They saw that the railroad kept along the west bank of the Notch, high above the bottom, but the carriage road plunged directly down, beside the Saco River (at this point but a tiny brook). On the west side of the Notch Mount Willard rose beside them, and south of that Mount Willey shot up almost precipitously, the latter being over four thousand feet high. On the east side was the huge rampart of Mount Webster, also four thousand feet high, and nearly as steep, with the long white scars of landslides down its face.
“Well!” said Peanut, “the Franconia Notch was some place, but this one has got it skun a mile. Gee! Looks as if the mountains were going to tumble over on top of you!”
“They did once, on top of the Willey family,” said Mr. Rogers. “Come on, we’ll walk down till we can see how it happened.”
The road plunged rapidly down-hill, into the forest at the bottom of the Notch. They met one or two motors chugging up, and having a hard time of it. In one case, everybody but the driver was walking, to lighten the load.
“I came down this hill on a bicycle once—only once,” said the Scout Master. “It was back in 1896, when everybody was riding bicycles. I was trying to coast through the Notch. Somewhere on this hill I ran into a big loose stone, head on, and the bicycle stopped. I didn’t, though. The man with me couldn’t stop his wheel for nearly a quarter of a mile. Finally he came back and picked me up, and took me back to the Crawford House, where they bandaged up my head and knee. Somebody brought the wheel back on a cart.”
“Say, it would make some coast on a bob-sled, though!” cried Peanut. “Wouldn’t be any rocks to dodge then.”
“And there’d only be about ten feet of snow in here to break out, I reckon,” Art answered.
“Nearer thirty,” said Mr. Rogers.
Over two miles below the Crawford House they came to the site of the old Willey House, and saw through the trees to the west the towering wall of Mount Willey, scarred still by the great landslide, seeming to hang over them.
“There’s where she started,” said Mr. Rogers, pointing to the top of the mountain. “It was back in late August, in 1826, that the slide came. There had been a drought, making the thin soil on the mountain very dry. Then came a terrific storm, a regular cloudburst, and the water went through the soil and began running down on the rocks underneath. That started the soil and the trees on it sliding, and they gathered headway and more soil and debris and rocks as they came, the way a snowball gathers more snow, and presently a whole strip of the wall was thundering down.