"You interrupted me; we will call it an æsthetic pilgrimage."
What days those were we passed in the upland region. Fabyan's is situated in the very heart of the White Hills and is the objective point for all tourists. From the verandas of this spacious hotel, one obtains an uninterrupted view of the whole Presidential Range, and can watch the course of the train of cars as it creeps slowly up the precipitous sides of Mount Washington.
Taking the train at Fabyan's, one glides rapidly up the steepest practical grade to the Base station, where he leaves the ordinary passenger coach and takes his seat in a car designed to be pushed up the Mount Washington Railroad. After the warning whistle the train starts slowly on its journey—the grandest sensation of the whole trip to the ordinary traveller. The most magnificent scenery is soon spread before the tourist. No other three miles of railway in the world affords such a succession of wild and startling views as the passenger has on his mountain ride on this iron line up the steep inclination of this mighty summit of the great northern range. We get glimpses of the wide valley below, the bold landscape ever changing, yet always filled with grand and startling outlines. Up and up we go. We pass Gulf station, Naumbet station, Jacob's Ladder, and the monument of stones which marks the spot where, in 1855, Miss Lizzie Bourne of Maine died from exposure. At last we are at the summit, in front of the hospitable looking Tip Top House. We are standing at an altitude of over six thousand feet above the sea, or to be exact, 6,293 feet, according to Professor Guyot, on the highest point of land with one exception east of the Rocky Mountains.
"Isn't the thought inspiring," I remarked to my companions, "that we are on the highest land for which our fathers fought a century ago?"
"And is it not the theme the ultima thule of grandeur in an artist's pilgrimage?" said Molly. "What a prospect! The plains of Canada, the forests of Maine, the mountains of New York, and I really believe the sea, if I mistake not that faint blue line in the far distance over the billowy land! What a grand spectacle a sunrise or a sunset would be, viewed from this height!"
The next morning we saw the sun start from its bed in the Orient, swathed in radiant clouds and vapors, and rise up behind the eastern range of hills; we had never seen anything so beautiful and striking before, and the scene is one which neither pen can describe nor pencil portray. Our memory will not fail to cherish it as the choicest revelation to be seen in a life time.
