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THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

PROPERLY, according to the plan we have generally followed in the book, the views of the White Mountain range from Bethlehem, and along the course of the Ammonoosuc near the White Mountain House and the ruins of the old Fabyan Hotel, belong to this chapter. They lie upon the slopes which the Connecticut drains. We wish, however, to call attention in this concluding chapter to a few prominent views of the Washington range from the Connecticut itself, and to show how the noblest of these pictures can be enjoyed in connection with the usual White Mountain tour.

There is a striking picture of the great chain from the village of Littleton, and all along the stage-route to Lancaster. Views not only of the grandest peaks, but also of the Franconia range, burst upon the traveller in connection with a breadth of open country, and rich rolls of cultivated upland that seem to be set there less for their bounty than their color, which may claim to be ranked among the rarest landscapes to which our volume has called attention. And they are a fitting introduction to the scenery around Lancaster. We have already said in the opening chapter, that if Lancaster had been made accessible, a few years ago, by the Grand Trunk Railway, it would have been the great rival of North Conway. With the attractive accommodation it now offers in its elegant and spacious Hotel, it will be sure to draw a large and increasing number of guests, every year, to submit themselves to the charm of the soothing hills that immediately encircle it; to enjoy the drives along the banks of the curving Connecticut; and, from the luxury of color and shadow spread wide over its intervale in a soft afternoon light, to mount upon the Lunenburg Hills, where the bright blue of the river and the embow

ered homes of the village are set in the relief and under the protection of the long White Mountain wall, tinged with the violet of departing day.

There is no single meadow-view in Lancaster equal to the intervale

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of North Conway. But the river is incomparably superior to the Saco; and in the combined charm, for walks or rides, of meadow and river-the charm not of wildness, such as the darker and more rapid Androscoggin gives, but a cheerful brightness and beneficence-Lancaster is unrivalled.

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And ferns that in these groves are hidden,
Are sculptured like a dainty frieze,
While choral music steals unbidden,
As undulates the forest breeze.

A Gothic arch and springing column,

A floral-dyed mosaic ground,
A twilight shade and vista solemn,

In all these sylvan haunts are found.

Lancaster is well situated for the enjoyment of the winter effects upon the mountains. It was the writer's fortune once to pass a few days in the village and its neighborhood, early in March, when the hue of the White Mountains justified their name, and they stood up in the full splendor of their snowy regalia.

It was in a week that opened a "sectional" view of winter, showing it enthroned on the hills in the gorgeous panoply of its despotism. The days ran over nearly the whole scale of the season's temperature, swept the gamut of its music, and displayed the resources of its winter-palette on the landscape. We had warm weather and savage cold; gray skies and cloudless blue; the mountains were wrapped in frosty veils, and soon stood up chiselled sharp on the spotless sky; still mornings dawned, when the smoke," the azure pillars of the hearth,"-rose to the heights of the neighboring peaks without bending, and were swiftly succeeded by furious gusts; golden evenings followed hard upon thick afternoons, and died into sparkling nights, when the valleys were lustrous with "the spears of moonfreezing crystals."

On the first day of our visit the weather was genial, and low clouds from the sea were scudding fast towards the mountains: But towards night, Shawondasee and Wabun-as the south and the east winds have been christened for us in "Hiawatha "-raised a savage warwhoop all through the valley, and pelted the region with squalls of snow. On Tuesday "the fierce Kabibonokka" was on hand to drive them back. Down he came

from his lodge of snow-drifts, From his home among the icebergs,

And his hair, with snow besprinkled,
Streamed behind him like a river,
Like a black and wintry river,

As he howled and hurried southward,
Over frozen lakes and moorlands.

Only we must make exception from the poet's description in the matter of the hair. It was not black, nor gloomy. The dishevelled clouds that rushed across the hills were smitten with fitful sunshine, and fluttered in golden threads as they scattered their sparkles southward. After the furious norther had blown the sky clear, it whirled the light snow in clouds, stopped railroad trains, and brought the temperature before night to ten below zero. What plumes it fastened upon the sharpest peaks! It swept the snow over them as an offshore breeze loosens the spray of breaking billows, tossed it in feathery spires to flash in the sunshine, and then would whirl a cloud. of the dazzling dust around the necks of the mountains, till you felt that they must gasp from suffocation. The rarest poetry of the winter scenery was painted on the eye in these antics of the hurricanes.

If one could enjoy the open air as freely, and find it as genial in the winter, as in the summer, we cannot doubt that the colors on the bleached landscapes would be found as inviting as those which blend into the summer pomp. The distant views of the great range in summer are certainly far inferior to those we enjoyed in the approach to them in March, when it swelled soft, vague, and golden,-a pigmy Monte Rosa, on the northwestern sky. Lafayette has never shown itself to such advantage in July as it did then from Lancaster at evening, when the blustering clouds parted to let its white wedge be visible, burnished to an amber blaze by the setting sun, and driven as one crystal into the chilly sky. And the Stratford peaks do not look so high and solemn in August, when the sun fevers their sheer precipices, as at such a time in their priestly drapery. On all the bald ridges and crests the silver splendor was relieved against the blue. This makes the richest charm of the Alps; and one could then drive among the White Hills as through a mimic Switzerland. Yes, and the colors must have been essentially the same. For the artist

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