Chapter VI: Part V (2)

Whole settlements of the slender, stately brakes filled the openings, and the mountain-ash drooped in graceful curves over our heads, but gradually the fine tall trees dwindled into dwarfs, chilled to the heart by the silent, pitiless cold. Others battled bravely with the bowling winds, which have stripped them bare on one side, while they seem to toss out their arms wildly on the other, imploring protection and aid from the valley-dwellers below. Up and up, and you come suddenly upon the "Silver Forest," a grove of dead white trees, naked of leaf and fruit and bud, bare of color, dry of sap and juice and life, retaining only their form,--cold set outline of their hale and hearty vigor; a skeleton plantation, bleaching in the frosty sun, yet mindful of its past existence, sturdy, and defiant of the woodman's axe; a frostwork mimicry of nature, a phantom forest. On and on, turning to overlook the path you have trodden, at every retrospect the struggle between life and death becomes more and more palpable. The Destroyer has hurled his winds, his frosts, his fires; and gray wastes, broken wastes, black wastes, attest with what signal power. But life follows closely, planting his seeds in the very footprints of death. Where blankness and bleakness seem to reign, a tiny life springs in mosses, rich with promise of better things. Long forked tongues of green are lapping up the dreary wastes, and will presently overpower them with its vivid tints. Even amid the blanched petrifaction of the Silver Grove fresh growths are creeping, and the day is not far distant that shall see those pale statues overtopped, submerged, lost in an emerald sea. Even among the rocks, the strife rages. Some mysterious principle inheres in the insensate rock, whose loss makes this crumbling, discolored, inert debris. Up you go, up and up, and life dies out. Chaos and ruin reign supreme. Headlong steeps yawn beside your path, losing their depths in darkness. Great fragments of rock cover all the ground, lie heaped, pile upon pile, jagged, gray, tilted into a thousand sharp angles, refusing a foothold, or offering it treacherously. Wild work has been here; and these gigantic wrecks bear silent witness of the uproar. It seems but a pause, not a peace. Agiocochook, Great Mountain of Spirits, rendezvous of departed souls, clothed with the strength and fired with the passions of the gods,--in what caverns under the cliffs do the wearied Titans rest? From what dungeons of gloom emerging shall they renew their elemental strife? What shall be the sign of their awaking to darken the earth with their missiles and deafen the skies with their thunder? And what daring of man is this to scorn his smiling valleys and adventure up into these realms of storm? No Titan he, yet the truest Titan of all, for he wrestled and overcame. No giant he, yet grander than the giants, since without Pelion or Ossa he has scaled heaven. Through uncounted aeons the mountain has been gathering its forces. Frost and snow and ice and the willing winds have been its sworn retainers. Cold and famine and death it flaunted in the face of the besieger. Man is of a day, and the elements are but slippery allies. A spade and a compass are his meagre weapons; yet man has conquered. The struggle was long, with many a reconnaissance and partial triumph, but at length the victory is complete. Man has placed his hand on the monarch's mane. He has pierced leviathan with a hook. The secrets of the mountain are uncovered. His fastnesses conceal no treasures that shall not be spread out to the day. His bolts and bars of ice can no longer press back the foot of the invader. Yon gray and slender ribbon, that floats down his defiles, disappearing now over his ledges to reappear on some lower range, and he lightly across the plateau,--that is his bridle of submission, his badge of servitude. Obedient to that, he yields up his hoarded wealth and pays tribute, a vassal to his lord. Men and women and little children climb up his rugged sides, and the crown upon his beetling brows is set in the circle of humanity.

In the first depression of abandonment one loses heart, and sees only the abomination of desolation; but gradually the soul lifts itself from the barren earth, and floats out upon the ocean, in which one stands islanded on a gray rock, fixed in seas of sunshine.

Whether you shall have a fair day or a foul is as may be. At the mountain's base they discreetly promise you nothing. It may be sunny and sultry down there, while storms and floods have at it on the peak. But mine was a day of days,--clear, alternating with cloudy. When you had looked long enough to dazzle and weary your eyes, a cloud would come and fold you about with opaqueness, and while you waited in the cloud, lo here! lo there! it flashed apart and shimmered yonder a blue sky, a brilliant landscape, and the distant level of the sea; or slowly its whiteness cleaved and rolled away, revealing a glorified mountain, a lake lying in the shadows, or the simple glen far down from which we came. It was constant change and ever-new delight.

But this going up mountains is a bad thing for the clouds. All their fleecy softness, all their pink and purple and pearly beauty, all the mystery of their unattainableness, is weighed in the balance and found to be fog, and by no means unapproachable. They will never impose upon us again. Never more will they ride through the serene blue, white-stoled cherubs of the sky. Henceforth there is very little sky about them. Sail away, little cloud, little swell, little humbug. Make believe you are away up in the curves of the sky. Not one person in fifty will climb a mountain and find you out. But I have been there, and you are nothing but fog, of the earth, earthy. And when I sat in the cleft of a rock on the side of Mount Washington, every fibre dulled through with your icy moisture, I could with a good will have sent a sheriff to arrest you for obtaining love under false pretences. O you innocent, child-like cloud heaving with warmth and passion as we saw, but a gray little imp, cold at the heart, and malignant, and malignant, as we felt.

Felt it only when we did feel it, after all; for no sooner did it roll slowly away, and, ceasing to be a discomfort, turn into scenery, than all its olden witchery came back. I have had no more than a glimpse of the world from a mountain. The evening and the morning were the first day; and, till time shall be no more, the evening and the morning will be all that there is of the day, aesthetically considered. Yet at noon,--the most unfascinating hour,--and in the early afternoon, though you must needs fail of the twilight and its forerunners, there is an intensity of brilliance and an immensity of breadth, that, it seems to me, must be greater than if the view were broken up by light and shade. You are blinded with a flood of radiance, disturbed, or rather increased, by the flitting cloud-shadows. The mountains deepen in the distance, burning red in the glare of the sun, bristling with pines, mottled with the various tints of oak and maple relieving the soberer evergreens purpling on the slopes through a spiritual hazy glow, delicatest lavender, and pearl, where they lie scarcely pencilling distant horizon. The clouds come sailing over, flinging their shadows to the plains,--shadows wavering down the mountain-sides with an indescribable sweet tremulousness, scudding over the lower summits, pursued by some frolicsome gale which we do not see, or resting softly in the dells, whose throbbing soothes itself to stillness in the grateful shade. And still, midway between heaven and earth, snatched up from the turmoil of the one into the unspeakable calm of the other, a great peace and rest sink into our souls. All around lies the earth, shining and silent as the sky, rippling in little swells of light, breaking into luminous points, rising into shapely shafts, spreading in limpid, molten silver, and all bathed, transmuted, glorified, with ineffable light, and sacred with eternal silence.

A bubble of home-life adheres to this stern peak. Determination and perseverance have built two stone cottages, rough and squat, where you may, if you have no mercy, eat a fine dinner that has been wearily dragged over eight miles of hillocky, rutty roads, and up eight miles of mountain; and drink without any compunction clear, cold water that the clouds have distilled without any trouble, and the rocks have bottled up in excellent refrigerators and furnish at the shortest notice and on the most reasonable terms, except in very dry weather. Or if a drought drinks up the supply in the natural wells, there is the Lake of the Clouds, humid and dark below, where you may see--I do not know--the angels ascending and descending. The angels of the summit are generally armed with a huge hoop, which supports their brace of buckets as they step cautiously over the cragged rock fragments. If you are ambitious to scale the very highest height, you can easily mount the roof of the most frivolously named Tip-top House, and change your horizon a fraction. If you are gregarious and crave society, you can generally find it in multifarious developments. Hither come artists with sketch-books and greedy eyes. Hither come photographers with instruments, and photograph us all, men, mountains, and rocks. Young ladies come, and find, after all their trouble, that "there is nothing but scenery," and sit and read novels. Haud ignota loquor. Young men come, alight from their carriages, enter the house, balance themselves on two legs of their chairs, smoke a cigar, eat a dinner, and record against their names, "Mount Washington is a humbug,"--which is quite conclusive as concerning the man, if not concerning the mountain. There is one man in whose fate I feel a lively curiosity. As we were completing our descent, twisted, frowzy, blown to shreds, burnt faces, parched lips, and stringy hair, a solitary horseman might have been seen just commencing his ascent,--the nicest young man that ever was,--daintily gloved, patently booted, oily curled, snowily wristbanded, with a lovely cambric (prima facie) handkerchief bound about his hyacinthine locks and polished hat. What I wish to know is, how did he get along? How did his toilette stand the ascent? Did he, a second Ulysses, tie up all opposing winds in that cambric pocket-handkerchief? or did Auster and Eurus and Notus and Africus vex his fastidious soul?

They say--I do not know who, but somebody--that Mount Washington in past ages towered hundreds of feet above its present summit. Constant wear and tear of frost and heat have brought it down, and its crumbling rock testifies to the still progress of decay. The mountain will therefore one day flat out, and if we live long enough, Halicarnassus remarks, we may yet see the Tip-top and Summit Houses slowly let down and standing on a rolling prairie. Those, therefore, who prefer mountain to meadow should take warning and make their pilgrimage betimes.

It is likely that you will be the least in the world tired and a good deal sunburnt when you reach the Glen House; and, in defiance of all the physiologies, you will eat a hearty supper and go right to bed, and it won't hurt you in the least. Nothing ever does among the mountains. The first you will know, you open your eyes and it is morning, and there is Mount Washington coming right in at your window, bearing down upon you with his seamed and shadowy massiveness, and you will forget bow rough and rocky he was yesterday, and will pay homage once more to his dignity of imperial purple and his solemn royalty.

The moment you are well awake, you find you are twice as good as new, and after breakfast, if you are sagacious, no one belonging to you will have any peace until you are striking out into the woods again,--the green, murmurous woods, tenanted by innumerable hosts of butterflies in their sunny outskirts, light-winged Psyches hovering in the warm, rich air, stained and spotted and splashed with every bright hue of yellow and scarlet and russet, set off against brilliant blacks and whites; dark, cool woods carpeted with mosses thick, soft, voluptuous with the silent tribute of ages, and in their luxurious depths your willing feet are cushioned,--more blessed than feet of Persian princess crushing her woven lilies and roses; the tender, sweet-scented woods lighted with bright wood-sorrel, and fragrant with dews and damps;--to the Garnet pool, perhaps, first, where the water has rounded out a basin in the rock, and with incessant whirls and eddies has hollowed numerous little sockets, smooth and regular, till you could fancy yourself looking upon the remains of a petrified, sprawling, and half-submerged monster. Where the water is still, it is beautifully colored and shadowed with the surrounding verdancy and flickering light and motion. If you have courage and a firm foothold, if you will not slip on wet rock, and do not mind you hands and knees in climbing up a dry one, if you can coil yourself around a tree that juts out over a path you wish to follow, you can reach points where the action of the water, violent and riotous, can be seen in all its reckless force. But, "Don't hold on by the trees," says Halicarnassus; "you will get your gloves pitchy." This to me, when I was in imminent danger of pitching myself incontinently over the rocks, and down into the whirlpools!

Glen Ellis Falls we found in a random saunter,--a wild, white water-leap, lithe, intent, determined, rousing you far off by the incessant roar of its battle-flood, only to burst upon you as aggressive, as unexpected and momentary, as if no bugle-peal had heralded its onset. Leaning against a tree that juts out over the precipice, clinging by its roots to the earth behind, and affording you only a problematical support, you look down upon a green, translucent pool, lying below rocks thickset with hardy shrubs and trees, up to the narrow fall that hurls itself down the cleft which it has grooved, concentrated and alert at first, then wavering out with little tremors into the scant sunshine, and meeting the waters beneath to rebound with many a spring of surge and spray. A strange freak of the water-nymphs it is that has fashioned this wild gulf and gorge, softened it with the waving of verdure, and inspirited it with the energy of eager waters.

Unsated we turn in again, thridding the resinous woods to track the shy Naiads hiding in their coverts. Over the brown spines of the pines, soft and perfumed, we loiter, following leisurely the faint warble of waters, till we come to the boiling rapids, where the stream comes hurrying down, and with sudden pique flies apart, on one side going to form the Ellis, on the other the Peabody River, and where in five minutes a stalwart arm could drain the one and double the other. Indeed, the existence of these two rivers seems to be a question of balance and coincidence and hairbreadth escapes. Our driver pointed out to us a tree whose root divides their currents. We pause but a moment on the crazy little bridge, and then climb along to the foot of the "Silver Cascade," farther and higher still, till we call see the little brook murmuring on its mountain way in the cliff above, and look over against it, and down upon it, as it streams through the rock, leaps adown the height, widening and thinning, spreading out over the face of the declivity, transmuting it into crystal, and veiling it with foam, leaping over in a hundred little arcs, lightly bounding to its basin below, then sweeping finely around the base of the projecting rock, and going on its way singing song of triumph and content. A gentle and beautiful Undine, the worshipping boughs bend to receive its benediction. Venturesome mosses make perpetual little incursions into its lapping tide, and divert numberless little streams to trickle around their darkness, and leap up again in silver jets, clapping their hands for joy.

"Now thanks to Heaven that of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place;
Joy have I had, and going hence
I bear away my recompense."

All good and holy thoughts come to these solitudes. Here selfishness dies away, and purity and magnanimity expand, the essence and germ of life. Sitting here in these cool recesses, screened from the sun, moist and musical with the waters, crusts of worldliness and vanity cleave off from the soul. The din dies away, and, with ears attuned to the harmonies of nature, we are soothed to summer quiet. The passion and truth of life flame up into serene but steadfast glow. Every attainment becomes possible. Inflated ambitions shrivel, and we reach after the Infinite. Weak desire is welded into noble purpose. Patience teaches her perfect work, and vindicates her divinity. The unchangeable rocks that face the unstable waters typify to us our struggle and our victory. Day by day the conflict goes on. Day by day the fixed battlements recede and decay before their volatile opponent. Imperceptibly weakness becomes strength, and persistence channels its way. God's work is accomplished slowly, but it is accomplished. Time is not to Him who commands eternity; and man, earth-born, earth-bound, is bosomed in eternity.

One and another has a preference, choosing rather this than that, and claiming the palm for a third; but with you there is no comparison. Each is perfect in his kind. Each bodies his own character and breathes his own expression.

O to be here through long, long summer days, drenched with coolness and shadow and solitude, cool, cool, cool to the innermost drop of my hot heart's-blood!

Never!

Why do I linger among the mountains? You have seen them all. Nay, verily, I could believe that eyes had never looked upon them before. They were new created for me this summer-day. I plucked the flower of their promise. I touched the vigor of their immortal youth.

But mountains must be read in the original, not in translation. Only their own rugged language, speaking directly to eye and heart, can fully interpret their meaning. What have adjectives, in their wildest outburst, to do with rocks upheaved, furrows ploughed, features chiselled, thousands and thousands of years back in the conjectured past? What is a pen-scratch to a ravine?

For speed and ease cars are, of course, unsurpassed; but for romance, observation, interest, there is nothing like the old-fashioned coach. Cars are city; coaches are country. Cars are the luxurious life of well-born and long-purses people; coaches are the stirring, eventful career of people who have their own way to make in the world. Cars shoot on independent, thrusting off your sympathy with a snort; coaches admit you to all the little humanities, every jolt harmonizes and adjusts you, till you become a locomotive world, tunefully rolling on in your orbit, independent of the larger world beneath. This is coaching in general. Coaching among the White Mountains is a career by itself,--I mean, of course, if you take it on the outside. How life may look from the inside I am unable to say, having steadfastly avoided that stand-point. When we set out it rained, and I had a battle to fight. First, it was attempted to bestow me inside, to which, if I had been a bale of goods, susceptible of injury by water, I might have assented. But for a living person, with an internal furnace well fed with fuel, in constant operation, to pack himself in a box on account of a shower, is absurd. What if it did rain? I desired to see how things looked in the rain. Besides, it was not incessant; there were continual liftings of cloud and vapor, glimpses of clear sky, and a constant changing of tints, from flashing, dewy splendor, through the softness of shining mists, to the glooms of gray clouds, and the blinding, uncompromising rain,--so that I would have ridden in a cistern rather than have failed to see it. Well, when the outside was seen to be a fixed fact, then I must sit in the middle of the coachman's seat. Why? That by boot, umbrellas, and a man on each side, I might be protected in flank, and rear, and van. I said audibly, that I would rather be set quick i' the earth, and bowled to death with turnips. If my object had been protection, I should have gone inside. This was worse than inside, for it was inside contracted. If I looked in front, there was an umbrella with rare glimpses of a steaming horse on each side, the exhilarating view of a great coat behind, a pair of boots. I might as well have been buried alive. No, the upper seat was the only one for a civilized and enlightened being to occupy. There you could be free and look about, and not be crowded; and I am happy to be able to say, that I am not so unused to water as to be afraid of a little more or less of it. So I ceased to argue, planted myself on the upper seat, grasped tho railing, and smiled on the angry remonstrants below,--smiled, but STUCK! "Let her go," said the driver in a savage, whispered growl,--not to me, but a little bird told me,--"let her go. Can't never do nothin' with women. They never know what's good for 'em. When she's well wet, then she'll want to be dried." True, O driver! and thrice that morning you stopped to change horses, and thrice with knightly grace you helped me down from the coach-top, gentle-handed and smooth of brow and tongue, as if no storm had ever lowered on that brow or muttered on that tongue, and thrice I went into the village inns and brooded over the hospitable stoves, and dried my dripping garments; and when once your voice rang through the hostelrie, while yet I was enveloped in clouds of steam, did not the good young woman seize her sizzling flat-iron from the stove, and iron me out on her big table, so that I went not only dry and comfortable, but smooth, uncreased, and respectable, forth into the outer world again?