The White Mountains are as high as ever, as fine in sharp outline against the sky, as savage, as tawny; no other mountains in the world of their height so well keep, on acquaintance, the respect of mankind. There is a quality of refinement in their granite robustness; their desolate, bare heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious. Powerful as man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them. He can reduce the valleys and the show "freaks" of nature to his own moral level, but the vast bulks and the summits remain for the most part haughty and pure.
Yet undeniably something of the romance of adventure in a visit to the White Hills is wanting, now that the railways penetrate every valley, and all the physical obstacles of the journey are removed. One can never again feel the thrill that he experienced when, after a weary all-day jolting in the stage-coach, or plodding hour after hour on foot, he suddenly came in view of a majestic granite peak. Never again by the new rail can he have the sensation that he enjoyed in the ascent of Mount Washington by the old bridlepath from Crawford's, when, climbing out of the woods and advancing upon that marvelous backbone of rock, the whole world opened upon his awed vision, and the pyramid of the summit stood up in majesty against the sky. Nothing, indeed, is valuable that is easily obtained. This modern experiment of putting us through the world--the world of literature, experience, and travel--at excursion rates is of doubtful expediency.
I cannot but think that the White Mountains are cheapened a little by the facilities of travel and the multiplication of excellent places of entertainment. If scenery were a sentient thing, it might feel indignant at being vulgarly stared at, overrun and trampled on, by a horde of tourists who chiefly value luxurious hotels and easy conveyance. It would be mortified to hear the talk of the excursionists, which is more about the quality of the tables and the beds, and the rapidity with which the "whole thing can be done," than about the beauty and the sublimity of nature. The mountain, however, was made for man, and not man for the mountain; and if the majority of travelers only get out of these hills what they are capable of receiving, it may be some satisfaction to the hills that they still reserve their glories for the eyes that can appreciate them. Perhaps nature is not sensitive about being run after for its freaks and eccentricities. If it were, we could account for the catastrophe, a few years ago, in the Franconia Notch flume. Everybody went there to see a bowlder which hung suspended over the stream in the narrow canon. This curiosity attracted annually thousands of people, who apparently cared more for this toy than for anything else in the region. And one day, as if tired of this misdirected adoration, nature organized a dam on the side of Mount Lafayette, filled it with water, and then suddenly let loose a flood which tore open the canon, carried the bowlder away, and spread ruin far and wide. It said as plainly as possible, you must look at me, and not at my trivial accidents. But man is an ingenious creature, and nature is no match for him. He now goes, in increasing number, to see where the bowlder once hung, and spends his time in hunting for it in the acres of wreck and debris. And in order to satisfy reasonable human curiosity, the proprietors of the flume have been obliged to select a bowlder and label it as the one that was formerly the shrine of pilgrimage.
In his college days King had more than once tramped all over this region, knapsack on back, lodging at chance farmhouses and second-class hotels, living on viands that would kill any but a robust climber, and enjoying the life with a keen zest only felt by those who are abroad at all hours, and enabled to surprise Nature in all her varied moods. It is the chance encounters that are most satisfactory; Nature is apt to be whimsical to him who approaches her of set purpose at fixed hours. He remembered also the jolting stage-coaches, the scramble for places, the exhilaration of the drive, the excitement of the arrival at the hotels, the sociability engendered by this juxtaposition and jostle of travel. It was therefore with a sense of personal injury that, when he reached Bethlehem junction, he found a railway to the Profile House, and another to Bethlehem. In the interval of waiting for his train he visited Bethlehem Street, with its mile of caravansaries, big boarding-houses, shops, and city veneer, and although he was delighted, as an American, with the "improvements" and with the air of refinement, he felt that if he wanted retirement and rural life, he might as well be with the hordes in the depths of the Adirondack wilderness. But in his impatience to reach his destination he was not sorry to avail himself of the railway to the Profile House. And he admired the ingenuity which had carried this road through nine miles of shabby firs and balsams, in a way absolutely devoid of interest, in order to heighten the effect of the surprise at the end in the sudden arrival at the Franconia Notch. From whichever way this vast white hotel establishment is approached, it is always a surprise. Midway between Echo Lake and Profile Lake, standing in the very jaws of the Notch, overhung on the one side by Cannon Mountain and on the other by a bold spur of Lafayette, it makes a contrast between the elegance and order of civilization and the untouched ruggedness and sublimity of nature scarcely anywhere else to be seen.
The hotel was still full, and when King entered the great lobby and office in the evening a very animated scene met his eye. A big fire of logs was blazing in the ample chimney-place; groups were seated about at ease, chatting, reading, smoking; couples promenaded up and down; and from the distant parlor, through the long passage, came the sound of the band. It was easy to see at a glance that the place had a distinct character, freedom from conventionality, and an air of reposeful enjoyment. A large proportion of the assembly being residents for the summer, there was so much of the family content that the transient tourists could little disturb it by the introduction of their element of worry and haste.
King found here many acquaintances, for fashion follows a certain routine, and there is a hidden law by which the White Mountains break the transition from the sea-coast to Lenox. He was therefore not surprised to be greeted by Mrs. Cortlandt, who had arrived the day before with her usual train.
"At the end of the season," she said, "and alone?"
"I expect to meet friends here."
"So did I; but they have gone, or some of them have."
"But mine are coming tomorrow. Who has gone?"
"Mrs. Pendragon and the Bensons. But I didn't suppose I could tell you any news about the Bensons."
"I have been out of the way of the newspapers lately. Did you happen to hear where they have gone?"
"Somewhere around the mountains. You need not look so indifferent; they are coming back here again. They are doing what I must do; and I wish you would tell me what to see. I have studied the guide-books till my mind is a blank. Where shall I go?"
"That depends. If you simply want to enjoy yourselves, stay at this hotel--there is no better place--sit on the piazza, look at the mountains, and watch the world as it comes round. If you want the best panoramic view of the mountains, the Washington and Lafayette ranges together, go up to the Waumbec House. If you are after the best single limited view in the mountains, drive up to the top of Mount Willard, near the Crawford House--a delightful place to stay in a region full of associations, Willey House, avalanche, and all that. If you would like to take a walk you will remember forever, go by the carriage road from the top of Mount Washington to the Glen House, and look into the great gulfs, and study the tawny sides of the mountains. I don't know anything more impressive hereabouts than that. Close to, those granite ranges have the color of the hide of the rhinoceros; when you look up to them from the Glen House, shouldering up into the sky, and rising to the cloud-clapped summit of Washington, it is like a purple highway into the infinite heaven. No, you must not miss either Crawford's or the Glen House; and as to Mount Washington, that is a duty."
"You might personally conduct us and expound by the way."
King said he would like nothing better. Inquiry failed to give him any more information of the whereabouts of the Bensons; but the clerk said they were certain to return to the Profile House. The next day the party which had been left behind at Alexandria Bay appeared, in high spirits, and ready for any adventure. Mrs. Farquhar declared at once that she had no scruples about going up Washington, commonplace as the trip was, for her sympathies were now all with the common people. Of course Mount Washington was of no special importance, now that the Black Mountains were in the Union, but she hadn't a bit of prejudice.
King praised her courage and her patriotism. But perhaps she did not know how much she risked. He had been talking with some habitue's of the Profile, who had been coming here for years, and had just now for the first time been up Mount Washington, and they said that while the trip was pleasant enough, it did not pay for the exertion. Perhaps Mrs. Farquhar did not know that mountain-climbing was disapproved of here as sea-bathing was at Newport. It was hardly the thing one would like to do, except, of course, as a mere lark, and, don't you know, with a party.
Mrs. Farquhar said that was just the reason she wanted to go. She was willing to make any sacrifice; she considered herself just a missionary of provincialism up North, where people had become so cosmopolitan that they dared not enjoy anything. She was an enemy of the Boston philosophy. What is the Boston philosophy? Why, it is not to care about anything you do care about.
The party that was arranged for this trip included Mrs. Cortlandt and her bevy of beauty and audacity, Miss Lamont and her uncle, Mrs. Farquhar, the artist, and the desperate pilgrim of love. Mrs. Farquhar vowed to Forbes that she had dragged King along at the request of the proprietor of the hotel, who did not like to send a guest away, but he couldn't have all the trees at Profile Lake disfigured with his cutting and carving. People were running to him all the while to know what it meant with "I. B.," "I. B.," "I. B.," everywhere, like a grove of Baal.
From the junction to Fabyan's they rode in an observation car, all open, and furnished with movable chairs, where they sat as in a balcony. It was a picturesque load of passengers. There were the young ladies in trim traveling-suits, in what is called compact fighting trim; ladies in mourning; ladies in winter wraps; ladies in Scotch wraps; young men with shawl-straps and opera-glasses, standing, legs astride, consulting maps and imparting information; the usual sweet pale girl with a bundle of cat-tails and a decorative intention; and the nonchalant young man in a striped English boating cap, who nevertheless spoke American when he said anything.
As they were swinging slowly along the engine suddenly fell into a panic, puffing and sending up shrill shrieks of fear in rapid succession. There was a sedate cow on the track. The engine was agitated, it shrieked more shrilly, and began backing in visible terror. Everybody jumped and stood up, and the women clung to the men, all frightened. It was a beautiful exhibition of the sweet dependence of the sex in the hour of danger. The cow was more terrible than a lion on the track. The passengers all trembled like the engine. In fact, the only calm being was the cow, which, after satisfying her curiosity, walked slowly off, wondering what it was all about.
The cog-wheel railway is able to transport a large number of excursionists to the top of the mountain in the course of the morning. The tourists usually arrive there about the time the mist has crept up from the valleys and enveloped everything. Our party had the common experience. The Summit House, the Signal Station, the old Tip-top House, which is lashed down with cables, and rises ten feet higher than the highest crag, were all in the clouds. Nothing was to be seen except the dim outline of these buildings.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Farquhar, as they stumbled along over the slippery stones, "what people come here for."
"Just what we came for," answered Forbes, "to say they have been on top of the mountain."
They took refuge in the hotel, but that also was invaded by the damp, chill atmosphere, wrapped in and pervaded by the clouds. From the windows nothing more was to be seen than is visible in a Russian steam bath. But the tourists did not mind. They addressed themselves to the business in hand. This was registering their names. A daily newspaper called Among the Clouds is published here, and every person who gets his name on the register in time can see it in print before the train goes. When the train descends, every passenger has one of these two-cent certificates of his exploit. When our party entered, there was a great run on the register, especially by women, who have a repugnance, as is well known, to seeing their names in print. In the room was a hot stove, which was more attractive than the cold clouds, but unable to compete in interest with the register. The artist, who seemed to be in a sardonic mood, and could get no chance to enter his name, watched the scene, while his friends enjoyed the view of the stove. After registering, the visitors all bought note-paper with a chromo heading, "Among the Clouds," and a natural wild-flower stuck on the corner, and then rushed to the writing-room in order to indite an epistle "from the summit." This is indispensable.
After that they were ready for the Signal Station. This is a great attraction. The sergeant in charge looked bored to death, and in the mood to predict the worst kind of weather. He is all day beset with a crowd craning their necks to look at him, and bothered with ten thousand questions. He told King that the tourists made his life miserable; they were a great deal worse than the blizzards in the winter. And the government, he said, does not take this into account in his salary.
Occasionally there was an alarm that the mist was getting thin, that the clouds were about to break, and a rush was made out-of-doors, and the tourists dispersed about on the rocks. They were all on the qui vine to see the hotel or the boarding-house they had left in the early morning. Excursionists continually swarmed in by rail or by carriage road. The artist, who had one of his moods for wanting to see nature, said there were too many women; he wanted to know why there were always so many women on excursions. "You can see nothing but excursionists; whichever way you look, you see their backs." These backs, looming out of the mist, or discovered in a rift, seemed to enrage him.
At length something actually happened. The curtain of cloud slowly lifted, exactly as in a theatre; for a moment there was a magnificent view of peaks, forests, valleys, a burst of sunshine on the lost world, and then the curtain dropped, amid a storm of "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and intense excitement. Three or four times, as if in response to the call of the spectators, this was repeated, the curtain lifting every time on a different scene, and then it was all over, and the heavy mist shut down on the registered and the unregistered alike. But everybody declared that they preferred it this way; it was so much better to have these wonderful glimpses than a full view. They would go down and brag over their good-fortune.
The excursionists by-and-by went away out of the clouds, gliding breathlessly down the rails. When snow covers this track, descent is sometimes made on a toboggan, but it is such a dangerous venture that all except the operatives are now forbidden to try it. The velocity attained of three and a half miles in three minutes may seem nothing to a locomotive engineer who is making up time; it might seem slow to a lover whose sweetheart was at the foot of the slide; to ordinary mortals a mile a minute is quite enough on such an incline.
Our party, who would have been much surprised if any one had called them an excursion, went away on foot down the carriage road to the Glen House. A descent of a few rods took them into the world of light and sun, and they were soon beyond the little piles of stones which mark the spots where tourists have sunk down bewildered in the mist and died of exhaustion and cold. These little mounds help to give Mount Washington its savage and implacable character. It is not subdued by all the roads and rails and scientific forces. For days it may lie basking and smiling in ............