Category: Adventure

The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery Tourist's Edition

_An illustrious and venerated bard, who shares with you the love and honor of his countrymen, tells us that the poets are the best travelling companions. Like Orlando in the forest of Arden, they "hang odes on hawthorns and elegies on thistles."

Chapters

15. Part 15

After the events described in the last chapter, I continued, like the navigator of unknown coasts, my tour of the great range. Half a mile below the Glen House, the Great Gulf d...

12. Part 12

In France they maintain that high mountains cannot be painted. Consequently, the modern French landscape is almost always a dead level; an illimitable plain, through which a pla...

21. Part 21

After an hour of steady, but not rapid, climbing, the path turned abruptly under the shattered, but still formidable, precipices of the cliff, which rose some distance higher, s...

11. Part 11

The three men, after their first emotion of ecstasy, amazement, or fear, looked about them. For the moment the great carbuncle was forgotten. Field had chosen the best month of...

9. Part 9

Between these high, receding walls, which draw widely apart at the outlet of the pass, mountains rise, range upon range. Over the flattened Nancy summits, Chocorua lifts his cre...

25. Part 25

The little merchant of small wares and great had on a rusty felt hat, rakishly set on one side of his bullet head, and a faded olive-green coat, rather short in the skirts, to c...

2. Part 2

There was the usual throng of idlers lounging about the pier with their noses in the air, and their hands in their pockets; perhaps more than the usual confusion, for the steame...

14. Part 14

demanded his bride. The alliance was too honorable to permit an abrupt refusal. Smothering his wrath, the father assembled his braves. The matter was debated in solemn council....

6. Part 6

The road up the valley first skirts a wood, and through this wood are delicious glimpses of Mount Adams. During the heat of the day or cool of the evening this extensive and bea...

10. Part 10

We had not gone far when a tremendous gust sent us reeling toward the abyss. I dropped on my hands and knees, and my companions followed suit. We arose, shook off the snow, and...

7. Part 7

From time to time a scarlet maple flamed up in the midst of the forest, and its red foliage, scattered at our feet by the wind, glowed like flakes of fire beaten from an anvil....

16. Part 16

From the village at the falls, and from Berlin Mills, are elevations from which the great White Mountains are grandly conspicuous. The view is similar to that much extolled one...

8. Part 8

For some time after the disaster a curse seemed to rest upon the old Notch House. No one would occupy it. Travellers shunned it. It remained untenanted, though open to all who m...

4. Part 4

From this centre, outlined with a bold, free hand against the azure, the undulations of the great White Mountains ascended grandly to the dome of Mount Washington, and then plun...

17. Part 17

Behold me installed in the cupola of New England! While I was resting, my host, a tall, bronzed, bearded man, bustled about the two or three apartments constituting this swallow...

3. Part 3

The view of the ranges which on either side elevate two immense walls of green is kept for nearly the whole distance. As we climb the hill into Sandwich, Mount Israel is the pro...

19. Part 19

Sanborn's, at West Campton, is the old road-side inn that long ago swung the stag-and-hounds as its distinctive emblem. A row of superb maples shades the road. Here we have fair...

26. Part 26

Put up with trout! Did I hear aright? The word made my mouth water. I softly repeated it to myself--"Trout!"--would I put up with trout? Not to lower myself in this woman's esti...

5. Part 5

Having assured ourselves no one saw us, we divested ourselves of shoes, stockings, pantaloons, and drawers. We put our stockings in our pockets, disposed our clothing in a roll...

23. Part 23

My pen refuses to record the dreadful extremities to which starvation reduced these miserable wretches. At length, after some days of fruitless wandering up and down, finding th...

13. Part 13

What a beautiful landscape is that from the Pulpit! The southern horizon is now widely opened. The mountains around Jackson have dwindled to hills. Especially curious are the fl...

28. Part 28

As he stands gazing up the Saco Valley, Moat Mountain is on his left, Kearsarge at his right, and Mount Washington in front. (Refer to the Chapter and Index articles on North Co...

18. Part 18

Casting an eye upward, and finding the houses on the summit were hidden by the retreating curvature of the cone, I saw, with chagrin, light mists scudding over my head. It was a...

24. Part 24

Bethlehem Street is the legitimate successor of the old road. This is a name _sui generis_ which seems hardly appropriate here, although it is so commonly applied to the princip...

22. Part 22

After the half-stifled feeling experienced among the great mountains, it is indeed a rare pleasure to once more come forth into full breathing-space, and to inspect at leisure f...

20. Part 20

I left the Flume House in company with a young-old man, whom I met there, and in whom I hoped to find another and a surer pair of eyes, for, were he to have as many as Argus, th...

31. Part 31

People must be strangely constituted who do not enjoy such pages as Mr. Gibson has presented to us here. It is not merely that he writes well, but the subject itself is irresist...

27. Part 27

It was still early when I descended the carriage-road on my way to Mount Adams. The usual way is to keep the railway as far as the old Gulf Tank, near which is a house of refuge...

29. Part 29

*_Moat._--An old path leads from the Swift River road to the summit of the South Peak. Another, from the clearings on an old road which extends along the base of the South Peak,...

30. Part 30

Pinkham Notch from Thorn Hill, 122; from the road between Jackson and Glen House, 129; from Glen House, 144; _see_ Thompson's Falls, Emerald Pool, Crystal Cascade, Tuckerman's R...

1. Part 1

_An illustrious and venerated bard, who shares with you the love and honor of his countrymen, tells us that the poets are the best travelling companions. Like Orlando in the for...

32. Part 32

[29] In going to and returning from the ravine, I must have walked over the very spot which has since derived a tragical interest from the discovery, in July, 1880, of a human s...