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that would paint the magnificence we saw on the Pilot Hills and the White Mountain range at sunset and sunrise from Lancaster, must dip his brush into as exquisite ambers, plum tints, gold, and purple, as he would need to interpret the baptism of the evening upon Mont Blanc, or the morning glow upon the Jungfrau.

During the same visit we enjoyed a ride among the familiar hills of the Androscoggin Valley, and can recall the contrast to the gen

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eral wildness given by a drive from Gorham to the Glen. The high walls which guard that road from the northwesters had saved the snow from drifts. It lay for six miles perfectly even, to the depth of some six inches, without blemish; and unbroken, except by a large sled-load of hay that had been driven over it, and which, overhanging the runners, had left delicately pencilled lines all along the untrodden margins of the path. The green on Carter and Moriah, at the left, was turned into rusty bronze, and the snow which shone

through the stripped trees around the roots of the forests made their sombre sides look as though they had been powdered with crystal dust. Every blackened stump along the roadside seemed an Ethiopian head crowned with a graceful and stainless turban. Each rock in the river-bed showed a fantastic nightcap. The springs were "stagnant with wrinkling frost." And at every turn, old Washington was bulging into the cold and brilliant blue with irregular whiteness; or Madison, in more feminine symmetry, displayed a fresh view of sloping shoulders clasped to the waist in ermine.

But the most impressive features of the scene were those which started out by moonlight. Then, with the thermometer at twelve below zero, and the wind cutting as you drove against it, as if determined to bite into the brain, one might easily fancy himself in an arctic latitude. The full moon turned the great hills into ghastly domes and pyramids of chalk. The air seemed weird. There was no sound of brawling brooks, or running river, or chirping insect life, as in summer. The stars flashed without sympathy in the bleak sky. Going from such a ride to the volumes of the lamented and heroic Kane, we could understand better the pictures that line the memory of the survivors of that devoted band. Those stiff, white peaks towered as gravestones over the creative forces that once filled the valley with joy, and painted it with verdure.

But what, we thought, is so mystic as the processes of Providence most familiar to us! Only a few weeks will pass before the frosty whiteness shall be chipped from those cliffs; the crystal splinters that fly from the sunbeams' chisels will melt into music, and feed the mosses of the mountain-top, and sing in the rills that dance. towards the sea; and the stars will glow over the bursting promise of June.

And now we must call attention to the route by which, in the early beauty of June, or in the full splendor of summer, the traveller may be introduced to the most impressive view of the White Mountain range which the slopes towards the Connecticut command. This is

gained by passing from the Androscoggin Valley over towards the Connecticut by what is called.

THE CHERRY MOUNTAIN ROAD,

from Gorham to the Notch. The distance is thirty-four miles. At Jefferson Hill, eighteen miles from Gorham, the distance is only seven miles to the Connecticut in Lancaster; but the road here intersects, by a very acute angle, with a road across the Jefferson meadows, and over a low spur of Cherry Mountain to the Crawford House at the Notch, which is sixteen miles distant from Jefferson Hill. With the exception of about two miles on Cherry Mountain-and this portion only rough, but not in the least dangerous-the road is as good as any in the neighborhood of the White Hills. It can easily be travelled from Gorham in seven hours.

We give these particulars because as yet there are no regular stages on the route. Parties are sent by private stage wagons from the Alpine House in Gorham. Comparatively few of the White Mountain tourists have become acquainted with the scenery, or even perhaps know of the route up to this time. But it is steadily securing a wider attention, and is destined before long, we think, to attract a large proportion of the travellers who now pass to or from the Notch and the Glen by the way of Jackson and Bartlett, a distance of thirty-six miles to the Glen, and of forty-four to Gorham.

The question of the comparative merits of the two routes, as to scenery, is often raised. On the regular stage-road from the Glen to the Notch, after leaving the Glen House, there is no full view of the great White Mountain range. There is a glimpse of Mount Washington about three miles from the Glen, near the entrance to the Crystal Cascade, and a very noble view of it on looking back after passing Cook's, on the edge of Jackson. But after that, not only Washington, but the range, is hidden by lower hills during the whole

distance. These hills are very lovely, and the drive is thoroughly delightful, but it does not make one acquainted, as the Cherry Mountain route does, with the whole of the Mount Washington range. And certainly if a person has once travelled the Jackson and Bartlett road, he should by all means, on the second visit, try the northerly circuit to the Notch through Jefferson.

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By this Cherry Mountain route, after the first mile from the Alpine House in Gorham, we are in company with the White Mountains proper for twenty-five miles. We take them up into fellowship gradually. The range is in the shape of the body of a figure five, and we go around the bulge of it, formed by the curve in which the five largest mountains are set. First Madison and Adams come into

view, and we drive directly by their base and under their summits in passing over Randolph Hill.-This view we have already described in the chapter on the Androscoggin Valley.-Next, after passing the great ravine in Mount Adams,-of which we gave a drawing in the last chapter,-Mount Jefferson comes into view. Here the driver should rein up to allow something more than hasty glances at the three majestic forms that tower over the path, and especially to let passengers enjoy the castellated ridge of Mount Jefferson, whose rocks rising over a steep ravine seem to be the turrets of decaying fortifications. The artist's sketch of these romantic looking cliffs was taken, not from below, but from Mount Adams on the ridge, nearly four thousand feet above.

Riding a little farther on, we see the summits of Pleasant, Franklin, and Monroe start out above the forests on the left. Next Mount Clay makes its appearance. And then, as we look back, the ascending line of Washington shows itself last of all, though it is the centre of the range, leaving the wilderness behind it as it mounts to a rocky crest. The point we speak of now is Martin's in Jefferson, about thirteen miles from Gorham. Have you ever seen a snake, half startled and half playful, raise its supple neck and support its wary head for a moment by a curve that is the poetry of rest? Then you know something of the vitality, blending pride and grace, of the line, seen from this point, on which the upper rocks of Mount Washington are borne to their airy majesty.

Goethe somewhere gives a picture in words of a typical Alpine landscape,-groups of deep shady trees of different species, standing out over a fresh green foreground which is fanned by soft airs that seem to put the lights in motion; a middle ground of lively green tone growing fainter as it ascends; wide pastures on the slopes of the higher districts, where dark solitary firs stand forth from the grassy carpet, and foaming brooks rush down from cliffs whose winding steeps are climbed by laden mules; and above, the topmost Alpine range, where neither tree nor shrub appears, but only amid the rocky teeth and snow summits a few sunny spots clothe them

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