same time more inexplicable, have never | lackeys in livery, cadets in uniform, ele so effectually overcome that habitual selfcommand derived from many experiences of travel among strange and unaccustomed scenes. The face is so amazing that I have often tried to imagine the sensations of him who first discovered it peering from the mountain-top with such absorbed, open-mouthed wonder. Again, I see the tired Indian hunter, pausing to slake his thirst by the lake-side, start as his gaze suddenly encounters this terrific apparition. I fancy the half-uttered exclamation sticking in his throat. I behold him standing there, with bated breath, not daring to stir either hand or foot, his white lips parted, his scared eyes dilated, until his own swarthy features exactly reflect that unearthly, that intense amazement, stamped large and vivid upon the livid rock. And in this immovable human figure I see the living counterpart of the great stone face. The novelist Hawthorne makes this Sphinx of the White Mountains the interpreter of a noble life. For him the Titanic countenance is radiant with majestic benignity. He endows it with a soul, surrounds the colossal brow with the halo of spiritual grandeur, and marshalling his train of phantoms, proceeds to pass inexorable judgment upon them one by one. At noon we reached the spacious and inviting Profile House, which is hid away in a deep and narrow glen nearly two thousand feet above the sea. No situation could be more sequestered or more charming. The place seems stolen from the unkempt wilderness that shuts it in. An oval grassy plain, not extensive, but bright and smiling, spreads its green between a grisly precipice and a shaggy mountain. And there, if you will believe me, in front of the long white-columned hotel, like a Turkish rug on a carpet, was a pretty flower garden. Like those flowers, on the lawn were beauties sauntering up and down in exquisite morning toilets, coquetting with their bright-colored parasols, and now and then glancing up at the grim old mountains with that air of elegant disdain which is so redoubtable a weapon even in the mountains. Little children fluttered about the grass like beautiful butterflies, and as unmindful of the terrors that hovered over them so threateningly. Nurses in their stiff grenadier caps and white aprons, gant equipages, blooded horses, dainty shapes on horseback, cavaliers, and last, but not least, the resolute pedestrian or the gentlemen strollers up and down the shady road, made up a scene which, being where it is, first strikes us as odd in the extreme, but which we soon adapt ourselves to and are reconciled with, because we see that for each in his way it is good to be here. The rich man may enter the White Mountains. Peals of laughter startle the solemn old woods. You hear them high up the mountain-side. There go a pair of lovers, the gentleman with his book, whose most telling passages he has carefully conned, the lady with some trifle of embroidery, over which she bends lower as he reads on. Ah, happy days! What is this youth which, having it, we are so eager to escape, and when it is gone we look back upon with such infinite longing? The lofty crag opposite the hotel is Eagle Cliff-a name at once legitimate and satisfying, although it is no longer tenanted by the eagles formerly making their home in the security of its precipitous rocks. In simple parlance it is an advanced spur of Mount Lafayette. The high curving wall of this cliff incloses on one side the glen, while Mount Cannon forms the other. Bald Mountain is seen to the north. The precipices tower so far above the glen that large trees look like shrubs. Here and there, among thickset evergreen trees, beech and birch and maples spread a drapery of rich green, and mottle it with softness. The purple rock bulges daringly out, forming a parapet of adamant. The black giant distends his enormous chest until we see the iron ribs, huge and gaunt, protruding. The turf underneath the cliff was most beautifully and profusely spangled with the delicate pink anemone, the fleur des fées, that pale darling of our New England woods to which the arbutus resigns the sceptre of spring. It is a moving sight to see these little drooping flowerets, so shy and modest, yet so meek and trustful, growing at the foot of a bare and sterile rock. The face hardened looking up, grew soft looking down. "Don't tread on us! May not a flower look up at a mountain?" they seem to plead. Lightly fall the night dews upon your upturned faces, dear little flowers! Soft be the sunshine and gentle the winds that kiss those sky-tinted cheeks! In thy sweet purity and innocence I see faces that are beneath the sod, flowers that have blossomed in paradise. We see, also, from the hotel, the singular rock that occasioned the change of name from Profile to Cannon mountain. It really resembles a piece of artillery protruding threateningly from the parapet of a fortress. Taking one of the well-worn paths conducting to the water-side-for another lovely mountain tarn is hidden by yonder fringe of trees-a short walk finds us standing by the shore of Echo Lake, with Eagle Cliff now rising grandly on our right. Nowhere among the White Hills is there a fuller realization of a mountain lakelet. The high peak of Lafayette, covered with snow, looked down into it with freezing stare. Cannon Mountain now showed his retreating wall on the right. The huge castellated rampart of Eagle Cliff lifted on its borders precipices dripping with moisture, glistening in the sun like aerial casements. Light flaws frosted the lake with silver. Sharp keels VOL. LXIII.-No. 375.-24 cut it as diamonds cut glass. The water is so transparent that you see fishes swimming or floating indolently about. Without the lake the whole aspect would be irredeemably savage and forbidding-a blind landscape; now it is instinct with a buoyant and vigorous life. In fact, it is like an eye of piercing brilliancy set deep and overhung by bushy, frowning brows. But it is not alone the eye, it is the soul of the landscape. It is dull or spirited, languid or vivacious, stern or mild, according to the varying moods of nature. The echo adds its feats of ventriloquism. The marvel of the phonograph is but a mimicry of nature, the universal teacher. Now the man blows a strong clear blast upon a long Alpine horn, and like a bugle-call flying from camp to camp the martial signal is repeated, not once, but again and again, in waves of bewitching sweetness, and with the exquisite modulations of the wood-thrush's note. From covert to covert, now here, now there, it chants its rapturous melody. Once again it glides upon the entranced ear, and still we lean in breathless eagerness to catch the last faint cadence sighing itself away | tion sufficient to reach the cooler upupon the palpitating air. A cannon was then fired. The report and echo came with the flash. In a moment more a deep and hollow rumbling sound, as if the mountains were splitting their huge sides with suppressed laughter, startled us. The ascent of Mount Lafayette fittingly crowns the series of excursions through which we have passed since leaving Plymouth. This mountain, whose splendid crest is concealed from us at the Profile House, dominates the valleys north and south with undisputed sway. It is the King of Franconia. per currents. You look deep into the Franconia Notch, and watch the evening shadows creep up the great east wall. Extending beyond these nearer mountains the scarcely inferior Twin summits pose themselves like gigantic athletes. But better than all, grander than all, is that kingly coronet of great mountains set on the lustrous green cushion at the head of the valley. Nowhere, I venture to predict, will the felicity of the title, “Crown of New England," receive more unanimous acceptance than from this favored spot. Especially when a canopy of clouds overspreading permits the pointed peaks to reflect the illuminated fires of sunset does the crown seem blazing with jewels and precious stones. The Bridal Veil Fall, discovered on the northern slope of Mount Kinsman, will present access is difficult. The height of The The climber will not fail to notice the remarkable natural causeway connecting Eagle Cliff with the mountain itself, nor omit to observe the little lakes reposing between the principal and subordinate peaks. Even those who have little in-by-and-by attract many visitors. At clination for the long climb to the top of the mountain ought not to miss the first, for I do not recall anything like it on this side of the great Sierras so finely typical of a mountain defile. But to do justice to this ascension I should have a chapter, and I have only a penful of ink. The fascination of being on a mountain-world over. top has yet to be explained. Perhaps, after all, it is not susceptible of explanation. As we come down the long three-mile descent from Echo Lake to the village of Franconia, to the level of the valley, and to the northern base of the Notch Mountains, an eminence rises to the left. This is Sugar Hill. Half way up there is a hotel, occupying a well-chosen site, and on the high ridge another commands not only this valley, but those water-courses lying to the west. Opposite to us rise the green heights of Bethlehem, Mount Agassiz conspicuous by the observatory on its summit. Between these walls the long ellipse of fertile land beckons us to descend. Distinguished by the beautiful groves of sugar-maple that adorn it, Sugar Hill is destined to grow more and more in popular esteem. It is certainly one of the finest sites among the mountains that I have seen. No traveller should pass it by. It is so admirably placed to command all the highest mountains in one magnificent coup d'œil. The days are not so breathless or so stifling as they are down in the valley, because it is lifted into sun and air by an eleva The reader who has thus far followed us patiently from point to point may now form some estimate of the relative attractions of the two principal groups with which most of the subordinate mountain chains are allied. Both have their admirers, their adherents even, who grow warm in praise of the locality of their predilection. The reason why this preference can not be explained is that there is no real difference at all. From Littleton we will first make a rapid retrograde movement to the western border of the mountains, having now again reached the railway line by which we might have come directly from Plymouth, had we not, in a fortunate moment, decided in favor of first exploring the Pemigewasset Valley. The configuration of the country is such that this railway is compelled to make a long detour. We will now, therefore, run down the rail as far as Wells River. Here we behold that most noble and interesting entrance formed by the meeting of the Ammonoosuc with the Connecticut. But we can not linger here, though tempted to do so. We proceed on our way up the Ammonoosuc Valley, which of to-day. It is turning from the postrider to the locomotive. Not a single feature is recognizable except the splendid prospect of the White Mountains and the magnificent collection of other mountains. in the neighborhood. Fortunate geographical position, salubrity, fine scenery these features, and these alone, are the legitimate cause of what may be termed the rise and progress of Bethlehem. All that the original settlers seem to have accomplished is to clear away the forests which intercepted, and to make the road conducting to, the view. the Ammonoosuc is intersected by that coming from Plymouth. In time a small road-side hamlet clustered about the spot. Dr. Timothy Dwight, one of the earliest as well as one of the most observant travellers here, speaks of the appearance of Bethlehem in 1803. "There is," he says, "nothing in Bethlehem which merits notice except the patience, enterprise, and hardihood of the settlers, which have induced them to stay upon so forbidding a spot, a magnificent prospect of the White Mountains, and a splendid collection of other mountains in their neighborhood, particularly in the southwest." It was then reached by one wretched road, pass-that the two or three houses, the store, the ing the Ammonoosuc by a dangerous ford. The few scattered habitations were mere log-cabins, rough and rude. The few planting fields were still covered with dead trees, stark and forbidding, which the settlers, unable to fell with the axe, killed by girdling, as the Indians did. From this historical picture of Bethlehem in the past we turn to the Bethlehem It does seem at first almost incredible solitary meeting-house, of those days should suddenly become the most populous and most frequented of mountain resorts. This newness, which you at first resent, besides introducing here and there some attempt at architectural adornment, contrasts very agreeably with the ill-built, rambling, and slipshod appearance of the older village centres. They are invaria |