Among the striking objects in the view are the deep river valleys as they go out from the Presidential range. The Peabody flows through the Glen north to the Androscoggin, which can be traced far northeast. The Ellis flows south to the Saco, which goes out through the Notch and away southeast. The valley of the Ammonoosuc runs off westward, where along the horizon is the great trough of the Connecticut Valley stretching all across the scene. Lakes and ponds are studded among the dark summits, and at the observer's feet are the springs feeding many great rivers of New England, the Merrimack, to the southward, also having its sources in this great wilderness of mountains, which on all sides sends out babbling brooks and silvery cataracts to bear their waters down to old ocean.
THE GLEN AND NORTH CONWAY.
The wagon-road from Mount Washington summit down to the base, is on the eastern side, and is a little more than eight miles long, with an average gradient of one to eight, descending into the Glen and displaying magnificent views. The descent occupies about one hour, and the ascent five hours. On the southeastern side of the mountain is Tuckerman's Ravine, a huge gorge enclosed by rocky walls a thousand feet high. This ravine usually displays the "Snow Arch" until late in August, formed by a stream flowing out from under the huge masses of snow piled up in winter, until it gradually melts away and collapses. The main Glen is formed by the deep and thickly-wooded Pinkham Notch at the eastern base of Mount Washington, its floor being at two thousand feet elevation, and this Notch continues north and south in deeply-carved stream beds, the Peabody River flowing northward to the Androscoggin at Gorham and the Ellis River southward to the Saco. The Peabody descends rapidly to the Androscoggin, entering it at about eight hundred feet elevation, the active town of Gorham being located here in a beautiful situation, and having two thousand people, at the northern gateway to the White Mountains. The Androscoggin, having drained the eastern mountain slopes, flows away into the State of Maine to seek the Kennebec, and thence the sea. In the Glen, in the coaching days, the old Glen House was the headquarters at the foot of the road down Mount Washington, but it was burnt in 1894, and has not been rebuilt. To the eastward, bounding the Glen, rise the Wild Cat Ridge and the impressive Carter Dome, which would be a grand mountain elsewhere, but here is dwarfed by the overshadowing Presidential range on the western side. From the Pinkham Notch the little Ellis River goes southward, and below the outlet of Tuckerman's Ravine is the beautiful Crystal Cascade, where it pours down eighty feet over successive step-like terraces. Another lovely cataract it makes is the Glen Ellis Fall, which is considered the finest in the White Mountains, on the slope of the Wild Cat Ridge. The stream slides down an inclined plane of twenty feet over ledges, and then falls seventy feet through a deep groove, twisted by bulges in the rocks and making almost a complete turn. Thus sliding, foaming and falling, the stream leaps nearly a hundred feet into a dark green pool beneath. The Glen broadens as it progresses southward, and soon becomes a widened intervale, having many houses for summer boarders.
Log Bridge over the Wild Cat, near Jackson, N. H.
Here is the pleasant village of Jackson in a broad basin, surrounded by low mountains, making splendid views in all directions. There are the Tin, Iron, Thorn and Moat Mountains, with others, the intervale being almost covered with hotels, boarding-houses, and the accessories of a popular summer resort, and having pretty cottages perched on the hill-slopes all about. This pleasant resting-place was originally called New Madbury, but at the opening of the nineteenth century it was named in honor of President John Adams. It continued contentedly as Adams until his son John Quincy became President, and in 1828, when politics ran high and John Quincy Adams was again a candidate, it happened that all the votes in the town of Adams but one were given to his competitor, Andrew Jackson, who was elected, whereupon the town changed its name to Jackson. Since then it has had a quiet history excepting once, when, in 1875, they were building the railroad through the White Mountain Notch, and the bears, scared by the powder-blasts of the builders, came in droves to Jackson and almost captured the town from the frightened inhabitants. Just beyond Jackson, in Lower Bartlett, the Ellis flows into the Saco in a magnificent environment, the Ellis and the Eastern Branch from the Carter range coming in together, and making the Saco a great river. This is another paradise for the seeker after the picturesque. From the little church of the village, looking down over the Saco intervales, when flooded with sunset light, gives a most fascinating view. An enraptured visitor has written of this landscape seen from the church door: "One might believe that he was looking through an air that had never enwrapped any sin, upon a floor of some nook of the primitive Eden." Bartlett was named in honor of Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and its pioneer settler, John Poindexter, came eighty miles on foot through the wilderness from Portsmouth, dragging his few household effects on a hand-sled, his wife riding an old horse, with the feather-bed for a saddle, and carrying the baby in her arms.
The Saco Valley broadens below, and Intervale, another summer village, is passed, and then North Conway, one of the most popular of the White Mountain resorts. It spreads along a low sloping terrace on the eastern verge of the widening valley, and looks out upon the river with the elongated and massive ridge of Moat Mountain grandly rising beyond. The town is largely built along a pleasant tree-bordered street, having the Presidential range spread in magnificent array to the northwest, sixteen miles away. To the southward the valley opens over long stretches of fertile lowlands until the Saco turns sharply to the eastward, seeking the sea. To the northward, the immediate guardian of the valley is Mount Kearsarge, sometimes called Pequawket, rising thirty-three hundred feet. Kearsarge means the "pointed pine mountain," and its name was given the famous warship which fought and sunk the privateer "Alabama." It is the beauty of the surroundings which gives North Conway its charm, and the valley is called the "Arcadia of the White Hills," where the harshness of the granite ramparts beyond are in strange contrast with the genial repose of these meadows, and the delicate curves of the long, swelling hills. The restfulness of the scene is its attraction, everything contributing to its serenity; even distant Mount Washington is said to "not seem so much to stand up as to lie out at ease across the north; the leonine grandeur is there, but it is the lion, not erect, but couchant, a little sleepy, stretching out his paws and enjoying the sun." Proud Chocorua, which is not far away, is also said to even appear "a little tired," as seen from North Conway, and as if looking wistfully down into