been due to extraordinary transient causes; it is not mentioned by the other visitors of the seventeenth century, and has not been heard of since. There is nothing else to be noticed but what was suggested at the beginning, that the author's remark about the mountains being inaccessible except by the gullies," seems to point to an ascent, in this case, by one of the eastern gulfs or ravines. 66 * We next hear of an ascent of the White Mountains by "a ranging company," which "ascended the highest mountain, on the N. W. part," so far, as appears, the first ascent on that side, April 29, 1725, and found, as was to be expected, the snow deep, and the alpine ponds frozen. Another ranging party, which was "in the neighborhood of the White Mountains, on a warm day in the month of March," in the year 1746, had an interesting and the first recorded experience of a force, which has left innumerable proofs of its efficiency all through the mountains. It seems that this party was "alarmed with a repeated noise, which they supposed to be the firing of guns. On further search, they found it to be caused by rocks, falling from the south side of a steep mountain."† The Western Pass of the mountains may have been known to the Indians, but it was not turned to account by the English till after 1771, when two hunters, Timothy Nash and Benjamin Sawyer, the former said by Messrs. Farmer and Moore to have made the discovery, but the latter certainly admitted to a share in its benefits, and himself not yet forgotten in the hills,-passed through it. A road was soon after opened by the proprietors of lands in the upper Cohos, and another, through the Eastern Pass, was commenced in 1774. Settlers began now to make their way into the immediate neighborhood of the mountains. The townships of Jefferson, Shelburne which included Gorham, and Adams now Jackson, successively received inhabitants from 1773 to 1779, and the wilderness, if as yet far enough from blossoming, was opened, and to some extent tamed. It was now that the first company of scientific inquirers approached the White Hills. In July, 1784, the Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Ips *Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 35. ↑ Ibid. p. 27. Ibid. iii. p. 36. wich, a zealous member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Rev. Daniel Little of Kennebunk, also a member of the Academy, and Colonel John Whipple of Dartmouth, afterwards called Jefferson, the most prominent inhabitant of the Cohos country, visited the mountains, "with a view to make particular observations on the several phenomena that might occur. It happened unfortunately that thick clouds covered the mountains almost the whole time, so that some of the instruments, which, with much labor, they had carried up, were rendered useless." Others were broken. They made some unsatisfactory barometrical observations, from a computation of which, the elevation of the principal summit above the sea was reckoned at ten thousand feet; but were disappointed in an attempt at a geometrical admeasurement from the base. It is likely that the plants of the higher regions were observed, and Mr. Oakes possessed fragments of such a collection made, either now or later, by Dr. Cutler; but the latter did not notice them in his memoir on the plants of New England published the next year in the transactions of the Academy, nor is there any mention of them in the six small volumes of his botanical manuscripts which have come to my knowledge. Belknap has preserved a single passage from a manuscript of Dr. Cutler's, which, in the absence of anything else, has possibly interest enough in this place to be quoted. "There is evidently the appearance of three zones-1, the woods-2, the bald mossy part-3, the part above vegetation. The same appearance has been observed on the Alps, and all other high mountains. I recollect no grass on the plain. The spaces between the rocks in the second zone, and on the plain, are filled with spruce and fir, which, perhaps, have been growing ever since the creation, and yet many of them have not attained a greater height than three or four inches, but their spreading tops are so thick and strong, as to support the weight of a man, without yielding in the smallest degree. The snows and winds keeping the surface even with the general surface of the rocks. In many places, on the sides, we could get glades of this growth, some rods in extent, * Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 37. when we could, by sitting down on our feet, slide the whole length. The tops of the growth of wood were so thick and firm, as to bear us currently, a considerable distance, before we arrived at the utmost boundaries, which were almost as well defined as the water on the shore of a pond. The tops of the wood had the appearance of having been shorn off, exhibiting a smooth surface, from their upper limits, to a great distance down the mountain.”* The way by which Cutler ascended the mountain is indicated by the stream which bears his name in Belknap's and Bigelow's narratives, and was doubtless very much that taken and described by the last-mentioned explorer. "In less than half a mile, southward from this fountain" of Ellis River, at the height of land between the Saco and the Androscoggin, in Pinkham woods, "a large stream, which runs down the highest of the White Mountains, falls into Ellis River, and in about the same distance from this, another falls from the same mountain; the former of these streams is Cutler's River, the latter New River."† Cutler's River was still known to the inhabitants of the solitary house in these woods, in 1840, when the writer followed its course, on his way to the upper region of the mountains; and the name, he was then told, by persons long resident in the place, and acquainted with the later explorations of Bigelow and others, was given to it at Dr. Cutler's express desire. It ought to be handed down. President Dwight passed through the Notch in 1797, and again in 1803, and has left in his Travels a description of the scenery which is still valuable for its particularity and appreciativeness, and an interesting account of the first settlers of Nash and Sawyer's, and Hart's Locations. It appears from this that Eleazar Rosebrook planted himself in the former tract, where he was succeeded many years after by the late well-known Ethan Allen Crawford, in 1788. Abel Crawford, who married Rosebrook's daughter, and whom very many remember as the worthy Patriarch of the mountains, began his *Cutler MS. in Belknap, iii. p. 34. † Belknap, N. H. iii. p. 44. clearing thirteen miles below Rosebrook's, in Hart's Location, a few years later; and one Davies, at about the same time, in the tract at the end of the Notch valley, afterwards occupied by Willey.† And this writer has also preserved a note of some importance on one of the great fires which have devastated the mountains of the Notch. "When we entered upon this farm," says he, speaking of Davies's, just mentioned, " in 1803, a fire which not long before had been kindled in its skirts, had spread over an extensive region of the mountains on the Northeast; and consumed all the vegetation, and most of the soil, which was chiefly vegetable mould, in its progress. The whole tract, from the base to the summit, was alternately white and dappled; while the melancholy remains of half-burnt trees, which hung here and there on the sides of the immense steeps, finished the picture of barrenness and death." Old Mr. Crawford used to speak (in 1845 or 6) of the great fire which reduced Mount Crawford to its present condition, as having occurred some thirty years before. The time may well arrive when careful records of these irreparable mischiefs, which destroy in their progress the very vitality of our mountains, and leave nothing but crumbling rocks, the shelter of a strange and spurious vegetation,-nothing but the ruir 3 of nature, shall possess a mournful value. In July, 1804, Dr. Cutler visited the mountains a second time, in company with Dr. W. D. Peck, afterwards Professor of Natural History at Cambridge. Barometrical observations obtained on this occasion, and computed by Mr. Bowditch, gave an elevation to the highest summit of 7055 feet above the sea. § A collection of the alpine plants was made by Dr. Peck, and was afterwards seen by Mr. Pursh, whose citations, in his Flora of North America, printed in 1814, enable us to determine the earliest recognition of several of the most interesting species. *Both were there at the time of Dr. Dwight's visit in 1797, and had come in since Rosebrook's clearing was begun. E. A. Crawford says it was "soon after " 1792, that his father commenced in Hart's Location. (Hist. of White Mountains, p. 19.) † Dwight's Travels, ii. p. 143. Ibid. p. 152. Mem. Amer. Acad. iii. p. 326. In 1812 a general account of the White Mountains was published by Dr. Belknap, in the last volume of his history of New Hampshire. This was made up in part of communications from Dr. Cutler, but contains also interesting original information, which has been already referred to. There does not appear to be any reason to suppose that the historian himself penetrated the wild parts of the mountains, but the name of Mount Washington was first published in his work. Up to this time no thorough survey of the Natural History of the Mountains had been carried out. We have seen the beginnings of an acquaintance with the plants. And Mr. Maclure, and George Gibbs, Esq., had each made more than one visit to different parts of the region, with a view to the examination of its geology and its minerals. But Dr. Bigelow's "Account of the White Mountains of New Hampshire," published in 1816, from explorations made during the same season, determined in great measure the phænogamous botany of our Alps, while it furnished also a statement of all that was known of their mineralogy and zoology. Dr. Francis Boott, Mr. Francis C. Gray, and the venerable Chief Justice Shaw, were members of this party, which accomplished, from barometrical observations, perhaps the most satisfactory determination of the height of Mount Washington that has been made; assigning to it an altitude above the sea of 6225 feet. Dr. Boott returned to the mountains in the next month, (August,) and added a "considerable" number of species to the botanical collection. Dr. Bigelow entered the mountains be the Eastern Pass, and followed Cutler's River, making the passage of the dwarf firs by a way opened a few years before by direction of Col. Gibbs. The knowledge of these journeys has now disappeared from the neighborhood, with the early inhabitants. But in 1840, all was still remembered, from Cutler's time, down, at the solitary house of D. Elkins, in the Pinkham woods; and I found it easy, in the company of the late Harrison Crawford, an honest man, and one who knew thoroughly his native hills, to trace again the old way of ascent. In 1819, Abel Crawford opened the footway to * *Account, &c., in New Eng. Journal of Med. and Surg. Nov. 1816. |