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childhood of Indian bravery, suffering, cruelty, or love. Looking up to the great range from the village of Jefferson, we must say with Hiawatha :

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HISTORY OF THE EXPLORATION OF THE WHITE HILLS.

"You ask," he said, "what guide

Me through trackless thickets led,

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide?

I found the water's bed.

The watercourses were my guide;

I travelled grateful by their side,

Or through their channel dry;

They led me through the thicket damp,

Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp,
Through beds of granite cut my road,

And their resistless friendship showed;

The falling waters led me,

The foodful waters fed me,

And brought me to the lowest land,

Unerring to the ocean sand.

The moss upon the forest bark

Was polestar when the night was dark,

The purple berries in the wood

Supplied me necessary food;

For Nature ever faithful is

To such as trust her faithfulness."

Before proceeding to the chapters on the avenues to the highest mountains, and the pictures which they supply, let us glance at the most important visits which have been made to the loftiest range for exploration and for the purposes of science.

The first mention of the White Mountains in print, occurs in John Josselyn's New England's Rarities Discovered, printed in 1672, a book now chiefly memorable as furnishing the earliest account of our plants; and this writer, in his Voyages, printed a year or two later, gives us the best part of the mythology of our highest hills. The story, as Josselyn tells it, is curious enough; and its resemblance to one of the most venerable of Caucasian traditions should seem to suggest some connection of the people which transmitted it, with the

"Ask them," says

common Asiatic home of the bearded races. Josselyn, "whither they go when they dye, they will tell you pointing with their finger to Heaven beyond the white mountains, and do hint at Noah's Floud, as may be conceived by a story they have received from Father to Son, time out of mind, that a great while agon their Countrey was drowned, and all the People and other Creatures in it, only one Powaw and his Webb foreseeing the Floud fled to the white mountains carrying a hare along with them and so escaped; after a while the Powaw sent the Hare away, who not returning emboldened thereby they descended, and lived many years after, and had many Children, from whom the Countrie was filled again with Indians." The English name of our mountains, which had its origin, perhaps, while as yet they were only known to adventurous mariners, following the still silent coasts of New England, relates them to all other high mountains, from Dhawala-Giri, the White Mountain of the Himmalayah, to Craig Eryri or Snowdon of Wales; but it is interesting to find them also, in this legend, in some sort of mythical connection with traditions and heights of the ancient continent, the first knowledge of which carries us back to the very beginnings of human history.

Josselyn spent fifteen months in New England, at his first visit, in 1638, and eight years at his second, in 1663; but there is no reason to suppose that he visited the mountains till the latter period,† which was twenty years after the journeys of which Winthrop's History has preserved a record. It is to Darby Field of Pascataquack that the credit is now generally assigned of being the first explorer of the White Mountains. Accompanied by two Indians, Winthrop tells us, Field climbed the highest summit in 1642. It appears from the account that " within 12 miles of the top was neither tree nor grass but low savins, which they went upon the top of sometimes, but a

Josselyn's Voyages, p. 135. "The Indians gave them the name of Agiocochook.” Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 31. There are one or two other, so called, Indian names.

† Mr. Savage, in a note to Winthrop, correcting Belknap's misstatement, takes this view, which appears to have all the evidence in its favor.

continual ascent upon rocks, on a ridge between two valleys filled with snow, out of which came two branches of Saco River, which met at the foot of the hill where was an Indian town of some 200 people. . By the way, among the rocks, there were two ponds, one a blackish water, and the other a reddish. The top of all was plain about 60 feet square. On the north side was such a precipice, as they could scarce discern to the bottom. They had neither cloud nor wind on the top, and moderate heat." This appears to have been in June, and "about a month after he went again with five or six in his company," and "the report he brought of shining stones, &c., caused divers others to travel thither but they found nothing worth their pains."

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Of these others are particularly mentioned Thomas Gorges, Esq., and Mr. Vines, two magistrates of the province of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who went "about the end" of August, of the same year. They went up Saco River in birch canoes. . . to Pegwaggett, an Indian town. From the Indian town they went up hill (for the most part) about 30 miles in woody lands, then they went about 7 or 8 miles upon shattered rocks, without tree or grass, very steep all the way. At the top is a plain about 3 or 4 miles over, all shattered stones, and upon that is another rock or spire, about a mile in height, and about an acre of ground at the top. At the top of the plain arise four great rivers, each of them so much water, at the first issue, as would drive a mill, Connecticut River from two heads, at the N. W. and S. W., which join in one about 60 miles off, Saco River on the S. E., Amascoggin which runs into Casco Bay at the N. E., and Kennebeck, at the N. by E. The mountain runs E. and W. thirty miles, but the peak is above all the rest."§ There can be but little doubt that Field, entering the valley, it is likely of Ellis River, left it for the great southeastern ridge of Mount Washington, the same which has since been called Boott's Spur. This was the "ridge

*Winthrop, N. E., by Savage, ii. p. 67.

↑ Ibid.

Ibid. p. 89. § Ibid. p. 89 Hubbard's account (Hist. N. E. p. 381) is made up from both of Winthrop's.

between two valleys filled with snow, out of which came two branches of Saco River," and it led him, as probably the other party also, to the broadest spread of that great plain, of which the southeastern grassy expanse, of some forty acres, has long been known as Bigelow's Lawn, and the "top," to the north, where the two ponds are, furnished Gorges with a part, no doubt, of the sources of his rivers. The writer sought to trace this early way in 1843, leaving the road, in Jackson, at about four miles distance from the Elkins farm-house in Pinkham woods, and striking directly up Boott's Spur to the summit; and was surprised, after struggling through the region of dwarf firs, and surmounting a considerable space of the bald region, with the first view of the peak of Mount Washington, as a pretty regular pyramid, in what appeared a plain (which is just the way it struck Gorges, and also Josselyn), that had ever occurred to him. Davis's bridle-path, opened in 1845, traverses the bald part of the same ridge, and afforded the same view, while it was in use. But the other early account, that of Josselyn, indicates possibly another way of ascent, as inviting, perhaps, to a new comer to the mountains, as it is difficult, and even dangerous. "Fourscore miles," says Josselyn" (upon a direct line) to the Northwest of Scarborow, a Ridge of Mountains run Northwest and Northeast an hundred leagues, known by the name of the White Mountains, upon which lieth Snow all the year, and is a Land-mark twenty miles off at Sea. It is rising ground from the Sea shore to these Hills, and they are inaccessible but by the Gullies which the dissolved Snow hath made; in these Gullies grow Saven bushes, which being taken hold of are a good help to the climbing discoverer; upon the top of the highest of these Mountains is a large Level or Plain of a days journey over, whereon nothing grows but Moss; at the farther end of this Plain is another Hill called the Sugar-loaf, to outward appearance a rude. heap of massie stones piled one upon another, and you may as you ascend step from one stone to another, as if you were going up a pair of stairs, but winding still about the Hill till you come to the top, which will require half a days time, and yet it is not above a

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