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 suminits 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,
Came the warriors of the nations,
Came the Delawares and Mohawks,
Came the Choctaws and Camanches,
Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet,
Came the Pawnees and Omawhaws,
Came the Mandans and Dacotahs,
Came the Hurons and Ojibways,
All the warriors drawn together
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,

To the mountains of the prairie,
To the great red Pipe-stone quarry.

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
Stretches broad and clear,

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 night 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 our log-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
With his teeth of steel.

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,
And the weary fisher on Contoocook,
Saw over the marshes and through the pine,
And down on the river the dance-lights shine.

For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo,
And laid at her father's feet that night
His softest furs and wampum white.

From the Crystal Hills to the far Southeast

The river Sagamores came to the feast;
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds shook,
Sat down on the mats of l'ennacook.

They came from Sunapee's shore of rock,

From the snowy sources of Snooganock,

And from rough Cous 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,
Glowing with paint came old and young,
la wampum and furs and feathers arrayed
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made.

Bird of the air and beast of the field,
All which the woods and waters yield,
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled,
Garnished and graced that banquet wild.

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large,
From the rocky slopes of the Kiarsarge;
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook,
And salmon spear'd in the Contoocook;

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick'
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic,
And small wild hens in reed-snares caught
From the banks of Sondagardee brought;

Pike and perch from the Suncook taken,

Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken,
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog,
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog.

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,
Rights and appurtenances, which make up

A Yankee Paradise-unsung, unknown
To beautiful tradition; even their names,
Whose melody yet lingers like the last
Vibration of the red man's requiem,
Exchanged for syllables significant
Of cotton mill and rail-car!

We can scarcely find a settler who can tell any story learned in

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