Mount Washington

“ 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 the sun, but at any hour it is liable to become inhospitable and pitiless, and for a good part of the year the summit is the area of elemental passion. ”

“ There are well-known and much-travelled trails to the austere peak of Mount Washington. There is even a railroad now. Doubtless no mountain in America is known in its contour to more people, though there are many of loftier height and of more inviting slopes.
So the outlines of the life of Washington are known more widely than those of any other American. The trails to the height of his achievement and genius have doubtless been learned in the histories of France. ”

“ Their incandescent points, thrust upward into the black gulf of the heavens, towered above the blacker gulfs below unspeakably. By degrees the scorching heat cooled. The great Franconia spires successively paled. But long after they seemed reduced to ashes, the red flame still lingered upon the snows of Mount Washington. At last that, too, faded out. Life was extinct. The great summit took on a wan and livid hue. Night kindly spread her mantle over the lifeless form of the mountain, which still disclosed its larger outlines rigid, majestic, even in death. ”

“ Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven: he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of American statesmen that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the loftiest WASHINGTON. Mountains are Earth’s undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render illustrious. ”

“ It is called Mount Washington, from a determination already formed on the part of the proprietors of this ground, to erect upon its summit a lofty and magnificent monument to the Father of his country. From this elevated point, a panoramic view of surpassing beauty, in almost illimitable perspective, opens upon the eye. ”

“ For the most part the trail to these lakes, whether one comes from Mount Washington or along the Crawford bridle path, seems bare and desolate to the overlooking glance. But when one gets down to it he finds it full of beauty and interest. The southern part of the Presidential Range, between Mount Washington and Mount Clinton, is a mighty ridge, out of which topple the crests of Monroe, Franklin and Pleasant, a giant still by day, but now a giant wave petrified. ”

“ The road up is rough, tedious, and, until the ridge at the foot of the south peak is reached, uninteresting. It crooks and turns with absolute lawlessness while climbing the flanks of the southern peak, skirting also the side of the profound ravine eating its way into the mountain from the south. Nearing this summit we obtained through an opening a glimpse of Mount Washington, veiled in the clouds. ”

“ Persons have passed all their days in sight of Mount Washington, and yet never looked upon the grand panorama from its brow. Men have lived from childhood almost within sound of the roar of Niagara, without ever gazing on the vast fountain, where mother Earth, like Rachel, weeps for her children, and will not be comforted. ”

“ It is somewhat of an undertaking to ascend Mount Washington, though the trip is performed on horseback; but if the weather is clear, the traveller will be well repaid for his labor. The painter will be pleased with the views he may command in ascending the route from Crawford’s, which abounds in the wildest and most diversified charms of mountain scenery. But the prospect from the summit of Washington will mostly excite the soul of the poet. Not so much on account of what he will behold, but for the breathless feeling which will make him deem himself for a moment to be an angel or a God. ”

“ We found the summit not a peak so much as a dome — a rounded mass of granite. Serbal is about the height of Mount Washington, but this gives no impression of its real grandeur: for while Mount Washington rises by a gradual slope, its sides being covered with forests, Serbal rises so perpendicularly that its five separate masses appear, as I have said, like gigantic columns, lifting their heads against the sky. We stood on the brow of a precipice, which might well make one shudder as he advanced to the point of the cliff, and looked over to a depth of four thousand feet. ”

“ On few mountains does one get the sense of exaltation and ecstatic uplift that comes to him when he stands on the high summit of Kearsarge. The mountain is splendidly isolated, only Bartlett rising high near it, and the summit of that even being so far below as to be readily overlooked. Northwestward looms Mount Washington, higher, no doubt, but so buttressed by the great ranges on which it sits serene as to lose the effect of upleap that Kearsarge has. ”

“ Respecting the appearance of Mount Washington from the Glen House itself, it is a received truth that neither the height nor the proportions of a high mountain are properly appreciated when the spectator is placed exactly at the base. The same is true here of Mount Washington, which is too much foreshortened for a favorable estimate of its grandeur or its elevation. The Dome looks flat, elongated, obese. ”

“ On top of Mount Washington survives a colony of butterflies found nowhere else south of Arctic snows and ice; descendants of a family which retreated with the great glacier that once overflowed New Hampshire and left only the pinnacle of Mount Washington uncovered. When the Œneis household moved back to Labrador and Greenland, these silk-winged stragglers, flirting in corners, were abandoned by their chaperons, and for thousands of years their progeny have flitted around that stone crest to show us the depth of the glacier. ”

“ We were perched upon the extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which we had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights together—and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high—grand old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. ”

“ Mount Washington, for instance, is over six thousand feet high, and the rough, unpolished surface of its summit, covered with loose fragments, just below the level of which glacier-marks come to an end, tells us that it lifted its head alone above the desolate waste of ice and snow. In this region, then, the thickness of the sheet cannot have been much less than six thousand feet, and this is in keeping with the same kind of evidence in other parts of the country ”

“ That Mount Washington! It was in vain to remind them that the eye traversed forty miles in its flight from lake to summit. Fault of perspective or not, the mountain was not nearly so high as they imagined. Chocorua, on the contrary, with its ashen spire and olive-green flanks, realized more fully their idea of a high mountain. One was near, the other far. Imagination fails to make a mountain higher than it looks. The mind takes its measure after the eye. ”

“ So they do on cloud-capped Mount Washington, on Carrigain, Lafayette and Carter Dome.
In time of storm lesser divinities may well - 66 - come down to the valleys, and when the passing clouds are mingled with the coming sunshine is the time to look for trolls in the woodland paths, pixies by the stream, and to find, in the very blossoming shrubs and graceful trees of the level river meadows a personality that is as nearly human as that which the Greeks gave their gods. Who can know the elms of the Conway and Intervale meadows without loving them for their femininity? ”

“ When viewed from a neighbouring position, they are always, except where snow lies, or the rocks are naked, shrouded in misty azure.
The height of these mountains has been a subject of much dispute. A scientific gentleman, whose remarks on physical subjects merit consideration and respect, supposes the summit of Mount Washington to be about seven thousand eight hundred feet above the level of the ocean ”

“ Clouds on the Northern Peaks, Mount Adams seen from Mount Washington summit
- 161 -
Here is the real mountain and the whole of it laid out for the eye from the beginnings in the low valley of the Peabody River to the corrugated pinnacle which is the crest. It takes the gulf to make us realize the mountain, and great as the gulf is it is forgotten in the mighty creature that rears its head into the clouds beyond it. From Madison the mountain has more than individuality. It has personality. It is as if some great god of Chaos had crushed an image of immensity out of new-formed stone. ”

“ They will find themselves in one of the boldest mountain-passes in the United States, in the heart of a scene comprising crags, forests, and a river sprinkled with numerous islands, all striking, harmonious, and romantic. There, indeed, is neither a Round-Top nor a Mount Washington, with ladders on which to climb to heaven; but there are certain mountain ridges hard by, from whose tops he who is hardy enough to mount them, can well believe he looks down on heaven, so broad, so fair, so elysian are the prospects that stretch below. ”

“ For half a century after Washington capitulated, his roadway from the Potomac was the great highway across the mountains, and thousands of weary pilgrims to the great West camped near the spot where the Father of the West fought his first battle for it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Cumberland Road, the historic highway of America, was built through Great Meadows, and the northern hill—on which the French opened the first battle of the French and Indian War on that July morning—over which the great road was built is named Mount Washington. ”

“ THE ANDROSCOGGIN AT SHELBURNE.
Beyond the river, over gently meeting slopes of the valley, two magnificent shapes, Washington and Madison, rose grandly. Those truly regal summits still wore their winter ermine. They were drawn so widely apart as to show the familiar peaks of Mount Clay protruding between them. It is hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful picture of mountain scenery. Noble river, hoary summits, blanched precipices, over whose haggard visages a little color was beginning to steal, eloquently appealed to every perception of the beautiful and the sublime. ”

“ From a plateau which has been cut deep by rivers and streams they rise to rounded summits often noble in outline and of greater elevation than elsewhere in the Appalachian system, except in North Carolina, and culminate in Mount Washington, 6293 ft. above the sea. Thirteen other summits have an elevation exceeding 5000 ft. The scenery is so beautiful and varied that the region has long been popular as a summer resort. It is traversed by railways, one which ascends Mount Washington, and contains numerous villages and fine hotels. ”

“ Coming up the land from the south I had thought that the lifting of Mount Washington through the plastic earth had caused the waves of land to radiate from it in all directions, but to stand on the highest summit is to see that this is not so. The force that made the mountains to the south and the mountains to the north is the same, and the Presidential Range is a result, also, and not a cause. It is but the seventh wave of those which ride in from the northwest, and the force which made them all came over the land from countless leagues beyond. ”

“ Informed of these facts, Washington wrote to Greene on the 8th: "If we cannot prevent vessels from passing up the river, and the enemy are possessed of all the surrounding country, what valuable purpose can it answer to hold a post from which the expected benefit cannot be had? I am, therefore, inclined to think, that it will not be prudent to hazard the men and stores at Mount Washington; but, as you are on the spot, I leave it to you to give such orders as to evacuating Mount Washington as you may judge best, and so far revoking the orders given to Colonel Magaw, to defend it to the last." ”

“ A mountain is not a thing that you can put away in your pocket, or hide under the eaves till an accident reveals its whereabouts. Verily our misguided brethren have much to do to make out a case; and, in the firm belief that I am climbing up the highest point of land this side the Rocky Mountains, I begin my journey.
Time was when the ascent of Mount Washington could be justly considered a difficult and dangerous feat ”

“ From too great a confidence [47] in the strength of fort Washington, and a conviction of its importance, General Greene had not withdrawn its garrison under the discretionary orders he had received, but still indulged a hope that the post might be maintained, or, should its situation become desperate, that means might be found to transport the troops across the river to the Jersey shore, which was defended by fort Lee.
Mount Washington is a high piece of rocky ground, near the North River, very difficult of ascent, especially towards the north, or Kingsbridge. ”