The high sun poured down with dazzling brilliancy upon the ghastly white ledges, which, rising like a wall above the solitary cabin before me, thrust out their jagged edges as if to forbid further progress. Out of this glittering precipice dead trees stretched huge antlers. This formless mass, overhanging the Half-way House, is one of the most terrific sights of the march.

But what a frightful silence! Not a murmur, not a rustling leaf, but all as still as death. I was half afraid.

At my feet yawned the measureless void of the Great Gulf, torn from the entrails of the mountain by Titanic hands. Crevassed with wide splits, encompassed round by lofty mountain walls, the gorge was at once fascinating and forbidding, grand yet terrible. The high encircling steeps of Clay and Jefferson, Adams and Madison, inclosing the ravine in one mighty sweep, ascended out of its depths, and stretched along the sky, which really seemed receding before their daring advance. Peering over into the abyss, where the tallest pines were shrubs, and the stark trunks needles, the earth seemed split to its centre, and the feet of these mountains rooted in the midst. Above my head, forming the nearer wall of the gulf, leaped up the endless pile of the great dome.

From my next halting-place I perceived that I had been traversing a promontory of the mountain, jutting out into the Great Gulf; and on looking down over the parapet wall, a mile or more of the road uncoiled its huge folds, turning hither and thither, doubling upon itself like a bewildered serpent, but always gaining a little upon the mountain. This is one of the strangest sights of this strange journey: but in order to appreciate it at its full value, one should be descending by the stagecoach, when the danger, more apparent than real, is intensified by the swift descent of the mountain into the gulf below, over which the traveller sees himself suspended, with feelings more poignant than agreeable. But, as one of the most experienced drivers said to me before the lamentable accident of last year, "there should be no fooling, no chaffing, and no drinking on that road."

Thus far I had encountered little snow, though the rocks were crusted with ice

upon the waste of granite, into a colder region. But now a sudden turning brought me full upon an enormous bank, completely blocking the roadway, which here skirted the edge of a high precipice. Had a sentinel suddenly barred my way with his bayonet, I could not have been more astonished. I was brought to a dead stand. I looked over the parapet, then at the snow-bank, then at the mountain against which it had lodged, and which here was only a continuation of the precipice, bent slightly back from the perpendicular, and ascending several hundred feet higher. The first look made me shudder; the second made me thoughtful; the third gave me the headache.

When a thing is to be done, the best way is to do it. I therefore tried the snow, and finding a solid foot-hold, resolved to venture. Had it been soft, I should not have dared. Using my umbrella as an alpenstock, I crossed the parapet where the declivity was the least, without accident, but slowly and breathlessly until near the opposite side, when I passed the intervening space in two bounds, alighting in the road with the blood tingling to my finger-ends.

A sharp turn around a ledge, and the southeast wall of Tuckerman's Ravine rose up like a wraith out of the forest. Here is a most enchanting view of the valleys of the Ellis and the Saco. Turning now my back upon these familiar scenes, the way led in the opposite direction, and I began to look over the depression between Clay and Jefferson into the world of blue peaks beyond. From here the striking spectacle of the four great northern peaks, their naked summits, their sides ploughed by old and new crevasses, and flecked with snow, towering above the ravine, confronted me. The terrible rents in the side of Clay; the blasted firs leaning over the abyss, and clutching the rocks with a death-gripe; the rocks themselves, tormented, formidable, impending-astound by their vivid portrayal of the formless, their suggestions of the agony in which these mountains were brought forth.

I was now fairly upon the broad grassgrown slope at the foot of the pinnacle. The low peak of black rocks rising upon its limits is a monument to the fatal temerity of a traveller who, having climbed, as he supposed, to the top of the mountain, died from hunger or exposure, or both,

at this inhospitable spot. A skeleton in rags was found at the end of a year huddled under some rocks. Farther down, Dr. Ball, of Boston, was rescued, after having passed two nights upon the mountain without food, shelter, or fire, and after as many days of fruitless wandering up and down. More dead than alive, he was supported down the mountain as far as the Ledge. His re-appearance at the Glen House had the effect of one risen from the dead. In reality, the rescuing party took up with them materials for a rude bier, expecting to find a dead body stiffening in the snow.

While traversing the plateau, with the

half way, and between rapid questions and answers led the way into the signal

station.

While I was resting, my host bustled about the two or three apartments constituting this swallow's nest. He put the kettle on the stove, gave the fire a stir, spread a cloth upon the table, took some plates, cups, and saucers from a locker, some canned meats from a cupboard, I, meanwhile, following all these movements with an interest easily imagined. His preparations completed, my host first ran his eye over them approvingly, then, with perfect politeness, begged me to draw my chair to the table and fall to. I did not refuse. While he poured out the tea, I asked, "Whom have I the pleasure of address

VOL LXIII.-No. 374.-14