At sight of the suspended bowlder, which seems, like Paul Pry, to have “just dropped in,” I believe every visitor has his moment of hesitation, which he usually ends by passing underneath, paying as he goes with a tremor of the nerves, more or less, for his temerity. But there is no danger. It is seen that the deep crevice, into which the rock seems jammed with the especial purpose of holding it asunder, also hugs the intruder like a vise; so closely, indeed, that, according to every appearance, it must stay where it is until doomsday, unless released by some passing earthquake from its imprisonment. Sentimental tourists do not omit to find a moral in this curiosity, which really looks to be on the eve of dropping, with a loud splash, into the torrent beneath. On top of the cliffs I picked up a visiting-card, on which some one with a poetic turn had written, “Does not this bowlder remind you of the sword of Damocles?” To a civil question, civil reply: No; to me it looks like a nut in a cracker.
Over the gorge bends an arcade of interlaced foliage shot through and through with sunshine; and wherever cleft or cranny can be found young birches, sword-ferns, trailing vines, insinuating their long roots in the damp mould, garland the cold granite with tenderest green. The exquisite white anemone blooms in the mossy wall wet with tiny streams that do not run but glide unperceived down. What could be more cunning than the persistency with which these hardy waifs, clinging or drooping along the craggy way, draw their sustenance from the rock, which seems to nourish them in spite of itself? Underneath your feet the swollen torrent storms along the gorge, dashing itself recklessly against intruding bowlders, or else passing them with a curl of disdain. How gallantly it surmounts every obstacle in its way! How crystal-clear are its waters! On it speeds, scattering pearls and diamonds right and left, like the prodigal it is; unpolluted, as yet, by the filth of cities, or turned into a languid, broken-spirited drudge by dams or mill-wheels. “Stop me?” it seems exclaiming. “Why, I am offspring of the clouds, their messenger to the parched earth, the mountain maid-of-all-work! Stay; step aside here in the sun and I will show you my rainbow-signet! When I rest, do you not behold the mother imaged in the features of the child? Stop me! Put your hand in my bosom and see how strong and full of life are my pulse-beats. To-morrow I shall be vapor. Thought is not freer. I do not belong to earth any more than the eagle sailing above yonder mountain-top.”
Overhead a fallen tree-trunk makes a crazy bridge from cliff to cliff. The sight of the gorge, with the flood foaming far below, the glitter of falling waters through the trees, the splendid light in the midst of deepest gloom, the solemn pines—the odorous forest, the wildness and the coolness—impart an indescribable charm to the spot that makes us reluctant to leave it. Many ladies ascend to the head of the gorge and, crossing on the rude bridge, leave their visiting-cards on the other side; one had left her pocket-handkerchief, with the scent fresh upon it. I picked it up, and out hopped a toad.
After the Pool and the Flume, an ascent of the mountain behind the hotel will be found conducive to enjoyment of another kind. This mountain commands delicious views of the valley of the Pemigewasset. A short hour is usually sufficient for the climb. It was a very raw, windy morning on which I climbed it, but the uncommon purity of the air and the exceeding beauty of the landscape were most rarely combined with cloud effects seen only in conjunction with a brisk north-west wind. I had taken a station similar to that occupied by Mount Willard with respect to the Saco Valley, now opening a vista essentially different from that most memorable one in my mountain experience. The valley is not the same. You see the undulating course of the river for many leagues, and but for an intercepting hill, which hides them, might distinguish the houses of Plymouth. The vales of Woodstock, Thornton, and Campton, spotted with white houses, lie outspread in the sun, between enclosing mountains; and the windings of the Pemigewasset are now seen dark and glossy, now white with foam, appearing, disappearing, and finally lost to view in the blended distance. The sky was packed with clouds. Over the vivid green of the intervales their black shadows drifted swiftly and noiselessly, first turning the light on, then off again, with magical effect. To look up and see these clouds all in motion, and then, looking down, see those weird draperies darkly trailing over the land, was a reminiscence of
“The dim and shadowy armies of our unquiet dreams—
Their footsteps brush the dewy fern and paint the shaded streams.”
The mountain ridges flowed southward with marvellous smoothness to the vanishing-point, on one side of the valley bright green, on the other indigo blue. This picture was not startling, like that from the Crawford Notch, but, in its own way, was incomparable. The sunsets are said to be beautiful beyond description.
One looks up the Notch upon the great central peaks composing the water-shed—Cannon, Lafayette, Lincoln, and the rest—to see crags, ridges, black forests, rising before him in all their gloomy magnificence.
On one side all is beauty, harmony, and grace; on the other, a packed mass of bristling, steep-sided mountains seem storming the sky with their gray turrets. Could we but look over the brawny shoulders of the mountains opposite to us, the eye would take in the vast, untrodden solitudes of the Pemigewasset forests cut by the East Branch and presided over by Mount Carrigain—a region as yet reserved for those restless and adventurous spirits whom the beaten paths of travel have ceased to charm or attract. But an excursion into this “forest primeval” is to be no holiday promenade. It is an arduous and difficult march over slippery rocks, through tangled thickets, or up the beds of mountain torrents. Hard fare and a harder bed of boughs finish the day, every hour of which has been a continued combat with fresh obstacles. At this price one may venture to encounter the virgin wilderness or, as the cant phrase is, “try roughing it.” It is a curious feeling to turn your back upon the last cart-path, then upon the last foot-path; to hear the distant baying of a hound grow fainter and fainter—in a word, to exchange at a single step the sights and sounds of civilized life, the movement, the bustle, for a silence broken only by the hum of bees and the murmur of invisible waters.
I left the Flume House in company with a young-old man, whom I met there, and in whom I hoped to find another and a surer pair of eyes, for, were he to have as many as Argus, the sight-seer would find employment for them all.