From this point of view the Sandwich Mountains took far greater interest and character, and I remarked that no two summits were precisely alike in form or outline. Higher and more distant peaks peered curiously over their brawny shoulders from their lairs in the valley of the Pemigewasset; but more remarkable, more weird than all, was the gigantic monolith which tops the rock-ribbed pile of Chocorua. The more I looked, the more this monstrous freak of nature fascinated. As the sun glided down the west, a ruddy glow tinged its pinnacle; while the shadows lurking in the ravines stole up the mountain side and crouched for a final spring upon the summit. Little by little, twilight flowed over the valley, and a thin haze rose from its surface.
I had waited for this moment, and now turned to the lakes. Winnipiseogee was visible throughout its whole length, the multitude of islands peeping above it giving the idea of an inundation rather than an inland sea. On the farthest shores mere specks of white denoted houses; and traced in faint relief on the southern sky, so unsubstantial, indeed, as to render it doubtful if it were sky or mountain, was the Grand Monadnock, the fixed sentinel of all this august assemblage of mountains.
Glowing in sunset splendor, streaked with all the hues of the rainbow, the lake was indeed magnificent.
In vain the eve roved hither and thither seeking some foil to this peerless beauty. Everywhere the same unrivalled picture led it captive over thirty miles of gleaming water, up the graceful curves of the mountains, to rest at last among crimson clouds floating in rosy vapor over their notched summits.
Imagination must assist the reader to reproduce this ravishing spectacle. To attempt to describe it is like a profanation. Paradise seemed to have opened wide its gates to my enraptured gaze; or had I surprised the secrets of the unknown world? I stood silent and spellbound, with a strange, exquisite feeling at the heart. I felt a thrill of pain when a voice from the forest broke the solemn stillness which alone befitted this almost supernatural vision. Now I understood the pagan’s adoration of the sun. My mind ran over the most striking or touching incidents of Scripture, where the sublimity of the scene is always in harmony with the grandeur of the event—the Temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration—and memory brought to my aid these words, so simple, so tender, yet so expressive, “And he went up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone.”
III.
CHOCORUA.
“There I saw above me mountains,
And I asked of them what century
Met them in their youth.”
AFTER a stay at Centre Harbor long enough to gain a knowledge of its charming environs, but which seemed all too brief, I took the stage at two o’clock one sunny afternoon for Tamworth. I had resolved, if the following morning should be clear, to ascend Chocorua, which from the summit of Red Hill seemed to fling his defiance from afar.
Following my custom, I took an outside seat with the driver. There being only three or four passengers, what is frequently a bone of contention was settled without that display of impudent selfishness which is seen when a dozen or more travellers are all struggling for precedence. But at the steamboat landing the case was different. I remained a quiet looker-on of the scene that ensued. It was sufficiently ridiculous.
At the moment the steamboat touched her pier the passengers prepared to spring to the shore, and force had to be used to keep them back until she could be secured. An instant after the crowd rushed pell-mell up the wharf, surrounded the stage, and began, women as well as men, a promiscuous scramble for the two or three unoccupied seats at the top.