The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery. Drake Samuel Adams

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СКАЧАТЬ of the most genial to be found among the mountains. While sitting over the fire during the evening, the conversation turned upon the primitive simplicity of manners remarked among mountaineers in general; and our host illustrated it with this incident:

      “You noticed, perhaps, a man who left here a few moments ago?” he began.

      We replied affirmatively. It was my antipathy.

      “Well, that man killed a traveller a few years back.”

      We instinctively recoiled. The air seemed tainted with the murderer’s presence.

      “Yes; dead as a mutton,” continued the landlord, punching the logs reflectively, and filling the chimney with sparks. “The man came to his house one dark and stormy night, and asked to be admitted. The man of the house flatly refused. The stranger pleaded hard, but the fellow ordered him away with threats. Finding entreaties useless, the traveller began to grow angry, and attempted to push open the door, which was only fastened by a button, as the custom is. The man of the house said nothing, but took his gun from a corner, and when the intruder crossed the threshold he put three slugs through him. The wounded man expired on the threshold, covering it with his blood.”

      “Murdered him, and for that? Come, come, you are joking!” ejaculated George, with a half smile of incredulity.

      “Blowed him right through, just as I tell you,” reiterated the narrator, without heeding the doubt George’s question implied.

      “That sounds a little like Old Kentuck,” observed the colonel, coolly.

      “Yes; but listen to the sequel, gentlemen,” resumed the landlord. “The murderer took the dead body in his arms, finding, to his horror, that it was an acquaintance with whom he had been drinking the day before; he took up the body, as I was saying, laid it out upon a table, and then went quietly to bed. In the morning he very honestly exhibited the corpse to all who passed his door, and told his story as I tell it to you. I had it from his own lips.”

      “That beats Kentucky,” asseverated the colonel. For my own part, I believed the landlord was amusing himself at our expense.

      “I don’t know about Kentucky,” observed the landlord; “I was never there in my life; but I do know that, when the dead man was buried, the man who killed him went to the funeral like any curious or indifferent spectator.”

      This was too much. George rose from his chair, and began to be interested in a placard on the wall. “And you say this happened near here?” he slowly inquired; “perhaps, now, you could show us the very house?” he finished, dryly.

      “Nothing easier. It’s only three miles back on the road you came. The blood-stain is plain, or was, on the threshold.”

      We exchanged glances. This was the house where we halted to inquire our way. The colonel’s eyes dilated, but he said nothing.

      “But was there no trial?” I asked.

      “Trial? oh yes. After several days had run by, somebody thought of that; so one morning the slayer saddled his horse and rode over to the county-seat to inquire about it. He was tried at the next sessions, and acquitted. The judge charged justifiable homicide; that a man’s house is his fort; the jury did not leave their benches. By-the-bye, gentlemen, that is some of the man’s cider you are drinking.”

      I felt decided symptoms of revolt in my stomach; George made a grimace, and the colonel threw his unfinished glass in the fire. During the remainder of the evening he rallied us a good deal on the subject of New England hospitality, but said no more about going back to chastise the man of the red house.5

      The sun rose clear over the right shoulder of Kearsarge. After breakfast the landlord took us out and introduced us to his neighbors, the mountains. While he was making the presentation in due form, I jotted down the following, which has, at least, the merit of conciseness:

      Upper Bartlett: an ellipse of fertile land; three Lombardy poplars; a river murmuring unseen; a wall of mountains, with Kearsarge looking up, and Carrigain looking down the intervale. Item: the cider is excellent.

      We had before us the range extending between Swift River and the Saco, over which I looked from the summit of Chocorua straight to Mount Washington. To the east this range is joined with the out-works of Moat. Then come Table, Bear, Silver Spring (Bartlett Haystack), and Tremont, in the order named. Then comes the valley of Sawyer’s River, with Carrigain rising between its walls; then, crossing to the north side of the Saco, the most conspicuous object is the bold Hart’s Ledge, between which and Sawyer’s Rock, on the opposite bank, the river is crowded into a narrow channel. The mountain behind the hotel is Mount Langdon, with Crawford more distant. Observe closely the curious configuration of this peak. Whether we go up or down, it nods familiarly to us from every point of approach.

      But Kearsarge and Carrigain are the grand features here. One gives his adieu, the other his welcome. One is the perfection of symmetry, of grace; the other simply demands our homage. His snowy crown, dazzling white against the pure blue, was the badge of an incontestable superiority. These two mountains are the presiding genii of this charming intervale. You look first at the massive lineaments of one, then at the flowing lines of the other, as at celebrated men, whose features you would strongly impress upon the memory.

      From the village street we saw the sun go down behind Mount Carrigain, and touch with his glittering sceptre the crest of Hancock. We looked up the valley dominated by the giant of the Pemigewasset wilderness with feelings of high respect for this illustrious hermit, who only deigns to show himself from this single point, and whose peak long yielded only to the most persevering and determined climbers.

      Two days were formerly required for the ascent of this mountain, but a long day will now suffice, thanks to the path constructed under the direction of the Appalachian Club. The mountain is four thousand six hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, and is wooded to its summit. The valley of Sawyer’s River drains the deep basin between Carrigain and Hancock, entering the Saco near the railroad station called Livermore. The lumbermen have now penetrated this valley to the foot of the mountain, with their rude logging roads, offering a way soon, it is hoped, to be made plainer for future climbers than it was our lot to find it.

      Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the mountains, we now regarded distances with disdain, and fatigue with indifference. We had learned to make our toilets in the stream, and our beds in the fragrant groves. Truly, the bronzed faces that peered at us as we bent over some solemn, pine-shaded pool were not those we had been accustomed to seeing at home; but having solved the problem of man’s true existence, we only laughed at each other’s tawny countenances while shouldering our packs and tightening our belts for the day’s march.

      Leaving Bartlett at an early hour, we turned aside from the highway a little beyond the bridge which spans Sawyer’s River, and were soon following a rough and stony cart-way ascending the banks of this stream, which thundered along its rocky bed, making the woods echo with its roar. The road grew rapidly worse, the river wilder, the forest gloomier, until, at the end of two miles, coming suddenly out into the sun, we entered a rude street of unpainted cabins, terminating at some saw-mills. This hamlet, which to the artistic eye so disadvantageously replaces the original forest, is the only settlement in the large township of Livermore. Its mission is to ravage and lay waste the adjacent mountains. Notwithstanding the occupation is legitimate, one instinctively rebels at the waste around him, where the splendid natural forest, literally hewed and hacked in pieces, exposes rudely all the deformities of the mountains. But this lost hamlet is the first in which a genuine emotion of any kind awaits the traveller. Ten to one it is like nothing he ever dreamed of; his surprise is, therefore, extreme. The men were rough, hardy-looking fellows; СКАЧАТЬ