Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

But in order not to lose the contrast of spring in the valleys with winter on the mountain crests, we drove from North Conway by the Ellis River through Jackson to the Glen. What glorious sweeping lines the ridges in Jackson, half revealed to us through the sultry dusk of the afternoon! The smoke was something to be grateful for, when we saw those stupendous amphitheatres, seemingly doubled in height, towering into gloom. After a while we could detect the craggy spurs of Washington outlined as a faint etching. And soon we seemed to be looking at the shade of the mighty monarch in an unsubstantial landscape of Hades-the phantasm of a mountain, like that awful Phantasm of Jupiter which Shelley, in the "Prometheus Unbound," called up from the shadowy world that mimics all that is real on the earth,

where do inhabit

The shadows of all forms that think and live.

Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom.

Cheerily the brooks, fed from the melting snows of the invisible summits near us, foamed along the road-side, their waves stained by the golden light, as though they were hurrying tributaries of some Pactolus. How cool the air of the forests through which the latter portion of the Pinkham road twists its way,-assuring us, as well as the remnants of snow-banks did, directly under the nearest trees, that Winter is not far off in time, and is still lingering on the neighboring heights! It was a ride to call up the charming passage on Spring from Goethe's "Faust:"

Spring's warm look has unfettered the fountains,

Brooks go tinkling with silvery feet;

Hope's bright blossoms the valley greet;

Weakly and sickly up the rough mountains

Pale old Winter has made his retreat.

Thence he launches, in sheer despite.

Sleet and hail in impotent showers,

O'er the green lawns as he takes his flight;
But the sun will suffer no white,

Everywhere waking the formative powers,
Living colors he yearns to spread.

And then when we ride out of the woods into the glorious Glen, we find the contrast for which we had made the early spring journey to the hills. We see the forest green up to a snow line. We stand in an almost tropical afternoon and look up to February. We see snowfields thirty and fifty feet deep clinging in the ravines, and literally blazing upon the brown barrenness that relieves them. There is no smoke hanging around those peaks, and no suggestion of fire in those fortifications of the frost. Up there the summer does not come with

thief-like step of liberal hours,

Thawing snow-drift into flowers.

It is almost a drawn battle between the sun and the snow-banks that are packed into the clefts of Tuckerman's ravine, and around the dome of the stubbed, square-shouldered Jefferson; for it is not till the last of August that the whole of it is dislodged. But now, standing by a brook in front of the Glen House, one may have the sense of Spring in the sweet, warm air, and the rustle of the young birch. leaves that overhang the water; and yet may see Winter by lifting the eye, and feel it by dipping the hand into the ice-water, into which that whiteness aloft is slowly dying, to be repeated in the snowy caps which the rocks will force upon the stream, as it goes brawling and dashing over them towards the Androscoggin.

But we are travelling too fast. We should not have been tempted into such a smoky atmosphere for the sake of escaping from it so delightfully. We ought to have ridden along more leisurely by the Sandwich mountains, under which the earthquake force must once have played with dolphin-like frolic, to have rolled the central mass, as it did, in so many smooth and heavy domes. And then we should have reined up by the shore of the little lake, two or three miles off from the regular Conway road, to see the two Chocoruas that are nearer alike than the Siamese twins. One is a rocky, desolate, craggy-peaked substance, crouching in shape not unlike a monstrous walrus (though the summit suggests more the half-turned head and

beak of an eagle on the watch against some danger); the other is the wraith of the proud and lonely shape above.

How rich and sonorous that word Chocorua is! Do not, O reader, commit the sin of which the Yankee inhabitants are guilty, and into which stage-drivers will tempt you, of flattening the majestic roll and melancholy cadence of the word into "Corway." Corway." Does not its rhythm suggest the wildness and loneliness of the great hills? To our ears it always brings with it the sigh of the winds through mountain pines. We have said in a former chapter that no mountain of New Hampshire has interested our best artists more. It is everything that a New Hampshire mountain should be. It bears the name of an Indian chief. It is invested with traditional and poetic interest. In form it is massive and symmetrical. The forests of its lower slopes are crowned with rock that is sculptured into a peak with lines full of haughty energy, in whose gorges huge shadows are entrapped, and whose cliffs blaze with morning gold. And it has the fortune to be set in connection with lovely water scenery,—with Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and the little lake directly at its base. Its pinnacle, too, that looks so sheer and defiant, is a challenge to adventurous pedestrians among the mountains, which is accepted now and then by parties every summer. Although it is but thirty-four hundred feet in height, the steepness of its ledges and the absence of any path make the scaling of it a greater feat than a walk to the top of Mount Washington by any of the bridle roads.

On one side of its jagged peak a charming lowland prospect stretches east and south of the Sandwich range, indented by the emerald shores of Winnipiseogee, which lies in queenly beauty upon the soft, far-stretching landscape. Pass around a huge rock to the other side of the steep pyramid, and you have turned to another chapter in the book of nature. Nothing but mountains running in long parallels, or bending, ridge behind ridge, are visible, here blazing in sunlight, there gloomy with shadow, and all related to the towering mass of the imperial Washington.

With the exception of Mount Adams of the Mount Washington

range, there is no peak so sharp as Chocorua. And there is no other summit from which the precipices are so sheer, and sweep down with such cycloidal curves. One must stand on the edge of the Grand Gulf, a thousand feet below the summit of Mount Washington, to see ravine lines so full of force, and spires of rock so sharp and fearful. It is so related to the plains on one side, and the mountain gorges on the other, that no grander watchtower except Mount Washington can be scaled to study and enjoy cloud scenery. The sketch we give of the peak is copied from studies made on the spot. The engraving loses not only all the charm of color, but very much of the spirit, which belongs to the original in oil by Mr. ColeIt is possible that the accomplished artist, who has passed so many hours near the summit, could decide for us, out of his own recollections, the accuracy of this brilliant description, by an American poet, of sunrise seen from such a mountain top.

man.

Before me rose a pinnacle of rock,

Lifted above the wood that hemmed it in,
And now already glowing.

I scaled that rocky steep, and there awaited

Silent the full appearing of the sun.

Below there lay a far-extended sea,

Rolling in feathery waves. The wind blew o'er it
And tossed it round the high-ascending rocks,
And swept it through the half-hidden forest tops,
Till, like an ocean waking into storm,

It heaved and weltered. Gloriously the light
Crested its billows, and those craggy islands
Shone on it like to palaces of spar

Built on a sea of pearl. Far overhead,
The sky, without a vapor or a stain,
Intensely blue, even deepened into purple,
Where, nearer the horizon, it received

A tincture from the mist, that there dissolved
Into the viewless air,-the sky bent round,
The awful dome of a most mighty temple,
Built by omnipotent hands for nothing less
Than infinite worship. There I stood in silence;-
I had no words to tell the mingled thoughts
Of wonder and of joy that then came o'er me,
Even with a whirlwind's rush. So beautiful,

[graphic][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »