Over there, to the left, is the rustic bridge, and hard by a clump of peeled birches throw their grateful shade over the hot road. Many stop here, for the white-columned trunks are carved with initials, some freshly cut, some mere scars. But why mutilate the tree? What signify those letters, that every idler should gratify his little vanity by giving it a stab? Do you know that the birch does not renew its bark, and that the tree thus stripped of its natural protection is doomed? Cease, then, I pray you, this senseless mutilation; nor call down the just malediction of the future traveller for destroying his shade. Unable to escape its fate, the poor tree, like a victim at the stake, stoically receives your barbarous strokes and gashes. Refrain, then, traveller, for pity’s sake! Have a little mercy! Know that the ancients believed the tree possessed of a soul. Remember the touching story of Adonis, barbarously wounded, surviving in a pine, where he weeps eternally. Consider how often is the figure of “The Tree” used in the Scriptures as emblematic of the life eternal! Who would wish to inhabit a treeless heaven?
The stream—which does not allow us to forget that it is here—is a vociferous mountain brook. Hardly less forward is the roadside fountain gushing into a water-trough its refreshing abundance for the tired and dusty wayfarer. It makes no difference in the world whether he goes on two legs or on four. “Drink and be filled” is the invitation thus generously held out to all alike. With what a sigh of pleasure your steaming beast lifts his reluctant and dripping muzzle from the cool wave, and after satisfying again and again his thirst, luxuriously immersing his nose for the third and fourth time, still pretends to drink! How deliciously light and limpid and sparkling is the water, and how sweet! How it cools the hot blood! You quaff nectar. You sip it as you would champagne. It tastes far better, you think, pouring from this half-decayed, moss-crusted spout than from iron, or bronze, or marble. Come, fellow-traveller, a bumper! Fill high! God bless the man who first invented the roadside fountain! He was a true benefactor of his fellow-man.
Turn once more to the house. A little girl tosses corn, kernel by kernel, to her pet chickens. There go a flight of pigeons: they curvet and wheel, and settle on the ridge-pole, where they begin to flirt, and strut, and coo. The men in the field look up at the top of the mountain, to see if it is not yet noon. And now a woman, with plump bare arms, coming briskly to the open door, puts the dinner-horn to her lips with one hand while placing the other lightly upon her hip. She does not know that act and attitude are alike inviting. How should she?
Let us follow the pretty stream that is our guide. Franconia has the reputation of being the hottest in summer and in winter the coldest of the mountain villages. It is hot. The houses are strung along the road for a mile. People may or may not live in them: you see nobody. One modest church-tower catches the eye for a moment, and then, as we enter the heart of the village, a square barrack of a building, just across the stream, is pointed out as the old furnace, which in times past gave importance to this out-of-the-way corner. But the old furnace is now deserted except by cows from the neighboring pastures, who come and go through its open doors in search of shade. At present the river, which brings its music and its freshness to the very doors of the villagers, is the only busy thing in the place.
During the Rebellion the furnace was kept busy night and day, turning out iron to be cast into cannon. The very hills were melted down for the defence of the imperilled Union. In the adjoining town of Lisbon the discovery of gold-bearing quartz turned the heads of the usually steady-going population. The precious deposits were first found on the Bailey farm, in 1865, and similar specimens were soon detected on the farms adjoining. It is said the old people could scarcely be made to credit these reports until they had seen and handled the precious metal; for the country had been settled nearly a century, and the presence of any but the baser ores was wholly unsuspected and disbelieved.
There is one peculiarity, common to all these mountain villages, to which I must allude. A stranger is not known by any personal peculiarity, but by his horse. If you ask for such or such a person, the chances are ten to one you will immediately be asked in return if he drove a bay horse, or a black colt, or a brown mare with one white ear; so quick are these lazy-looking men, that loll on the door-steps or spread themselves out over the shop-counters, to observe what interests them most. The girls here know the points of a horse better than most men, and are far more reckless drivers than men. To a man who, like myself, has lived in a horse-stealing country, it does look queerly to see the barn-doors standing open at night. But then every country has its own customs.
One seeks in vain for any scraps of history or tradition that might shed even a momentary lustre upon this village out of the past. Yet its situation invites the belief that it is full of both. Disappointed in this, we at least have an inexhaustible theme in the dark and tranquil mountains bending over us.
Mount Lafayette presents toward Franconia two enormous green billows, rolled apart, the deep hollow between being the great ravine dividing the mountain from base to summit. Over this deep incision, which, from the irregularity of one of its ridges, looks widest at the top, presides, with matchless dignity, the bared and craggy peak whose dusky brown gradually mingles with the scant verdure checked hundreds of feet down. With what hauteur it seems to regard this effort of Nature to place a garland on its bronzed and knotted forehead! One can never get over his admiration for the savage grace with which the mountain, which at first sight seems literally thrown together, develops a beauty, a harmony, and an intelligence giving such absolute superiority to works of Nature over those of man.
The side of Mount Cannon turned toward the village now elevates two almost regular triangular masses, one rising behind the other, and both surmounted by the rounded summit, which, except in its mass, has little resemblance to a mountain. It is seen that on two-thirds of these elevations a new forest has replaced the original growth. Twenty-five years ago a destructive fire raged on this mountain, destroying all the vegetation, as well as the thin soil down to the hard rock. Even that was cracked and peeled like old parchment. This burning mountain was a scene of startling magnificence during several nights, when the village was as light as day, the sky overspread an angry glow, and the river ran blood-red. The hump-backed ridges, connecting Cannon with Kinsman, present nearly the same appearance from this as from the other side of the Notch—or as remarked when approaching from Campton.