More than a mile the path again climbs steeply through closely set evergreens, in whose perpetual shade the moist mosses are knee deep above all rocks and fallen timber. Nowhere can one see better the value of spruce and fir growth on mountain sides in the preservation of the mountains themselves. Beneath this everlasting cushion of wet moss, re-enforced by roots, each rock lies in place and nothing short of an avalanche can stir it. Where the path has let in the sunlight on the moss the torrents have stripped it clean from the surface and frost and storm year by year gully the opening deeper. It is astounding, this sponge of moss that climbs to the top with the path, sphagnums and dainty cedar moss predominating, but seemingly all other varieties intermingled as well.
And at the top one finds how persistent in its withdrawal the summit of a great mountain like Lafayette can be. This is only the top of a westerly spur, a far greater chunk than Eagle Cliff, but only a chunk of the main mountain, that also broke off when the foundations of the range settled. Strange to relate, the ravine that lies between is choked, not with mighty rocks, but with a level that has for a surface at least a boggy space in which lie two sheets of water,—the Eagle Lakes, 4146 feet in elevation. This is no summit; rather it is another notch, and the peak of Lafayette lies more than a thousand feet farther on into the blue.
A little above this point the firs cease and the moss with them. The rest of the way lies over broken stone that has crumbled from rough ledges unrestricted by any mossy protection. In the gravel ground from it grow some stunted firs, some very dwarf birches and scattered wild flowers, but the way to the summit lies for all that through a desert. From its jagged agglomeration of rocks, scattered on ledges that still hold to the main mass of rock which is the mountain, one looks north or south along a great rocky ridge which is the crest of the Franconia Range. North lie the great outlying spurs and buttresses of Lafayette, leading across a high col to Garfield, which sticks a bare rock pinnacle skyward. Southward a well-worn path lies along the ridge to Lincoln, Haystack, Liberty and Flume, each just a rise in the crest which lies along the ponderous bulk of really one mountain. Garfield is in a certain measure off by itself, but these others are all merely pinnacles of one great structure, Lafayette being the highest. Here as on the Presidential Range one finds Alpine plants, conspicuously the tiny mountain sandwort, so constant a bloomer as to show its white flowers still in mid-September. With this, but no others in bloom, were the three-toothed cinquefoil, the mountain avens, mountain cranberry, mountain goldenrod, bilberry and Labrador tea, all to be seen on the final crest which is Lafayette's summit.
A north wind out of a clear sky had blown at the start of my trip, but as if to prove that its day was not yet over, the wind out of the south came over the long barren ridge, bringing butterflies in its train. For a time the two winds seemed to meet at the very mountain top, and a yellow Colias, that was the first to come, caught between the two, coasted upward and disappeared toward the zenith as if even the summit of Lafayette were not high enough for him. Later, when the south wind had fairly driven that from the north back toward the Canadian boundary, I saw several of these, which I took to be Colias philodice, the common sulphur, flitting about the summit, their yellow pale and clear compared with that of the autumn-tinted birches just down the slope. Two mourning cloaks, a Compton tortoise and a Grapta progne, made up the list of other butterflies seen. Summer was doing well to be able to show even these so late in September on so high a summit as Lafayette. I looked curiously for the little gray Oeneis semidea, the White Mountain butterfly which is so common in earlier summer on the Presidential Range and said to be confined to it, but I did not see it. Perhaps this variety is not to be found on Lafayette, though the altitude is sufficient, the food plants are there, and the same geological conditions which left this variety "islanded" on Washington no doubt apply.
The south wind which brought up the butterflies and which pushed the north wind back brought up also a gray haze which swept in like a sea turn. It blotted out the Ossipee Mountains and the little Squam Range. For a time the Sandwich peaks stood out, deep blue against its pale blue blur, then they melted into it and were gone. It came on and took Tecumseh, Osceola and Kancamagus. Kineo, Cushman and Moosilauke were drowned in it one after another, but still to the eastward Carrigain and Hancock showed, and below them the broad Pemigewasset Valley was spread out like a map. Almost at my feet was the broad swath of ruin which past years of lumbering have cut in this once beautiful valley of primeval forest. For miles down the western slope of the Franconia Range and beyond all valleys are bare and all slopes that the utmost daring can climb are denuded. On mile after mile, save for, in spots, a pale undergrowth of blueberry and wild cherry, only dead birches stand, stretching bare white bones to the sky in ghostly appeal. Islanded in it here and there are peaks and ridges still beautiful in deep-green evergreens, with just a misty touch of the tender yellow of autumn-tinted birches, wood too small or too dangerously set to tempt the axe. The rest is desert; dignified, haughty even in the mighty uplift of its long slopes and bare gray crags, but desert for all that.
It is a relief to turn the eye from this to the rich green of the unscathed slopes of the Notch itself. A thin blue line of air between Eagle Cliff and Mount Cannon shows the narrow passage where the mountains split apart, perhaps to let man and the streams go through. Over the way lies Moran Lake, a blue gem among the green ridges of Cannon. At my feet, so near it seems, is the round eye of Echo Lake, which is at the bottom of the Notch, but seems almost as near as the larger Eagle Lake, which is but a thousand feet below, far up on the side of the mountain. All about are bold, bare cliffs showing through the green, but their bareness is that of nature, and the deep green around them grows, forgetful of the axe, which for many long years has not been laid at their roots, perhaps never will be again. Southerly the Pemigewasset Valley opened far to the villages of Woodstock and on to Plymouth, but even as I looked the pale blue haze blotted them out and swept on up the valley. The south wind was getting into a passion, bringing clouds behind and above the haze, putting out the sun and growling in gray gusts about the summit. It shouted threats in my ears and shook me as I went down the zig-zag trail to the shelter of the firs about the nearer Eagle Lake. Then it lulled and dropped a tear or two of warm rain as if ashamed of itself.
Profile Lake, Franconia Notch, and Mount Lafayette from Bald Mountain
Star Lake, on Mount Madison, is but a puddle among the bare, slatey-coherent rocks of the Northern Peaks. The Lakes of the Clouds are real lakes, beautifully set, but barren in themselves, their shallow rocky bottoms allowing no growth of water-plants. Spaulding Lake at the head of the Great Gulf on Washington and Hermit Lake at the bottom of the Tuckerman Ravine are singularly alike, shallow, transparent, barren and beautifully set among spiring firs and spruces, each in the heart of a mighty gorge. But here, way up on the high shoulder of Lafayette, where one would think no lake could possibly be, is a little one in a brown bog,—a bog in which the mountain cranberry sets its deep red fruit to the sun and the snowberry scatters its pearls all over the maroon carpet of the sphagnum. Curiously beautiful fruit, that of the creeping snowberry. Here is a cranberry vine grown slender and with tiny leaves fringing it most delicately. Here at its tip is an elongated checkerberry, waxy, almost transparent white, with an odor of checkerberry, a pleasantly acid pulp that reminds one of cranberry and an after-flavor of checkerberry also. If there were prehistoric wizards in plant-breeding in these mountains, surely one must have cross-fertilized the cranberry with the pollen of the checkerberry to the producing of this shy, delicate, hardy and altogether lovely fruit. To this antediluvian Burbank it may be that the Old Man of the Mountain is a statue, erected by a grateful posterity in the Notch below.