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Especially if one can take a walk or drive to the point we speak of, near the Crawford House, late in a clear afternoon, he will be doubly repaid by the sight of one of these mountain edges sweeping down in shadow to the haggard ruins at its base, and of the other glistening in delicate and cheerful gold. A moonlight view at the same spot gives

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the contrast no less marked and impressive, in blackness on one side and silver on the other.

But to know the Notch truly, one must take the drive from the Crawford House to the top of Mount Willard, and look down into it. A man stands there as an ant might stand on the edge of a huge

tureen. We are lifted twelve hundred feet over the gulf on the brink of an almost perpendicular wall, and see the sides, Webster and Willey, rising on either hand eight hundred feet higher still, and running off two or three miles towards the Willey House. The road below is a mere bird-track. The long battlements that, from the front of the Willey House, tower on each side so savagely, from this point seem to flow down in charming curves to meet at the stream, which looks like the slender keel from which spring up the ribs that form the hold of a tremendous line-of-battle ship on the stocks. But perhaps we suggest a more exact and noble comparison if we speak of its resemblance to the trough of the sea in a storm. They are earth-waves, these curving walls that front each other. They were flung up thus, it may be, in the passion of the boiling land, and stiffened before they could dash their liquid granite against each other, or subside by successive oscillations into calm.

Mr. Ruskin has called attention by drawings in the fourth volume of the Modern Painters, to the picturesque characters of the lines of projection and escape among the debris of the Swiss mountains. They are almost always found to represent portions of infinite curves; and in spite of breaks and disturbances, their natural unity is so sweet and perfect, that we have little difficulty in turning the sketches of them into the outlines of a bird's wing, slightly ruffled, but still graceful, and very different from any that we should suppose would be designed or drawn by a land-slide, or the rage of a torrent. Standing over the Notch, also, we are struck with the grace that curbed the rage of the murderous avalanches. We remember talking once with a man who was very indignant at all poetic descriptions of natural scenery. "Now," said he, "what can be honestly said of this Willey Notch, but, Good Heavens, what a rough hole!" " Yet, on Mount Willard, it is the delicacy of slope and curve, and not the roughness, that is prominent. "Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary," and it is beauty which the savage forces serve at last. The waste of the mountains is not destructive, but creative. In the long run the ravage of the avalanche is beneficent. And here we

see how, as its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, its apparent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness. "The hand of God, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of mankind, guides also its grim surges by the law of their delight; and bridles the bounding rocks, and appeases the flying foam, till they lie down in the same lines that lead forth the fibres of the down on a cygnet's breast."

The view of the summits of the Mount Washington range, too, from Mount Willard-the only point within some miles of the Notch where any of them can be seen-is a reward for the short excursion, almost as valuable as the view of the Gulf of the Notch. And let us again advise visitors to ascend Mount Willard if possible, late in the afternoon. They will then see one long wall of the Notch in shadow, and can watch it move slowly up the curves of the opposite side, displacing the yellow splendor, while the dim green dome of Washington is gilded by the sinking sun" with heavenly alchemy."

Those who love mountain cascades, and especially those who love to climb to them through the undisturbed wilderness, will find now a new temptation to a drive into the Notch and through it from the Crawford House. The Flume and the Silver Cascade pouring down from Mount Webster have gladdened the eyes of almost all the visitors to the hotel, for they are visible from the road. The windings and leapings of the Silver Cascade, whose downward path for more than a mile is in view, suggest the movement and in part the picture of Shelley's lines:

Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,-
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains,

She leapt down the rocks
With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams;

Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine

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In murmurs as soft as sleep;

The Earth seemed to love her,

And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.

But a more wild and beautiful waterfall than any hitherto seen on the western side of the mountains, was discovered on Mount Willey in September, 1858, by Mr. Ripley of North Conway, and Mr. Porter of New York. An old fisherman had reported at the Crawford House that he had once seen a wonderful cascade on a stream that pours down that mountain, and empties into the Saco below the Willey House. These gentlemen drove through the Notch to the second bridge below the Willey House, which crosses a stream with the unpoetical name of Cow Brook, and followed up this rivulet into the wild forest. An ascent of nearly two miles revealed to them the object of their search inclosed between the granite walls of a very steep ravine, whose cliffs, crowned with a dense forest of spruce, are singularly grand. They saw the cascade leaping first over four rocky stairways, each of them about six feet high, and then gliding, at an angle of forty-five degrees, a hundred and fifty feet with many graceful curves down a solid bed of granite into a pool below. The Cascade is about seventy-five feet wide at the base, and fifty at the summit.

Exploring the stream nearly a mile higher, other falls were discovered, each one deserving especial notice, and one or two of most rare beauty. The finest of these upper falls was christened, we believe by the discoverers, the "Sparkling Cascade," and the larger one below, the "Sylvan-Glade Cataract." The brook itself has been named since in honor of Mr. Ripley, and the ravine, of Mr. Porter. We hope, however, that the name "Avalanche Brook," which we believe the explorers first gave to it, may be the permanent title of the stream, since it flows near the track of the fatal land-slide of 1826, and that Mr. Ripley's name may be transferred to the Cataract.

Child of the clouds! remote from every taint

Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;

Thine are the honors of the lofty waste;

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