found. Here Mount Washington towers, in satisfactory majesty, above the whole curving line of the confederate summits. Stern Sagamore! where are the tawny tribes Our very works are tombstones to our dust! What a pity that the hills could not have kept the names which the Indian tribes gave to them! The names which the highest peaks of the great range bear were given to them in 1820, by a party from Lancaster. How absurd the order is! Beginning at "The Notch," and passing around to Gorham, these are the titles of the summits which are all seen from the village just spoken of: Webster, Clinton, Pleasant, Franklin, Monroe, Washington, Clay, Jefferson, Adams, Madison. What a wretched jumble! These are what we have taken in exchange for such Indian words as Agiochook, which is the baptismal title of Mount Washington, and for words like Ammonoosuc, Moosehillock, Contoocook, Pennacook, Pentucket. Think, too, of the absurd association of names which the three mountains that rise over the Franconia Notch are insulted with-Mount Lafayette, Mount Pleasant, and Mount Liberty! How much better to have given the highest peaks of both ranges the names of some great tribes or chiefs, such as Saugus, Passaconaway, Uncanoonuc, Wonnalancet, Weetamoo, Bomazeen, Winnepurkit, Kancamagus,-words that chime with Saco, and Merrimack, and Sebago, and Connecticut, and Ossipee, and Androscoggin. Even the general name, "White Mountains," is usually inapplicable during the season in which visitors see them. All unwooded summits of tolerable eminence are white in the winter; and in the summer, the mountains of the Washington range, seen at a distance in the ordinary daylight, are pale, dim green. The first title, "Crystal Hills," which the white explorers gave them, it would have been better to have retained. But how much richer is the Indian name "Waumbek!" The full title they applied to them was WaumbekMethna, which signifies, it is said, "Mountains with snowy foreheads." Yet not a public house in all the mountain region bears the name of Waumbek, which is so musical, and which might be so profitably exchanged for Alpine House, or Glen House, or Profile House, or Tip-Top House. We are surprised, indeed, that the appellation "Kan Ran Vugarty," signifying the continued likeness of a gull, which it is said one Indian tribe applied to the range, has not been adopted by some landlord as a title to a hotel, or in some village as the name of a river, on account of its barbarity. Would this be worse than to give the name "Israel's River" to the charming stream, fed from the rills of Washington and Jefferson, which flows through the Jefferson meadows, and empties into the Connecticut? The Indian name was Singrawac. Yet no trace of this charming name is left in Jefferson or Lancaster. Think of putting "Mount Monroe," or "Mount Clay," or "Mount Franklin," or "Peabody River," or "Berlin Falls," or "Israel's River," into poetry. The White Mountains have lost the privilege of being en shrined in such sonorous rhythm and such melody as Longfellow has given to the Indian names in his lines: Down the rivers, o'er the prairies, To the mountains of the prairie, The eastern wilderness of Maine is more favored in this respect, of · which Whittier has written in his poem of "The Lumbermen: Where the crystal Ambijejis And Millnoket's pine-black ridges Hide the browsing deer: Where, through lakes and wide morasses, Or through rocky walls, Swift and strong, Penobscot passes White with foamy falls; Where, through clouds, are glimpses given Of Katahdin's sides, Rock and forest piled to heaven, Torn and ploughed by slides! Far below, the Indian trapping, In the sunshine warm; Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping Half the peak in storm. O'er us, to the southland heading, Screams the gray wild-goose; On the ni; it air sounds the treading Of the brindled moose. Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping, Frost his task-work plies; Soon, his icy bridges heaping, Shall ourg-piles rise. The lumbermen work, also, during the fall and winter, in the wilderness that slopes into Randolph and Jefferson. They pile the hemlocks and the hackmetacks by the stream, so that When, with sounds of smothered thunder, On some night of rain, Lake and river break asunder Winter's weakened chain, Down the wild March flood shall bear them To the saw-mill's wheel, Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them But "Whipple's Grant," and "Hart's Location," and "Israel's River," and "Knot-Hole" road, are not so redolent of poetry as crystal Ambijejis and Katahdin and Millnoket. The lower portion of New Hampshire is more fortunate in this respect, as the following passage from Whittier's "Bridal of Pennacook" will convince our readers delightfully :— The trapper, that night on Turee's brook, For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo From the Crystal Hills to the far Southeast The river Sagamores came to the feast; They came from Sunapee's shore of rock, From the snowy sources of Snooganock, And from rough Coos whose thick woods shake Their pine-cones in Umbagog lake From Ammonoosuck's mountain pass Wild as his home came Chepewass; And the Keenomps of the hills which throw Their shade on the Smile of Manito. With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, Bird of the air and beast of the field, Steaks of the brown bear fat and large, Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, But the Indian names and legends are shorn from the upper mountain region. They have not been caught for our literature. The valleys are almost as bare of them as the White Mountain cones are of verdure. What a pity it is that our great hills Piled to the clouds,- -our rivers overhung By forests which have known no other change For ages, than the budding and the fall Of leaves-our valleys lovelier than those Which the old poets sang of-should but figure On the apocryphal chart of speculation As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, A Yankee Paradise-unsung, unknown To beautiful tradition; even their names, We can scarcely find a settler who can tell any story learned in |