Raising my eyes to look out of the window, the light from within fell upon a bank of snow. A man was stooping over it as if in search of something. Going out, I found him feeling it with his hands, and examining it with childish wonder and curiosity. I approached this eccentric person very softly; but he, seeing my shadow on the snow beside him, looked up.
“Can I assist you in recovering what you have lost?” I inquired.
“Thank you; no. I have lost nothing. Ah! I see,” he continued, laughing quietly, “you think I have lost my wits. But it is not so. I am a native of the East Indies, and I assure you this is the first time in my life I have ever seen snow near enough to handle it. Imagine what an experience the ascent of Mount Washington is for me!”
We took a turn down the hard-frozen Glen road together in order to see the moon come up. The telegraph-poles, fantastically crusted with ice to the thickness of a foot, stretched a line of white-hooded phantoms down the dark side of the mountain. From successive coatings of frozen mist the wires were as thick as cables. Couches of snow lay along the rocks, and fresh snow had apparently been rubbed into all the inequalties of the cliffs rising out of the Great Gulf. The scene was supremely weird, supremely desolate.
From here we crossed over to the railway, and, ascending by it, shortly came upon the heap of stones, surmounted by its tablet, erected on the spot where Miss Bourne perished while ascending the mountain, in September, 1855. The party, of which she was one, setting out in high spirits in the afternoon from the Glen House, was overtaken near the summit by clouds, which hid the house from view, and among which they became bewildered. It was here Miss Bourne declared she could go no farther. Overcome by her exertions, she sunk exhausted and fainting upon the rocks. Her friends were scarcely awakened to her true condition when, amid the surrounding darkness and gloom, this young and lovely maiden of only twenty expired in the arms of her uncle. The mourners wrapped the body in their own cloaks, and, ignorant that a few rods only separated them from the summit, kept a vigil throughout the long and weary night. We hasten over this night of dread. In the morning, discovering their destination a few rods above them, they bore the lifeless form of their companion to it with feelings not to be described. A rude bier was made, and she who had started up the mountain full of life now descended it a corpse.
The evening treated us to a magnificent spectacle. The moon, in full-orbed splendor, moved majestically up the heavens, attended by her glittering retinue of stars. Frozen peaks, reflecting the mild radiance, shone like beaten silver. But the immense hollows between, the deep valleys that had been open to view, were now inundated with a white and luminous vapor, from which the multitude of icy summits emerged like a vast archipelago—a sea of islands. This spectral ocean seemed on the point of ingulfing the mountains. This motionless sea, these austere peaks, uprising, were inconceivably weird and solemnizing. An awful hush pervaded the inanimate but threatening host of cloud-girt mountains. Upon them, upon the sea of frozen vapor, absorbing its light, the clear moon poured its radiance. The stars seemed nearer and brighter than ever before. The planets shone with piercing brilliancy; they emitted a sensible light. The Milky Way, erecting its glittering nebula to the zenith, to which it was pinned by a dazzling star, floated, a glorious, star-spangled veil, amid this vast sea of gems. One could vaguely catch the idea of an unpeopled desolation rising from the fathomless void of a primeval ocean. The peaks, incased in snow and ice, seemed stamped with the traces of its subsidence. Pale and haggard, they lifted their antique heads in silent adoration.
Going to my room and extinguishing the light, I stood for some time at the window, unable to reconcile the unwonted appearance of the stars shining far below, with the fixed idea that they ought not to be there. Yet there they were. To tell the truth, my head was filled with the surpassing pomp I had just witnessed, of which I had not before the faintest conception. I felt as if I was silently conversing with all those stars, looking at me and my petty aspirations with such inflexible, disdainful immobility. When one feels that he is nothing, self-assurance is no great thing. The conceit is taken out of him. On a mountain the man stands naked before his Maker. He is nothing. That is why I leave him there.
That night I did not sleep a wink. Twenty times I jumped out of bed and ran to the window to convince myself that it was not all a dream. No; moon and stars were still bright. Over the Great Gulf, all ghastly in the moonlight, stood Mount Jefferson in his winding-sheet. I dressed myself, and from the embrasure of my window kept a vigil.
Sunrise did not produce the startling effect I had anticipated. The morning was fine and cloudless. A gong summoned the inmates of the hotel to the spectacle. Without dressing themselves, they ran to their windows, where, wrapped in bed-blankets, they stood eagerly watching the east. To the pale emerald of early dawn a ruddy glow succeeded. Before we were aware, the rocky waste around us grew dusky red. The crimsoned air glided swiftly over the neighboring summits. Now the brightness was upon Adams and Jefferson and Clay, and now it rolled its purpled flood into the Great Gulf, to mingle with the intense blackness at the bottom. For some moments the mountain-tops held the color, then it was transfused into the clear sunshine of open day; while the vapors, heavy and compact, stretched along the valleys, still smothering the land, retained their leaden hue.
It was still early when I descended the carriage-road on my way to Mount Adams. The usual way is to keep the railway as far as the old Gulf Tank, near which is a house of refuge, provided with a cooking-stove, fuel, and beds. I continued, however, to coast the upper crags of the Great Gulf, until compelled to make directly for the southern peak of Mount Clay. The view from this col is imposing, embracing at once, and without turning the head, all the southern summits of the chain. Here I was joined by two travellers fresh from Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.