In a trice we exchanged the sultriness, the dryness, the dust, parching or suffocating us, of a shadeless road, for the cool, moist air of the mountain-forest and the delectable sound of running water. A brook shot past; then another; then the horse, who stopped when he liked, and as often as he liked, like a man forced to undertake a task which he is determined shall cost his task-masters dearly, began a languid progress up the increasing declivity before us. His sighs and groans, as he plodded wearily along, were enough to melt a heart of stone. I therefore dismounted and walked on, leaving the driver to follow as he could. The question was, not how the horse should get us up the mountain, but how we should get the horse up.
They call it four and a half miles from the bottom to the top. The distances indicated by the sign-boards, nailed to trees, did not appear to me exact. They are not exact; and the reason why they are not is sufficiently original to merit a word of explanation. Having long observed the effect of imagination, especially in computing distances, the builder of the road, as he himself informed me, adopted a truly ingenious method of his own. He lengthened or shortened his miles according as the travelling was good or bad. For example: the first mile, being an easy one, was stretched to a mile and a quarter. The last mile is also very good travelling. That, too, he lengthened to a mile and a half. In this way he reduced the intervening two and a half miles of the worst road to one and three-fourth miles. This absolutely harmless piece of deception, he averred, considerably shortened the most difficult part of the journey. No one complained that the good miles were too long, while the bad ones were now passed over with far less grumbling than before they were abbreviated by this simple expedient, which very few, I am convinced, would have thought of. In fact, the sum of the whole distance being scrupulously adhered to, it is the most civil piece of engineering of which I have any knowledge.
The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. The trees now visibly dwindled. Just before reaching the ridge, where it joins this peak, a fine spring, deliciously cold, gushed from the mountain side. A few rods more of ascent brought us quite out upon the long, narrow, curving backbone of the mountain, uplifting its sharp edge between two profound gorges, connecting the peaks set at its two extremes, between which Nature has decreed a perpetual divorce. The sun was just setting as we emerged upon this natural way conducting from peak to peak along the airy crest of the mountain.
Although this, it will be remembered, is one of the longest miles, according to the scale of computation in vogue here, the unexpected speed which the horse now put forth, the sight of the squat, little Tip-Top House, clinging to the summit beyond, the upper and nether worlds floating or fading in splendor, while the night-breezes sweeping over cooled our foreheads, and rudely jostled the withered trees, drawn a little apart to the right and left to let us pass, quickly replaced that weariness of mind and body which the mountain exacts of all who pass over it on a sultry midsummer’s day.
At the extremity of the ridge, which is only wide enough for the road, a gradual ascent led to the high summit and to a level plateau of a few acres at its top. This was treeless, but covered with something like soil, smooth, and, being singularly free from the large stones found everywhere else, affords good walking in any direction. The house is built of rough stone, and, though of primitive construction, is comfortable, and even inviting. Furthermore, its materials being collected on the spot, one accepts it as still constituting a part of the mountain, which, indeed, at a little distance it really seems to be. In the evening I went out, to find the mountain blindfolded with clouds. Soon rain began to drive against the window-panes in volleys. At a late hour we heard wheels grinding on the rocks outside, and then a party of tourists drove up to the door, dripping and crestfallen at having undertaken the ascent with a storm staring them in the face. But they had only this one day, they said, and were “bound” to go up the mountain. So up they toiled through pitch darkness, through rain and cloud, passed the night in a building said to be on the summit, and returned down the mountain in the morning, to catch their train, through as dense a fog as ever exasperated a hurried tourist. But they had been to the top! Are there anywhere else in the world people who travel two hundred miles for a single day’s recreation?
It is very curious, this being domesticated on the top of a mountain. We go to bed wondering if the scene will not all vanish in our dreams. It was very odd, too, to see the tourists silently mount their buck-board in the morning, and disappear, within a stone’s throw, in clouds. Detaching themselves to all intents from earth, they began a flight in air. Walking a short distance, perhaps a gunshot, from the house, I groped my way back with difficulty. The case seemed desperate.
But grandest scene of all was the breaking up of the storm. Shortly after noon the high sun began to exert a sensible influence upon the clouds. A perceptible warmth, replacing the chill and clammy mists, began to pervade the mountain-top. Presently a dim sun-ray shot through. Then, as if a noiseless explosion had suddenly rent them, the whole mass of clouds was torn in ten thousand tatters flying through space. All nature seemed seized with sudden frenzy. Here a summit and there a peak was seen, struggling fiercely in the grasp of the storm. Coming up with rushing noise, the west wind charged home the routed storm-clouds with fresh squadrons. What indescribable yet noiseless tumult raged in the heavens! Even the mountains seemed scarcely able to stem the tide of fugitives. A panic seized them. Fear gave them wings. They rushed pell-mell into the ravines and clung to the tree-tops; they dashed themselves blindly against the adamant of Lafayette, only to fall back broken into the deep fosse beneath. Bolts of dazzling sunshine continually tore through them. The gorges themselves seemed heaped with the wounded and the dying. But the rushing wind, trampling the fugitives down, dispersed and cut them mercilessly to pieces. One was irresistibly carried away by this rage of battle. In ten minutes I looked around upon a clear sky. One cloud, impaled on the gleaming spear of Lafayette, hung limp and lifeless; another floated like a scarf from the polished casque of Chocorua; a third, taken prisoner en route, humbly held the train of Washington. All the rest of the phantom host, using its power to render itself invisible, vanished from sight as if the mountains had swallowed it up.
The landscape being now fully uncovered, I enjoyed all its rare perfection. It is a superb and fascinating one, invested with a powerful individuality, surrounded by a charm of its own. You wish to see the two great chains? There they are, the greater rising over the lesser, in the order fixed by Nature. That sunny space in the softened coloring of old tapestry, more to the right, is the Pemigewasset Valley, and the spot from where not long ago we looked up at this mountain looming large in the distance. We raise our eyes to glance up the East Branch upon Mount Hancock and the peaks of Carrigain peeping over. We touch with magic wand the faint cone of Kearsarge, so dim that it seems as if it must rise and float away; then, continuing to call the roll of mountains, Moat, Tripyramid, Chocorua, and all our earlier acquaintances rise or nod among the Sandwich peaks. Some draw their cloud-draperies over their bare shoulders, some sun their naked and hairy breasts in savage luxury. We alight like a bird upon the glassy bosom of Winnepiseogee the incomparable, and, like the bird, again rise, refreshed, for flights still more remote. We sweep over the Uncanoonucs into Massachusetts, steadying the eye upon far Wachusett as we pass from the Merrimac Valley. Now come thronging in upon us the mountains of the Connecticut Valley. We rest awhile upon the transcendently beautiful expanse of the Ox-Bow, and its playthings of villages, strung along the glittering necklace of the river. Across this valley, lifting our eyes, we wander among the loftiest peaks of the Green Mountains—those colossal verd-antiques—exchanging frozen glances across the placid expanse of Champlain with the haughtiest summits of the Adirondacks. We grow tired of this. One last look, this time up the valley, reveals to us the wide and curious gap between two distant mountains, and far beyond Memphremagog, where these mountains rise, we scan all the route travelled by Rogers, the perils of which are fresh in our memory. We pass on unchallenged into the dominions of Victoria.
Is not this a landscape worth coming ten miles out of one’s way to see? And yet the half is not told. I have merely indicated its dimensions. Now let the reader, drawing an imaginary line from peak to peak, go over at leisure all that lies between. I merely prick the chart for him. Moosehillock, not quite five thousand feet high, overlooks all New Hampshire, pushes investigation into Maine and Massachusetts, is familiar with Vermont, distant with New York, and has an eye upon Canada. It is said the ocean has been seen, but I did not see it.
Circumstances compelled me to drive the old horse, who has made more ascensions of the mountain than any living thing, back to Warren. No other was to be had for love or money. Had there been time I would have preferred walking, but there was not. This horse measured sixteen hands. His thin body and long legs resembled a horse upon stilts. He looked dejected, but resigned. I argued that he would be able to get down the mountain somehow; and, once out of the woods, I could count on his eagerness to get home, to some extent, perhaps. I was not deceived in either expectation.