The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery / Tourist's Edition

by Samuel Adams Drake

There is one thing more. When asked by the whites to point out the Indian’s heaven, the savage stretched his arm in the direction of the White Hills, and replied that heaven was just beyond. Such being his religion, and such the influence of the mountain upon this highly imaginative, poetic, natural man, one finds himself drawn legitimately in the train of those marvels which our ancestors considered the most credible things in the world, and which the sceptical cannot explain by a sneer.

According to the Indians, on the highest mountain, suspended from a crag overlooking a dismal lake, was an enormous carbuncle, which many declared they had seen blazing in the night like a live coal. Some even asserted that its ruddy glare lighted the livid rocks around like the fire of a midnight encampment, while by day it emitted rays, like the sun, dazzling to look upon. And this extraordinary sight they declared they had not only seen, but seen again and again.

It is true that the Indians did not hesitate to declare that no mortal hand could hope to grasp the great fire-stone. It was, said they, in the special guardianship of the genius of the mountain, who, on the approach of human footsteps, troubled the waters of the lake, causing a dark mist to rise, in which the venturesome mortal became bewildered, and then hopelessly lost. Several noted conjurers of the Pigwackets, rendered foolhardy by their success in exorcising evil spirits, so far conquered their fears as to ascend the mountain; but they never returned, and had, no doubt, expiated their folly by being transformed into stone, or flung headlong down some stark and terrible precipice.

This tale of the great carbuncle fired the imagination of the simple settlers to the highest pitch. We believe what we wish to believe, and, notwithstanding their religion refused to admit the existence of the Indian demon, its guardian, they seem to have had little difficulty in crediting the reality of the jewel itself. At any rate, the belief that the mountain shut up precious mines has come down to our own day; we are assured by a learned historian of fifty years ago that the story of the great carbuncle still found full credence in his.[12] We are now acquainted with the spirit of the time when the first attempt to scale the mountain, known to us, was rewarded with complete success. But the record is of exasperating brevity.

Among the earliest settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire, was a man by the name of Darby Field. The antecedents of this obscure personage are securely hidden behind the mists of more than two centuries.

A hundred and twenty-five years before the ascent of Mont Blanc by Jacques Balmat, Darby Field successfully ascended to the summit of the “White Hill,” to-day known as Mount Washington; but the exploit of the adventurous Irishman is far more remarkable in its way than that of the brave Swiss, since he had to make his way for eighty miles through a wilderness inhabited only by beasts of prey, or by human beings scarcely less savage, before he reached the foot of the great range; while Balmat lived under the very shadow of the monarch of the Alps, so that its spectre was forever crossing his path. Furthermore, the greater part of the ascent of Mont Blanc was already familiar ground to the guides and chamois-hunters of the Swiss Alps. On the contrary, according to every probability, Field was the first human being whose daring foot invaded the hitherto inviolable seclusion of the illustrious hermit of New England.

For such an adventure one instinctively seeks a motive. I did not long amuse myself with the idea that this explorer climbed merely for the sake of climbing; and I have little notion that he dreamed of posthumous renown. It is far more probable that the reports brought by the Indians of the fabulous treasures of the mountains led to Field’s long, arduous, and really perilous journey. It is certain that he was possessed of rare intrepidity, as well as the true craving for adventure. That goes without saying; still, the whole undertaking—its inception, its pursuit to the end in the face of extraordinary obstacles, which he had no means of measuring or anticipating—announces a very different sort of man from the ordinary, a purpose before which all dangers disappear.

In June, 1642, that is to say, only twelve years after the Puritan settlements in Massachusetts Bay, Field set out from the sea-coast for the White Hills.

So far as known, he prosecuted his journey to the Indian village of Pigwacket, the existence of which is thus established, without noteworthy accident or adventure. Here he was joined by some Indians, who conducted him within eight miles of the summit, when, declaring that to go farther would expose them to the wrath of their great Evil Spirit, they halted, and refused to proceed. The brave Irishman was equal to the emergency. To turn back, baffled, within sight of his goal was evidently not an admitted contingency. Leaving the Indians, therefore, squatted upon the rocks, and no doubt regarding him as a man rushing upon a fool’s fate, Field again resolutely faced the mountain, when, seeing him equally unmoved by their warnings as unshaken in his determination to reach the summit, two of the boldest warriors ran after him, while the others stoically made their preparations to await a return which they never expected to take place. They watched the retreating figures until lost among the rocks.

In the language of the original narration, the rest of the ascent was effected by “a ridge between two valleys filled with snow, out of which came two branches of the Saco River, which met at the foot of the hill, where was an Indian town of two hundred people.” ... “By-the-way, among the rocks, there were two ponds, one a blackish water, and the other reddish.”.... “Within twelve miles of the top was neither tree nor grass, but low savins, which they went upon the top of sometimes.”