Gentlemen, metaphysicians, explain that scene, if you please: it is no romance.
As this tale plunged me in a train of sombre reflection, the river recounted one of those marvellous legends which contain more poetry than superstition, and which here seem so appropriate.
According to the legend, a family living at the foot of a lofty peak had a daughter more beautiful than any maiden of the tribe, possessing a mind elevated far above the common order, and as accomplished as beautiful. When she reached a proper age, her parents looked around them for a suitable match, but in vain. None of the young men of the tribe were worthy of so peerless a creature. Suddenly this lovely wildflower of the mountains disappeared. Diligent was the search, and loud the lamentations when no trace of her light moccasin could be found in forest or glade. The tribe mourned her as lost. But one day some hunters, who had penetrated into the fastnesses of the mountain, discovered the lost maiden disporting herself in the limpid waters of a stream with a beautiful youth, whose hair, like her own, flowed down below his waist. On the approach of the intruders, the youthful bathers vanished from sight. The relatives of the maiden recognized her companion as one of the kind spirits of the mountain, and henceforth looked upon him as their son. They called upon him for moose, bear, or whatever creature they desired, and had only to go to the water-side and signify their desire, when, behold! the animal came swimming toward them. This legend strongly reminded me of one of those marvellous fables of the Hartz, in which a princess of exceeding beauty, destroyed by the arts of a wicked fairy, was often seen bathing in the river Ilse. If she met a traveller, she conducted him into the interior of the mountain and loaded him with riches. Each legend dimly conveys its idea of the wealth believed to reside in the mountain itself.
The Ellis continues to guide us farther and farther into the mountains. If we turn in the direction of the Glen House, a mile out of the village the Giant’s Stairs come finely into view, and are held for some distance. Then bewitching vistas of Mount Washington, with snow decorating his huge sides, rise and sink, appear and disappear, until we reach an open vale, where the stream is spanned by a rude bridge. The route offers nothing more striking in its way than the view of the Pinkham Notch, which lies open at this point.
One of my walks extending as far as the last house on this road, permitted me to gratify a strong desire to see something of the in-door life of the poorer class of farmers. That desire was fully satisfied. There was nothing remarkable about the house itself; but the room in which I rested would have furnished Meyer von Bremen a capital subject for one of his characteristic interiors—it carried me back a century at least. In one corner a woman upward of seventy, I should say, sat at a spinning-wheel. She rose, got my bread-and-milk, and then resumed her spinning. A young mother, with a babe in her lap and two tow-headed urchins at her knee, occupied a high-backed rocking-chair. To judge from appearances, the river which flowed by the door was completely forgotten. Her efforts to hush the babe being interrupted by the peevish whining of one of the brats, she dealt him a sound box on the ear, upon which the whole pack howled in unison, while the mother, very red with the effect of her own anger, dragged the culprit from the room. There was still another occupant, a young girl, so silently plying her needle that I did not at first notice her. The floor was bare. A rickety chair or two and a cradle finished the meagre inventory of the apartment. The general appearance of things was untidy and unthrifty, rather than squalid; but I could not help recalling Sir William Davenant’s remark, “that those tenants never get much furniture who begin with a cradle.”
In such rambles, romantic and picturesque, in such dreams, the time runs away. The weeks are long days, the days moments. Every one asks himself why he finds Jackson so enticing, but no one is able to answer the question. Cui bono? When I am happy, shall I make myself miserable searching for the reason? Not if I know it.
Like bees to the sweetest flowers, the artists alight on the choicest bits of scenery by instinct. One runs across their umbrellas almost everywhere, spread like gigantic mushrooms; but some of them seem only to live and have their true artistic being here. In general, they are gentle, unobtrusive, and rather subdued in the presence of their beloved mountains. Some among them, however, develop actual rapacity in the search for new subjects, as, with a pencil between their teeth, they creep in ambush to surprise and carry off some mountain beauty which you or I are to ransom. Does a traveller contemplate some arduous exploration in an unvisited region? the artist knocks him over by quietly remarking, “I camped there several days last year.”
In France they maintain that high mountains cannot be painted. Consequently, the modern French landscape is almost always a dead level; an illimitable plain, through which a placid stream quietly meanders, with a thick wood of aged trees at the left, a snug hamlet in the middle distance, some shrubbery on the right, and a clumsy ox-cart with peasants, in the foreground. All these details are sufficiently commonplace; but they appeal strongly to our human yearning for a life of perfect peace—a sanctuary the world cannot enter. Turner knew that he must paint a mountain with its head in the clouds, and its feet plunged in unfathomable abysses. Imagination would do the rest, and imagination governs the universe.
Photography cannot reproduce the true relation of distant mountains to the landscape. The highest summits look like hills. For want of color, too, it is always twilight. Even running water has a frozen look, and rocks emit a dead, sepulchral glare. But for details—every leaf of the tree, or shadow of the leaf—it is faultless; it is the thing itself. True, under the magnifying-glass the foliage looks crisped, as is noticed after a first frost. In short, the photograph of mountain scenery is like that of a friend taken in his coffin. We say with a shiver that is he, but, alas, how changed! A body without a soul. Again, photography cannot suggest movement. Perfect immobility is a condition indispensable to a successful picture. A successful picture! A petrified landscape!
“In the morning to the mountain,” says the proverb, as emblematic of high hopes. For two stations embodying the best features the vicinity of Jackson can offer, the crest of Thorn Mountain and the ledges above Fernald’s Farm are strongly commended to every sojourner. Both are easily reached. On the first, you are a child lifted above the crowd on the shoulders of a giant; the mountains have come to you. On the second, you have taken the best possible position to study the form and structure of Mount Washington. You see all the ravines, and can count all the gigantic feelers the immense mountain throws down into the gorge of the Ellis. In this way, step by step, we continue to master the topography of the region visited as we take our chocolate, one sip at a time.