Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
"For health comes sparkling in the streams
From cool Chocorua stealing:
There's iron in our northern winds;
Our pines are trees of healing."
Lake Winnepesaukee, thus magnificently outstretched in front of these lofty hills, is twenty-five miles long and in the centre about seven miles wide, covering a surface, exclusive of its many islands, of seventy square miles. It has wonderfully transparent water, being fed by springs, and its outline is very irregular, pierced by deep, elongated bays, and having broad peninsulas or necks of land stretching far out from the mainland. The shores are composed mostly of rocks, myriads of boulders being piled up along the water's edge as if for a wall, making an attractive rocky border with the foliage growing out of it. An archipelago of islands of all sizes and characters is dotted over the lake, there being two hundred and seventy-four of them, several having inhabitants. These are what Starr King calls "the fleet of islands that ride at anchor on its bosom—from little shallops to grand three-deckers." This attractive lake is the storage-reservoir for the many mills on the Merrimack, keeping their water-supply equable throughout the year by a dam at the Weirs, the western outlet, raising the surface six feet and making its level about five hundred feet above the sea. The railroads approach the lake both at the Weirs and at Wolfboro' on the eastern verge, and steamboats take the people over the lake to the various settlements on its shores. Wolfboro' was named after the British General Wolfe who fell on the Plains of Abraham, and is the largest town on the lake, having three thousand people. It has a beautiful outlook over the water from the adjacent high hills of Copple Crown and Tumble-Down Dick, the latter getting its name from an unfortunate blind horse "Dick," who once fell over a cliff on its side.
The steamboat journey upon the lake discloses its beauties, the gentle tree-clad shores with higher hills and mountains behind them, the many pleasant cottages, and the wonderfully clear green waters. It is a curious place, all arms and bays and great protruding necks of land, the open spaces dotted with islands, so that everywhere there are long vista views across the water and far up into the inlets of the shores, while the large double peak of Mount Belknap stands up massive and impressive at the southwestern border, and opposite in the northeast is the proud white summit of Chocorua. Edward Everett, speaking of his extensive travels in Europe, says, "My eye has yet to rest on a lovelier scene than that which smiles around you as you sail from Weirs Landing to Centre Harbor." The Weirs Landing is at the head of a deep bay made by the outlet stream, and is a popular summer camping-ground, the edge of the water fringed with cottages and the adjacent groves used by the camps. Many fish ascended the outlet stream in the early times seeking the clear waters, and the shallows at the outlet were availed of by the Indians to set their nets, so that it naturally got the name of the Weirs. Here, adjoining the shore, is the ancient "Endicott Rock," which was marked by the first surveyors sent up by Governor Endicott of Massachusetts to find the source of the Merrimack. The outlet stream goes through a region of many ponds and lakes bordered by large icehouses, the chief of these waters being Lake Winnisquam, and all these extensive reservoirs help to supply the great river of mill-wheels. The longest fiord indented in the southern shore of Winnepesaukee is narrow and five miles long, called Alton Bay, and it has a most attractive environment, with Mount Belknap rising to the westward twenty-four hundred feet high.
Upon the northern shore, grandly encircled by the Sandwich Mountains, the most extensive bay running up into the land is Centre Harbor, and here is a popular place of summer sojourn. Its background is a grand mountain amphitheatre from Red Hill to the westward around to the dark Ossipee range to the east, while in front, over the lake, is one of the most charming views in nature, with its many islands, long arms, deep bays, and strangely protruding elongated necks of wooded land. Thus the delicious water scene stretches for over twenty miles away, having in the distance the twin peaks of Belknap and the long and wavy summits of the attendant ridges nestling low and blue at the southern horizon. Climbing to the top of Red Hill, rising over two thousand feet, this magnificent view is got in a way which one charmed observer says "defies competition, as it transcends description; it is the perfection of earthly prospects." Whittier, who was passionately fond of this whole region, after admiring it from Red Hill, wrote the noble invocation: