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rising higher than the last, and all of them destitute of trees,-which lead to the crest of the ridge. From the White Mountain House there is a carriage-road on which visitors are carried some ways up on Mount Washington itself, to within about two miles of the summit. Here horses are taken for the remainder of the ascent. The views, by both roads, when the day is clear, give compensation that makes the toil a trifle. But we must reserve what we have to say of the views which the summit gives, for the next chapter, and we have no intention of assuming to decide which of the three routes by which the ascent is made is preferable.

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The rambles in the neighborhood of the White Mountain House are exceedingly interesting. There are many hills of moderate height which may be scaled, from which views of the great range are gained, that, especially towards evening, are very impressive and rich. We must remember that the neighborhood of this hotel supplies the near

est access to the White Mountain range on the western side; in fact it is the only point where, from the level of the road, the range is even visible, after we leave North Conway.

Then, too, the falls and cliffs of the Ammonoosuc lie not far from the hotel. This river, one of the principal feeders of the Connecticut, is undoubtedly the wildest stream in New England. The water, which it receives from the cone of Mount Washington, and from the Blue Ponds, near the summit of Mount Munroe, dashes down the mountain side, often in leaps of thirty to forty feet at a time,-pours over the gray granite shelves near the White Mountain House, where, after every heavy rain the water is tossed into heaps as high as haycocks,— catches only for a moment the deep shadows of the balsam fir, white pine, and spruce, which the grand cliffs of its right bank throw upon it, and will not stop to play with the flickering lights and shades that dance upon its ripples through the birches that rustle on the flat ledges which guard it on the left, but in a hurry along its whole course of thirty miles, during which it descends over five thousand feet, is calmed in the current of the sober Connecticut that moves with a lordly leisure towards the sea.

Fast by the river's trickling source I sit,

And view the new-born offspring of the skies;
Cradled on rocky felt, a nursling yet,

Fed by his mother-cloud's soft breast, he lies.

But lo! the heaven-born streamlet swelling flows,
Dreaming e'en now of fame, the woods adown,
And as his bosom heaves with longing throes,

His wavelets rock the mirrored sun and moon.

And now he scorns beneath the firs to creep,
Or hemmed by narrow mountain walls to flow,
But tumbles headlong down the rocky steep,
And foams along the pebbly vale below.

"Come on! come on!" he every brookling hails,
"Here suns exhaust and sands absorb your force,
Ye brothers come! through smiling fields and dales
I lead you down to your primeval source."

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The name of Crawford is associated with the Giant's Grave and the neighboring meadow. And we ought not to leave the spot until we have paid respect to the memory of the early settlers of the wilderness which is upborne on the flanks of the White Hills. We can now breakfast in Boston, and reach the base of Mount Washington, on the eastern or the western side, in season for supper. It is difficult for us to conceive the hardships of the pioneers who, seventy or eighty years ago, invaded "the forest primeval," and determined to wring a livelihood from lands upon which, at evening or morning, the shadow of Mount Washington was flung. Whether we read the accounts of the first settlers in Jackson, Conway, Bartlett, Albany, Bethlehem or Shelburne, the stories are essentially the same. The perils of isolation, the ravages of wild beasts, the wrath of the mountain torrents, the obstacles to intercourse which the untamed wilderness interposed, every form of discomfort and of danger was visibly threatened by the great mountains to guard their immediate slopes and valleys from intrusion, but in vain. Whether we study history on a large or a small scale, we find that the movements of population, carrying the threads of civilization to new districts, new climates, and foreign shores, furnish the most mystic chapters in the revelation of an Intellect that works through human folly as through human wisdom for generous ends.

When there was so much land within the bounds of civilization already unoccupied and unclaimed, what could have induced families eighty years ago, to move from a great distance in order to colonize the banks of the Ellis River, or the wild borders of the upper Ammonoosuc, or the glen through which above North Conway the Saco rushes? The very horses of the settlers on the Bartlett meadows, in 1777, would not stay, but struck over the hills due south, in the direction of Lee from which they had been taken. They all perished in the forest before the succeeding spring. And many of the pioneers, as if to taste hardship in its bitterest flavor, started for their new homes in the winter. One couple travelled eighty miles on snow-shoes, the husband carrying a pack of furniture on his back, in order to enjoy

the privilege of nearly starving in Conway. Joseph Pinkham and his family removed to Jackson in 1790, when the snow was five feet deep on a level. Their hand-sled, on which their provisions, furniture, and clothing were packed, was drawn by a pig which they compelled to work in harness. John Pendexter and wife made a triumphal entry into Bartlett in the winter. She rode a large part of the way from Portsmouth, on a feeble horse, with a feather-bed under her and a child in her arms, while the husband dragged the rest of their worldly wealth over the snow. Their child was cradled in a sap-trough, and became the mother of a family, "all of whom do honor to their parentage."

Several of the earliest settlers lived for years without any neighbors within many miles. The pioneer in the village of Jackson was obliged to go ten miles to a mill, and would carry a bushel of corn on his shoulder, and take it back in meal, without removing the burden during the whole distance; and Ethan Crawford tells us that his grandfather went once to a lower settlement for a bushel of salt, the scarcity of which produced a great deal of distress and sickness in the cabins of the forest, and returned with it on his back, eighty miles through the woods. And it was not from the lack of salt alone that these bold people suffered. Not all the families scattered along the course of a mountain stream owned cows, and could have so rich a diet as milk-porridge. Water and meal, with dried trout without salt, were their dependence when game was shy, or long storms prevented hunting. Sometimes when famine threatened, they were obliged to send deputations thirty, fifty, sixty miles to purchase grain. And we read that now and then, in times of great scarcity, the most hardy settlers wore a wide strap of skin, which as they grew more emaciated was drawn tighter, to mitigate the gnawings of hunger, that they might hold out till relief came. Often we are told the buckle was drawn almost to the last hole. In the early history of Conway, we read of a man who had tightened his strap thus, and was lying down thinking that he should never rise again. A neighbor, almost as weak, and who did not own a gun, crept to his door to say that a

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