moose was not far from the cabin. The news excited the famishing pioneer so that he was able to cut a new hole in the strap and gird it tighter. He then crept out and was fortunate enough, by resting the gun, to kill the moose. The skeleton men soon had a bountiful repast, and it is pleasant to read the assurance that before thirty-six hours their straps would hardly reach round them.

Besides occasional famine, these families were tried by the freshets that tore up their rude bridges, swept off their barns, and even floated their houses on the meadows. On the Saco intervale, in the year 1800, a heavy rain swelled the river, so that it floated every cabin and shed that had been built on it, and bore them quietly down the current," the cocks crowing merrily as they floated on." Let us be grateful for this note of cheer in the story. The year before this the few settlers in Bethlehem attempted to build a bridge over the Ammonoosuc. The laborers, who worked all day in the water, had nothing to eat but milk-porridge, which was carried to them hot by their wives. At last they were obliged to cut and burn wood enough in the forest to make a large load of potash, which they sent to Concord, Mass., a distance of a hundred seventy miles, to be bartered for provisions. The teamster was absent four weeks, and dur ing part of this time the settlers cooked green chocolate roots and a few other wild plants, to save them from starvation.

When the settlers accumulated anything worth stealing which the mountains could not destroy by natural ravage, the bears were unloosed upon them. If nuts and berries failed, and there was a famine in the woods, down came an irruption of black barbarians upon the cattle, especially upon the pigs. Often a huge bear would make his appearance near a settler's house, steal a good-sized pig with his forepaws, and run off with him, eating as he ran. And sometimes the personal contests of the squatters with these aboriginal tenants, would be such as are decidedly more pleasant in history than in experience. What a charming surprise, for instance, to an early settler under Chocorua, when he ascended a hill near his cabin, on a very dark night, and came suddenly into the embrace, more warm

than friendly, of a big bear that was waiting for him at the top. Then commenced a wrestling-match which it is delightful to contemplate. The bear was an adept in hugging, but the man understood the art of tripping, and by a dexterous movement threw the bear from her feet. The two rolled down the hill in the darkness, over and over, and tumbled into a pond at the foot. Here the bear let go, and both, crawling wet out of the water, were content to consider it a drawn battle, and retired to their respective places of abode.

The first things, of course, which the settlers did when a dozen families had collected within the compass of a few miles, were to organize a church, and establish a school. By the time two dozen families were gathered in a valley, it was almost certain that a second church of a different sect would be started. Ministers toiled all the week on their meadow or wood-lot, and, if they did not preach without notes, wrote their sermons at night by the blaze of pitch-knots. The school-house was built of rough hemlock logs, covered with rude boards and the bark of trees, and was lighted by two or three panes of glass placed singly in its wall. "The something that answered for a fireplace and chimney was constructed of poor bricks and rocks, together with sticks, laid up so as to form what was called a catting,' to guide the smoke." And to this cabin the scholars went in paths cut through the thick forests. Yet in many an instance the passion for learning was kindled within these rude hovels as intensely as it has ever been in the most shapely academy. A son of one of these pioneers, now a clergyman, who attended such a school, assures us that many an excited contest in spelling and ciphering took place within its walls, and that "many tears have been shed, and bursts of applause shaken the very bark on its roof at the successful performance of the Conjuror' and Neighbor Scrapewell.'" Such rough churches, and wigwam schools, have been the cell-germs from which the organizing power of civilization in our cold north has poured.

From one of these "locations," or "grants," the story runs that a man once made his appearance in the State Legislature, and took a seat. He was asked for proof that he was the choice of the people.

"Whom could they put up against me?" he said; "I am the only man in my town." His claim to a seat was allowed. There must have been a few more inhabitants in the settlement in upper Coös which was legally warned to have training. After the officers were chosen, there was but one soldier. And he said, "Gentlemen, I hope you will not be too severe in drilling me, as I may be needed another time. I can form a solid column, but it will rack me shock ingly to display."

The hardships of which we have been writing are forcibly suggested at the Giant's Grave. Abel Crawford lived in a log hut on that mound some months, alone. But in 1792, the Rosebrook family moved into it when it was buried in snow, so that the entrance to it could be found with difficulty. For six weeks neither the sun, nor the heat from the cabin, would make a drop of water fall from the eaves. During the whole winter they were dependent upon the game they could catch, and often, from fear that the father might return empty, the children would be sent down through the Notch twelve miles, to Abel Crawford's, to obtain something for sustenance. Good Mrs. Rosebrook often lay awake late in the night, waiting anxiously for the children's return through the snows and winds of the awful Notch, and when they arrived would " pour out her love in prayer and thankfulness to her heavenly Father, for preserving them, and that she was permitted to receive them again to her humble mansion."

Abel Crawford, in his old age, was never tired of telling stories of the hardships and adventures of the pioneers. He was well named the veteran pilot" of the hills; for he was the first guide that introduced visitors to the grandeur of the scenery so easily reached now, and he saw the gradual process of civilization applied to the wilderness between Bethlehem and Upper Bartlett. When he was about twenty-five years old, he wandered through the region alone for months, dressed in tanned mooseskin, lord of the

Cradle, hunting-ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear and deer.

He assisted in cutting the first footpath to the ridge, and at seventy-five, in the year 1840, he rode the first horse that climbed the cone of Mount Washington. During the last ten years of his life he was a noble object of interest to thousands of visitors from all parts of the United States, for whom the whole tour of the hills had been smoothed into a pastime and luxury. He died at eighty-five.

He had been so long accustomed to greet travellers in the summer, that he longed to have his life spared till the visitors made their appearance in Bartlett, on their way to the Notch. He used to sit in the warm spring days, supported by his daughter, his snow-white hair falling to his shoulders, waiting for the first ripple of that large

tide which he had seen increasing in volume for twenty years. Not long after the stages began to carry their summer freight by his door, he passed away. We have a very pleasant recollection of the venerable appearance of the patriarch in front of his house under Mount Crawford, in the year 1849, when we made our first visit to the White Hills. A large bear was chained to a pole near the house, and the stage load of people had gathered around, equally interested in seeing a specimen of the first settlers and of the aboriginal tenants of the wilderness. The old man handed the writer a biscuit, and said: "Give it to the beast, young man, and then tell when you go back to Boston, that a bear ate out of your hand up in these mountains." The difference between an experience in the mountain region, as our party were then enjoying it for a week, and his early acquaintance with its hardships and solitude, was the difference between feeding a fettered bear with a biscuit, and wrestling in a tight hug with a hungry one alone in the forest.

In 1803 the first rude public-house for straggling visitors to the White Mountains, was erected on the Giant's Grave itself. And in 1819 the first rough path was cut through the forest on the side of the Mount Washington range to the rocky ridge. Ethan Allen Crawford, who lived on the Giant's Grave, marked and cleared this path in connection with Abel Crawford, his father, who was living eight miles below the Notch. A few years after, Ethan spotted and trimmed a footpath on the side of Mount Washington itself, along essentially the same route by which carriages are driven now from the White Mountain House to the Cold Spring. And it ought not to be forgotten that it was by Ethan Crawford, that the first protection for visitors was built under the cone of Mount Washington. It was a stone hut, furnished with a small stove, an iron chest, a roll of sheet lead, and a plentiful supply of soft moss and hemlock boughs for bedding. The lead was the cabin-register on which visitors left their names engraved by a piece of sharp iron. Every particle of this camp and all the furniture, was swept off on the night of the storm by which the Willey family were overwhelmed.