“These White Hills, at the head of Penobscot River, are by the Indians said to be much higher than those called Agiockochook,[14] above Saco.”
The similitude between the names White Mountains and Mont Blanc suggests the same idea, that color, rather than character, makes the first and strongest impression upon the beholder. Thus we have White Mountains and Green Mountains, Red Mountains and Black Mountains, the world over. The eye seizes a color before the mind fixes upon a distinctive feature, or the imagination a resemblance. It is stated, on the authority of Schoolcraft, that the Algonquins called these summits “White Rocks.” Mariners, approaching from the open sea, descried what seemed a cloud-bank, rising from the landward horizon, when twenty leagues from the nearest coast, and before any other land was visible from the mast-head. Thirty leagues distant in a direct line, in a clear midsummer day, the distant summits appeared of a pearly whiteness; observed again from a church steeple on the sea-coast, with the sky partially overcast, they were whitish-gray, showing that the change from blue to white, or to cool tones approximating with white, is due to atmospheric conditions. The early writers succeed only imperfectly in accounting for this phenomenon, which for six months of the year at least has no connection whatever with the snows that cover the highest peaks only from the middle of October to the middle of April, a period during which few navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries visited our shores, or, indeed, ventured to put to sea at all.[15]
II.
JACKSON AND THE ELLIS VALLEY.
Once more, O mountains of the North, unveil
Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by!—WHITTIER.
IT is Petrarch who says, “A journey on foot hath most pleasant commodities; a man may go at his pleasure; none shall stay him, none shall carry him beyond his wish, none shall trouble him; he hath but one labor, the labor of nature, to go.” Every true pedestrian ought to render full faith to the poet’s assertion; and should he chance to have his Laura, he will see her somewhere, or, rather, everywhere, I promise him. But that is his affair.
There are two ways of reaching Jackson from North Conway. One route leaves the travelled highway a short distance beyond the East Branch of the Saco, and ascends Thorn Hill; another diverges from it near Glen Station, in Bartlett. The Thorn Hill way is the longer; but, as the views are unsurpassed, I unhesitatingly chose it in preference to the easier and shorter road.
The walk from the Intervale over Thorn Hill gives ravishing backward glimpses, opening to a full and broad panorama of the Saco meadows and of the surrounding mountains. Needless to call them by name. One might forget names, but the image never. Then, advancing to the summit, full upon the charmed eye comes that glorious vision of the great mountains, elevated to an immense height, and seeming, in their benevolence, to say, “Approach, mortals!” Underneath is the village.
We have left the grand vestibule of the Saco to enter an amphitheatre. Washington, in his snowy toga, occupies the place of high honor. Adams flaunts his dainty spire over the Pinkham Notch, at the monarch’s left hand. Then comes an embattled wall, pierced through its centre by the immense hollow of the Carter Notch.
Jackson is the ideal mountain village. From Thorn Hill it looked a little elysium, with its handful of white houses huddled around its one little church spire, like a congregation sitting at the feet of their pastor. You perceive neither entrance nor exit, so completely is the deep vale shut in by mountains. The streams, that make two veins of silver in the green floor, seem vainly seeking a way out. One would think Nature had locked the door and thrown away the key. The first stream is the Wildcat, coming from the Carter Notch; the second, the Ellis, from the Pinkham Notch. They unite just below the village, and, like a forlorn-hope, together cut their way out of the mountains.
Getting down into the village, the high mountains now sink out of sight, and I saw only the nearer and less elevated ones immediately surrounding—on the north, Eagle and Wildcat; on the east, Tin and Thorn; on the west, Iron Mountain. The latter has fine, bold cliffs. Over its smooth slope I again saw the two great steps of the Giant’s Stairs, mounting the long ridge which conducts to the great plateau of Mount Washington.