"A land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
These Conway intervales of the Saco were the Indian valley of Pequawket, and its people have long been known as the Pigwackets. An Indian village first occupied the site of North Conway, gradually giving place to the rude huts of the colonists. It progressed greatly by the trade through the mountain district, before the advent of the railway, and was the chief stage-coach headquarters in those days. Now it is quiet and restful, the excitements of the coaching times being gone. Three miles below, the magnificent valley makes its grand bend to the eastward, and the swelling Saco flows out through the State of Maine and to the sea at the twin towns of Saco and Biddeford.
LAKE WINNEPESAUKEE.
The southern verge of the White Mountains has many lower peaks and ridges, including the Ossipee and Sandwich ranges, and finally they all run off into the serrated shores of the extensive and beautiful Lake Winnepesaukee, cut by long, sloping promontories and abounding in islands. Thirteen miles southward from North Conway, near Madison, is the largest erratic boulder of granite known to exist, which was brought down and dropped there by the great glacier and is estimated to weigh eight thousand tons. It is seventy-five feet long, forty wide, and from thirty to thirty-seven feet high. Lake Winnepesaukee washes all the southeastern flanks of the mountain region, and has many peaks in grand array around its northern borders. The Indians were so impressed with the attractive scenery of the lake that they gave it the poetical name, meaning "the Smile of the Great Spirit." The Sandwich Mountains are spread across its northern horizon, showing the rocky summit of Mount Tecumseh, rising over four thousand feet; Tripyramid and its great "Slide," marked along its face, where a vast mass of rocks and forest went down the slope in the rainy season of 1869, moving over a distance of two miles and falling twenty-one hundred feet; the broad, rounded summit of the Sandwich "Dome;" the sharp peak of Whiteface, also scratched by a wide landslide on its southern slope; the lofty top of Passaconaway, rising forty-two hundred feet; and the proud apex of Chocorua, regarded as the most picturesque of all these mountains. Its much-admired peaks do not rise as high as some of the others, thirty-five hundred feet, but are built of a brilliant crystalline labradorite, called Chocorua granite, presenting a striking appearance, and being entirely denuded of trees. Chocorua was an Indian prophet of the Pequawkets, whose family was slain by the whites, and he took a terrible revenge. A reward was offered for his scalp, and his pursuers followed him to the mountain top and shot him down. When dying, he invoked the curses of the Great Spirit upon them, and the mountain now bears his sonorous name. For years afterwards the curses came true; pestilence raged in the adjacent valleys, cattle could not be kept, for they all died, and the people submitted humbly to the affliction, believing it to be the realization of the Indian's imprecation. But one day a scientific fellow wandered that way, and being of an investigating turn, he soon found the sickness was due to muriate of lime in the water. After that discovery the Indian's curse went for naught. Now the whole country roundabout is healthy, and filled with the balsamic atmosphere which invigorates the admiring thousands who come to see the noble mountain. Thus sings Whittier of it in Among the Hills, after a storm:
"Through Sandwich Notch the west wind sang
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
Of shadow pierced the water.
"Above his broad Lake Ossipee,