XVII.

THE CONNECTICUT RIVER AND WHITE MOUNTAINS.

The Long Tidal River—Middletown—Wethersfield—Blue Hills of Southington—Meriden—Berlin—Hartford—The Charter Oak—Samuel Colt and the Revolver—New Britain—Enfield Rapids—Windsor Locks—Agawam—Springfield and the Armory—Westfield River—Brookfield—Chicopee Falls—Hadley Falls—Holyoke—Mount Tom—Mount Holyoke—Nonotuck—Northampton—Old Hadley and its Street—The Ox-Bow—Goffe and Whalley—Mount Holyoke College—Amherst—Deerfield River and Old Deerfield—Greenfield—Shelburne Falls—Brattleboro'—Ashuelot River—Keene—Mount Monadnock—Williams River—Bellows Falls—Lake Sunapee—Windsor, Vermont—Ascutney Mountain—White River—Olcott Falls—Hanover—Dartmouth College—Mooseilauke—Newbury—Wells River—Littleton—Passumpsic River—St. Johnsbury—Lake Memphramagog—Dixville Notch—Lake Umbagog—Rangeley Lakes—Connecticut Lakes—Source of the Connecticut—White Mountains—Ammonoosuc River—Bethlehem—Gale River—Sugar Hill—Franconia Notch—CoÖs—Echo Lake—Profile Lake—Old Man of the Mountain—Pemigewasset River—Flume and Pool—North Woodstock—Plymouth—Squam Lake—Ethan's Pond—Thoreau and the Merrimack—White Mountain Notch—Israel River—Jefferson—Lancaster—Fabyan's—Crawford's—The Presidential Range—Saco River—Willey Slide—View from Mount Willard—Giant's Grave—Mount Washington—Grand Gulf—The Summit and View—Tuckerman's Ravine—The Glen—Pinkham Notch—Peabody River—Gorham—Androscoggin River—Ellis River—Jackson—Lower Bartlett—Intervale—North Conway—Mount Kearsarge—Pequawket—Madison—Ossipee—Lake Winnepesaukee—Sandwich Mountains—Chocorua—Wolfboro'—Weirs—Alton Bay—Centre Harbor—Red Hill—Whittier's Poetry on the Lake and the Merrimack.

THE LONG TIDAL RIVER.

The greatest New England river, the Connecticut, was first explored by the redoubtable Dutch navigator, Captain Adraien Blok. When he made his memorable voyage of discovery from New Amsterdam along Long Island Sound, Blok ascended the Connecticut to Enfield Falls. Its source is in the highlands of northern New Hampshire upon the Canadian boundary, at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, and it flows four hundred and fifty miles southward to the Sound. Its Indian title was Quonektakat, or "the long tidal river," from which the name has been derived. It is noted for beautiful scenery and has many cataracts, the chief being Olcott Falls, at Wilder in Vermont, South Hadley in Massachusetts, and Enfield in Connecticut. The soils of its valley are extremely fertile, making a garden-spot in the otherwise generally sterile New England, the most luxuriant crop being the tobacco-plant, known as "Connecticut seed-leaf," used largely for cigar-wrappers, and often yielding two thousand pounds to the acre. Steamboats navigate the river to Hartford, about fifty miles from the Sound. The blazing red beacon of the Cornfield Point Lightship is the outer guide for the mariner entering its mouth, while the white lights of Saybrook guard the inner channel. The lower Connecticut flows through a region of farms, enriched by copious dressings of manures made from the fish caught in the stream, and it passes picturesque shores and pleasant villages in the domain of Haddam, an extensive tract which the Indians originally sold to Hartford people for thirty coats.

Middletown, the "Forest City," at a great bend in the lower river, has many mills making pumps, tapes, plated wares, webbing and sewing-machines, its shaded streets leading up the hill-slopes, bordering the water, that have in them valuable quarries of rich brown Portland stone. The county Court-house of Middletown is a quaint little miniature of the Parthenon. The Wesleyan Methodist College, having three hundred students, is located here, the chief buildings being the Memorial and Judd Halls, built of the native Portland stone, the latter the gift of Orange Judd. The large buildings of the Connecticut Insane Hospital, also of Portland stone, overlook the river from a high hill southeast of the city, and are in a spacious park. To the northward of Middletown, level green and exceedingly fertile meadows adjoin the river, their product being the noted onion crops of Wethersfield, which permeate the whole country. This was the earliest Connecticut settlement in 1635, and here in the next year convened the first Connecticut Legislature to make the arrangements for the war against the Pequots which annihilated that tribe. In one of its old mansions General Washington had his headquarters, where, in conjunction with the French officers, the plans were prepared for the campaign closing the Revolution by the victory at Yorktown.

To the westward of the river are the famous "Blue Hills of Southington," the most elevated portion of the State of Connecticut, and nestling under their shadow is Meriden, the hills rising high above its western and northern verge, in the West Peak and Mount Lamentation. Here are gathered over thirty thousand people in an active factory town, the neat wooden dwellings of the operatives forming the nucleus of the city adjacent to the extensive mills, and having as a surrounding galaxy the attractive villas of their owners, scattered in pleasant places upon the steep adjacent hills. They are industrious iron and steel, bronze, brass and tin workers, and the Meriden Britannia and electro-plated silver wares are famous everywhere. The Meriden Britannia Company has enormous mills, and is the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Meriden and Berlin, a short distance northward, have long been the headquarters of the peripatetic Connecticut tin-pedler, who goes forth laden with all kinds of pots and pans, and other bright and useful utensils, to wander over the land, and charm the country folk with his attractive bargains. Berlin began in the eighteenth century the first American manufacture of tinware. There are scores of villages about, cast almost in the same mould. Each has the same beautiful central Public Green, the charm of the New England village, shaded by rows of stately elms; the tall-spired churches; the village graveyard, usually on a gently-sloping hillside, with the lines of older white gravestones, supplemented in the modern interments by more elaborate monuments; the attractive wooden houses nestling amid abundant foliage, and surrounded by gardens and flower-beds, that are the homes of the people, and the huge factories giving them employment. Some of these villages are larger than others, thus covering more space, but excepting in size, all are substantially alike.

HARTFORD.

The high gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford and the broad fronts of the stately buildings of Trinity College surmounting Rocky Hill, above a labyrinth of factories, are seen rising on the Connecticut River bank to the northward. This is the noted city, with about seventy thousand people, which has reproduced in New England the name in the mother country of the ancient Saxon village just north of London at the "Ford of Harts," whence some of its early settlers came. The brave and pious Thomas Hooker led his flock from the seacoast through the wilderness in 1636 to Hartford, to establish an English colony at the Indian post of Suckiang, the Dutch three years before having built a fort and trading-station at a bend of the Connecticut, where the little Park River flowing in gave a water-power which turned the wheels of a small grist-mill, to which all the country around afterwards brought grain to be ground. Cotton Mather, the quaint historian, described Hooker as "the renowned minister of Hartford and pillar of Connecticut, and the light of the Western churches." Hartford is known as the "Queen City," and its centre is the attractive Bushnell Park, fronting on the narrow and winding Park River. An airy bridge leads from the railway station over this little stream, to the tasteful Park entrance, a triumphal brownstone arch with surmounting conical towers, erected as a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. A grand highway then continues up the hill to the Connecticut State Capitol, which cost $2,500,000 to build, one of the finest structures in New England, an imposing Gothic temple of white marble, three hundred feet long, the dome rising two hundred and fifty feet, and all the fronts elaborately ornamented with statuary and artistic decoration. The statue of General Putnam, who died at Hartford in 1790, is in the Park, and his tombstone, battered and weatherworn, is kept as a precious relic in the Capitol. The "Putnam Phalanx" is the great military organization of Hartford. In the east wing of the Capitol is the bronze statue of Nathan Hale, whom the British hanged as a spy in the Revolution. It is a masterpiece, the almost living figure seeming animated with the full vigor of earnest youth, as with outstretched hands he actually appears to speak his memorable words: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." The Connecticut law-makers of to-day who meet in this sumptuous Capitol are milder legislators than their ancestors who made the "blue laws" of the olden time, when the iron rule of the Puritan pastors governing the colony enacted a Draconian code, inflicting death penalties for the crimes of idolatry, unchastity, blasphemy, witchcraft, murder, man-stealing, smiting parents, and some others, with savage punishment for Sabbath-breaking and the use of tobacco.

The celebrated Charter Oak is the great memory of Hartford. In 1856 the old tree was blown down in a storm, and a marble slab marks where it stood. The remains of the tree were fashioned into many precious relics, and our friend of humorous memory, Mark Twain, who lives in Hartford, says he has seen all conceivable articles made out of this precious timber, there being, among others, "a walking-stick, dog-collar, needle-case, three-legged stool, bootjack, dinner-table, tenpin alley, toothpick, and enough Charter Oak to build a plank-road from Hartford to Great Salt Lake City." This ancient tree concealed the royal charter of the Connecticut colony, granted by the King, when, in 1687, the tyrannical Governor Andros came to Hartford with his troops and demanded its surrender. While the subject was being discussed in the Legislature, the lights were suddenly put out, and in the darkness a bold colonist seized the precious document, and running out, concealed it in the hollow of the oak. The fine statue surmounting the Capitol dome and overlooking the city is now, with extended arm, crowning the municipality with a wreath of Charter Oak leaves, and the oak leaf is repeated in many ways in the decoration of the Capitol and of many other buildings in the city. The Charter Oak Bank and Life Insurance Company are also flourishing institutions. In proportion to population, Hartford is regarded as the wealthiest city in America, and it is financially great, particularly in Life and Fire Insurance Companies, whose business is wide-spread. It has many charitable foundations, book-publishing houses, banks, manufacturing establishments and educational institutions, the most noted of the latter being Trinity College, in the southern part of the city, its brownstone Early English buildings having a grand view across the intervening valley to the hills of Farmington and Talcott Mountain, nine miles westward.

Picturesque suburbs adorned by magnificent villas environ the built-up parts of Hartford, making a splendid semi-rural residential section, where arching elms embower the lawn-bordered avenues, many localities being adorned by superb hedges. There is a fine artistic and historical collection in the Wadsworth Atheneum, where, among other precious relics, are kept General Putnam's sword and the Indian King Philip's club. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Sigourney, the poetess, were long residents of Hartford. The citizen whom it holds in steadfast memory, however, is Colonel Samuel Colt, who invented the revolving pistol. He was born in Hartford, and his remains rest under a fine monument in Cedar Hill Cemetery. His widow built as his memorial a beautiful little brownstone chapel, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is not far away from the huge works of the Colt Arms Company, the chief industrial establishment of the city. Colt, when a boy, ran away from home and went to sea, and is said to have there conceived the idea of his great invention. He sought vainly during several years to establish a factory to make it, but did not prosper until 1852, when he started in Hartford; and with the great demand for small-arms then stimulated by the opening of the California gold mines and the exploration of the Western plains, afterwards expanded by the Civil War, his factory grew enormously. The heraldic "colt rampant" adopted by the inventor is stamped on all the arms and reproduced in all the decorations of these vast works. Among other large factories is also the Pope bicycle works. A short distance west of Hartford is New Britain, where there are twenty thousand people engaged in making hardware, locks and jewelry, its noted resident having been Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," who was born there in 1810 and died in 1879.

SPRINGFIELD AND THE ARMORY.

To the north of Hartford is a fertile intervale, the rich meadows of Mattaneag, where the Connecticut River pours down the Enfield Rapids, and the diverted water flows through a canal formerly used to take the river-craft around the obstruction, but now giving ample power to many paper and other mills at Windsor Locks. The original colony was started here by John Warham, said to have been the first New England pastor who used notes in preaching. He sustained the "blue laws," but his colony to-day is a great tobacco-growing section, through which the Farmington River flows down from the western hills. At South Windsor, John Fitch, the steamboat inventor, was born. The Hazardville Powder Works, one of the greatest gunpowder factories in the world, are beyond, and also Thompsonville, a prodigious maker of carpets, and then the boundary is crossed into Massachusetts. Just north of the line, the Connecticut River sweeps grandly around in approaching Springfield, built on the eastern bank, and spreading for a long distance up the slopes of the adjacent hills. It is a busy manufacturing city, with sixty thousand population and an important railway junction, where the roads along the river cross the route from Boston to Albany and the West. This was the Indian land of Agawam—"fish-abounding"—to which the Puritan missionary William Pynchon led his hardy flock in 1636, and the statue of Miles Morgan, a noted soldier of the early time, representing the "Puritan," stands, matchlock in hand, in heroic bronze on the Public Square. Springfield is noted for its great firearms factories, having the extensive works of the Smith & Wesson Company, and also the United States Armory. This enormous Government factory, making rifles for the army previously on a large scale, quadrupled its output during the Spanish War of 1898. It occupies an extensive enclosure on Armory Hill, up to which the surface gradually slopes from the river, giving an admirable view over the city. The chief buildings stand around a quadrangle, making a pleasant stretch of lawn, with regular rows of trees crossing it. There are a few old cannon planted about, giving a military air, and here are made the Springfield rifles. During the Revolution most of the arms for the American army were made here, and the cannon were cast that helped defeat Burgoyne at Saratoga. In the Civil War the main works were constructed, and they ran day and night for four years, making nearly eight hundred thousand rifles for the Union armies. The Arsenal, a large building on the western side of the quadrangle, contains two hundred and twenty-five thousand arms, tastefully arranged, and rivalling the collection at the Tower of London. This armory is the chief industrial establishment of Springfield, and Longfellow has thus described its great Arsenal:

At Springfield the Agawam River flows from the westward into the Connecticut, and along its broad bordering meadows comes the Boston and Albany Railroad. This is one of the Vanderbilt lines, crossing Massachusetts from the Berkshires to Boston, and it was among the earliest railways built in New England, being in construction from 1833 to 1842. The project while zealously pushed was then generally derided as chimerical, the Boston Courier of that time saying the road could only be built at "an expense of little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and, if practicable, every person of common sense knows it would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon." Yet it was built, and prospered so much that, to break its profitable monopoly, Massachusetts had afterwards to bore the costly Hoosac Tunnel on the only available route, to provide a competing line. The railroad climbs up the Taghkanic range from the Hudson River Valley, crosses the Berkshire Hills, going through Pittsfield and over Hoosac Mountain at an elevation of fourteen hundred and fifty feet, then coming down a wild and picturesque defile made by a mountain brook flowing into Westfield River, which in turn flows into the Agawam. It is a route of magnificent scenery, gradually leading from a mountain gorge to a broadening intervale, where it passes the fertile Indian domain of Woronoco and the pleasant town of Westfield, noted for its whips and cigars. Then the winding reaches of the Agawam lead through broad meadows and past many mills to Springfield. The various streams around the Armory City, like so much of the clear waters elsewhere in Massachusetts, are largely devoted to paper-making, and eastward from Springfield the railroad ascends the valley of the swift-flowing Chicopee, meaning the "large spring," among more paper-mills. This is a vast industry developed by the pure, clean waters of Central Massachusetts. Farther eastward, however, the character of the mills changes, and at Brookfield shoemaking villages appear, while elsewhere there are textile and leather factories. Brookfield was the birthplace, in 1818, of the noted female agitator Lucy Stone, its Quaboag Pond furnishing the water turning the mill-wheels, and then flowing off through Podunk meadows by the Sashaway River to the Chicopee. At Spencer, not far away, was born in 1819 Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine. Farther eastward the railway route leads to Worcester, and thence to Boston.

THE LAND OF NONOTUCK.

The valley of the Connecticut north of Springfield is a hive of busy industries where are made most of the finer papers used in the United States. All the tributary water-courses teem with factories. Four miles above Springfield the Chicopee flows in from the eastern hills, there being a population of twenty thousand, and the mills, served by the power from its falls two miles eastward, working cotton and wool, brass and bronze, as well as making paper. Chicopee Falls was the home of Edward Bellamy, author of Looking Backward, who died in 1898. A few miles above the Chicopee, on the Connecticut, are the Hadley Falls, the greatest water-power of New England, and the creator of Holyoke, with fifty thousand people, the chief manufactory of fine papers in the world. In a little more than a mile the river descends sixty feet in falls and rapids, and by a system of canals the water is led for three miles along the banks, thus serving the factories, which have great advantages of position, as the river winds around them on three sides, and its flow is also supplemented by steam-power. The water, from its great descent, is used several times over. The main Hadley fall descends thirty feet, and to prevent erosion is aproned with stout timbers sheathed with boiler iron. The river is bridled by a huge dam one thousand feet long, and has a boom to catch the floating logs.

The scenery above the Hadley Falls grows more attractive; the hills approach nearer the river and rise sharply into mountains; the river winds about their bases, and, abruptly turning, goes through a gorge between them. Upon the western side is the Mount Tom range, and upon the eastern bank Mount Holyoke, with inclined-plane railways ascending both, Mount Tom rising twelve hundred and fifteen feet, and Mount Holyoke nine hundred and fifty-five feet. The Connecticut flows out between them from the extensive valley above. These guardian peaks of Tom and Holyoke bear the names of two pioneers of the valley, who are said to have first discovered the pass, and the tradition is that the broad and fertile plain above, spreading almost to the northern Massachusetts boundary, was once a lake with the outlet towards the west, behind Mount Tom, until the waters broke a passage through the ridge, and made the Connecticut River route to the Sound. The origin of these mountains was evidently volcanic, being built up of trap-rock lifting its columned masses abruptly from the level floor of the valley, and almost without foothills to dwarf the greater elevation. The broad vale beyond is the fertile land of Nonotuck, bought from the Indians in 1653 for "one hundred fathoms of wampum and ten coats." Here to the westward of the river is Northampton, a most lovely and attractive town, well described as "the frontispiece of the book of beauty which Nature opens wide in the valley of the Connecticut." The fairest fields surround it, with thrifty farmers cultivating their rich bottom-lands, and the people have a splendid outlook in front of their doors, in the glorious panorama of the noble mountains, with the river flowing away through the deep gorge. The place was named Northampton because most of the original settlers came from that English town. Solomon Stoddart was the sturdy Puritan pastor, ruling the flock at Nonotuck for over a half-century, the village being for protection surrounded by a palisade and wall. The little church in which he preached measured eighteen by twenty-six feet, being built in 1655 at a cost of $75, and the congregation were summoned to meeting armed and by the blasts of a trumpet:

This renowned pastor was of majestic appearance, and as good a fighter as he was a preacher. He never hesitated to lead his people in their Indian wars, and once he is said to have got into an ambush, but the awestruck savages, impressed by his noble bearing, hesitated to shoot him, telling their French allies, "That is the Englishman's god." The present stone church is the fifth built on the original site. During nearly a quarter-century the noted Jonathan Edwards was the Northampton pastor, but he was dismissed in 1750, because, owing to the growing laxity of church members, he insisted upon "a higher and purer standard of admission to the communion-table." Northampton is famed for its educational development, the chief institution, endowed by Sophia Smith in 1871, being Smith College for women, having a thousand students and possessing fine buildings, with an art gallery, music hall and gymnasium. There are various attractive public buildings, including an Institution for Mutes and the State Lunatic Asylum. The level land of Nonotuck raises much tobacco, the Connecticut River winding in wide circular sweeps among the fields and meadows, but making little progress as it goes around great curves of miles in circuit. Upon an isthmus thus formed, with the broad river loop stretching far to the westward, is "Old Hadley," the Connecticut having made a five-mile circuit to accomplish barely one mile of distance. Across the level isthmus from the river above to the river below, stretching through the village, is the noted "Hadley Street," the handsomest highway in natural adornments in the Old Bay State. Over three hundred feet wide, this street is lined by two double rows of noble elms, with a broad expanse of greenest lawn between, and nearly a thousand ancient trees arching their graceful branches over it. This very quiet street has perfect greensward, for it is almost untravelled, and its inhabitants grow tobacco and make brooms. Another of these wayward river loops is the great "ox-bow" of the Connecticut, where the river used to flow around a circuit of nearly four miles and accomplished only one hundred and fifty yards of actual distance, until an ice-freshet broke through the narrow isthmus and made a straight channel across it, which has become the course of the river. The abandoned channel of the "ox-bow" is now usually stored with logs awaiting the sawmill. Hadley was the final home and burial-place of Goffe and Whalley, the regicides, who fled there from New Haven. When their house was pulled down, it was said the bones of Whalley, who died in 1679, were found entombed just outside the cellar-wall. It was the house of the pastor, and they were concealed in it fifteen years, from 1664 to 1679, their presence known only to three persons. Once, during the hiding, Indians attacked the town, and after a sharp fight the people gave way, when there suddenly appeared "an ancient man with hoary locks, of a most venerable and dignified aspect," who rallied them to a fresh onslaught, driving the Indians off. He then disappeared, the inhabitants attributing their deliverance to a "militant angel." This was Goffe, and the tale is the chief legend of "Old Hadley." General Joseph Hooker of the Civil War was born in Hadley. At South Hadley is the Mount Holyoke College for girls, almost under the shadow of the mountain, amid magnificent scenery, a noted institution with four hundred students, where, during the past century, have been educated many missionary women for their labors in distant lands.

MOUNT HOLYOKE AND BEYOND.

There is a grand view from the summit of Mount Holyoke, spreading almost from Long Island Sound to the White Mountains, and from the Berkshire Hills in the west to the cloud-capped mountains Monadnock and Wachusett, fifty miles to the eastward. This is regarded as the finest view in New England, for the wide and highly cultivated valley of the Connecticut, with its wayward, winding stream flowing apparently in all directions over the rich bottom-lands cut up into diminutive farms and fields like so many "plaided meadows," gives a charm that is lacking in most other mountain views. The grand panorama displays parts of four New England States. Off to the northeast several miles is seen the town of Amherst, with four thousand people, the seat of another noted educational institution, Amherst College, having over four hundred students and a fine archÆological museum.

The Hoosac Mountain range in the Berkshires sends down various streams on its eastern slopes through wild and romantic gorges into the Connecticut Valley, and one of these is Deerfield River, coming into the main stream some distance north of Mount Holyoke. Here is the village of "Old Deerfield," settled in 1670, on the Indian domain of Pocomtuck, and named from the abundance of deer found in the forests. Its streets often ran with blood in King Philip's and the later Indian Wars, and its young men were then described by the quaint Puritan chronicler as "the very flower of Essex County, none of whom were ashamed to speak with the enemy in the gate." Its guardian peaks are the Sugar Loaf, rising seven hundred and ten feet, and on the opposite eastern side of the river Mount Toby, nearly thirteen hundred feet high. King Philip, in his attack upon the settlers here in 1675, made the tall and isolated Sugar Loaf his lookout station, whence he directed the movements of his forces, and a crag on the top is yet called "King Philip's Chair." Nearby, a monument marks the battlefield of Bloody Brook in 1675, where the Indians killed Captain Lathrop and eighty young men of Essex County. The Fitchburg Railroad from Boston through Fitchburg comes across the Connecticut Valley, and passing the village of Greenfield, takes advantage of the winding canyon of Deerfield River to ascend westward to the wall of Hoosac Mountain, where the great tunnel is pierced. The route is in a wild and picturesque defile, in the heart of which is the pleasant village of Shelburne Falls, where the stream glides down a series of cataracts and rapids having one hundred and fifty feet descent. Here are mills making cutlery, hooks, gimlets and other things, and there are sheep-pastures on the mountain sides, and the people also tap the maple trees for sugar. There are more villages among these mountains farther up the gorge, where it may broaden to give a little arable land, and at one of these, under the shadow of the great Pocomtuck Mountain, was born in 1797 Mary Lyon, the devout and noted teacher who founded Mount Holyoke College for girls. Finally the railway reaches the Hoosac wall, and leaving the little Deerfield River which comes down from the north, disappears westward in the tunnel.

The Connecticut River beyond the Massachusetts northern boundary divides the States of New Hampshire and Vermont, and its scenery, as ascended, becomes more romantic and mountainous. At Northfield, near the boundary, lived Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist. Above the boundary, the Massachusetts colony, as a protection to the river settlements, in 1724 built Fort Dummer, which was often attacked by the French and Indians in their forays from Canada, but never captured, and near it was made the first settlement in Vermont, a village named in 1753 Brattleborough, in honor of Colonel Brattle of Boston, one of the landowners. The Whetstone Brook flows in, making a fine water-power, and the town, now having six thousand people, is charmingly situated on an elevated plateau, surrounded by lofty hills. Brattleboro' is the centre of the Vermont maple-sugar industry, and it has the largest organ-works existing, those of the Estey Company. Just south of the town rises Cemetery Hill, overlooking it with a fine view, and here is the grand monument erected in memory of the notorious James Fisk, Jr., who was a native of the place. It bears emblematic female statues representing Railroads, Commerce, Navigation and the Drama, and was executed by Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, also a native of the town. It is recorded that when a lad, Mead worked one long winter night on a snow figure at the head of the Main Street, and next morning, the people were surprised to see there a beautiful figure of the Recording Angel, modeled in the purest snow. Southwest of Brattleboro' is Sadawga Lake, in the town of Whitingham, near which, in a poor log hut, Brigham Young was born in 1801. He was a farmer's son, educated in the Baptist Church, and afterwards emigrating to Ohio, joined the Mormons there when about thirty years old. When Rudyard Kipling had his home in Vermont, it was about three miles north of Brattleboro'.

From the eastern highlands of New Hampshire the Ashuelot River flows into the Connecticut below Brattleboro', and to the northeast in its alluvial valley is Keene, the centre of an agricultural district, and having about eight thousand people, some of whom make leather goods, furniture and wooden ware. The Ashuelot means a "collection of many waters," and the place was named before the Revolution in honor of Sir Benjamin Keene, a British friend of Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire, in consequence of which the colonial historian recorded that "Keene is a proud little spot." To the southeast boldly rises Mount Monadnock, its high and rugged top elevated nearly thirty-two hundred feet, and having a hotel half-way up its side. This mountain is about eighty miles from Boston, and the town of Jaffrey, at its southeastern base, has an old church, the frame of which was raised on the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, the workmen claiming that they heard the cannonading. The Williams River, coming from the slopes of the Green Mountains, flows into the Connecticut on the Vermont side, at Bellows Falls, a picturesque summer resort located at the river rapids, where there is a descent of forty-two feet in about a half-mile, the power being availed of for various factories. Above, at Claremont, the Sugar River flows in from New Hampshire, and to the eastward is the charming Lake Sunapee, nine miles long, and surrounded by wooded highlands, which has been often called the American Loch Katrine. Over on the Vermont side, north of Claremont, is Windsor, where it is recorded that during a fearful thunder-storm, and with the appalling news of the loss of Fort Ticonderoga ringing in their ears, the deputies of Vermont adopted the State Constitution, July 2, 1777. Southwest of the village rises Ascutney Mountain, its Indian name meaning the "Three Brothers," being supposed to refer to three singular valleys running down the western slope. Its summit is elevated thirty-three hundred and twenty feet. William M. Evarts, who was a native of Boston, has his summer home Runnymede near Windsor, and at Cornish, nearby, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase was born in 1808, emigrating to Ohio in 1830.

HANOVER TO MEMPHRAMAGOG.

The White River, coming out from the Green Mountains, flows into the Connecticut at a noted railway junction, while a short distance above is the Olcott Falls, a cataract amid picturesque surroundings which provides power for large paper-mills at Wilder, Vermont. To the northward is Hanover, in New Hampshire, the seat of the most famous educational foundation of northern New England, Dartmouth College, having some seven hundred students. Rev. Eleazer Wheelock began it in 1770, and his name is preserved in the chief hotel. He started a school in the forest to educate missionaries for the Indians, having twenty-four students domiciled in rude log huts. He also educated several Indians, giving them Master's degrees; but after some of them had returned to savage life he changed his plan, and this object was subordinated to the purposes of general and higher education, the College, which was named for the Earl of Dartmouth, entering upon a successful career subsequently to the Revolution. Among the graduates have been Daniel Webster, Amos Kendall, Levi Woodbury, Benjamin Greenleaf, George P. Marsh, George Ticknor, Rufus Choate, Thaddeus Stevens and Salmon P. Chase. There are numerous buildings surrounding an extensive elm-shaded campus, and also a spacious college park. The Connecticut River above Hanover winds about the level fertile intervale, making numerous "ox-bow" bends, and there appear numerous mountain peaks which are outlying sentinels of the Franconia Mountains to the eastward. The best known of these is Moosilauke, rising forty-eight hundred feet, which formerly was the "Moose Hillock" of the colonists. On the western river bank is the Vermont town of Newbury, founded by General Bailey of Massachusetts. It is related that during the Revolution a detachment of British troops came there to capture him, but a friend who learned their object went out where he was ploughing and dropped in the furrow a note, saying, "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" Bailey, returning down the long furrow, saw the note, took the hint and escaped. The crooked little Wells River flows out of the Green Mountains and falls into the Connecticut at the village of Wells River, nestling in a deep basin among the high hills; and here is another important railway junction, with routes going westward to Lake Champlain, northward to Canada, and eastward to the White Mountains. The latter route is up the Ammonoosuc River valley, past Littleton, with its glove factories and summer boarding-houses, on the edge of the mountain district, and thence to Bethlehem and into the heart of the White Mountain region.

The Passumpsic River flows from Vermont into the Connecticut a few miles above, and about ten miles up that winding and hill-environed stream is the picturesque town of St. Johnsbury, with about seven thousand people, noted as the location of the extensive Fairbanks Scale Works. St. John de Crevecoeur, the French Consul at New York, was very popular in the Revolutionary times and a benefactor of Vermont, and this town, settled in 1786, was named in his honor. It is related that in 1830, when there was a good deal of excitement about hemp-culture in the United States, the Fairbanks Brothers established a hemp-dressing factory here, and one of them conceived the idea of a platform-scale to weigh the hemp, which construction was the origin of their extensive business, the works sending scales all over the world. The railroad route to Montreal and Quebec ascends the Passumpsic, crosses the watershed, passing Lake Memphramagog at Newport, and then enters Canada. This noted lake is on the national boundary, more than two-thirds of it being in Canada, and is thirty miles long. Memphramagog means the "beautiful water," and the mountain ranges enclosing it with their wooded slopes present fine views. The national boundary is marked by clearings in the forests on either side of the lake. The massive rounded summit of the Owl's Head rises thirty-three hundred feet on the western shore in imposing magnificence, and many other peaks are sentinelled all around. Steamboats ply on the lake from Newport to Magog at the foot, where its waters discharge northward into Magog River and thence flow over the vast plain of Canada, which is so conspicuously contrasted with the mountains to the southward, until at Sherbrooke they reach St. Francis River, and finally the St. Lawrence. Lake Memphramagog has its Indian legends of massacre and escape, but its chief modern tradition is of a noted smuggler named Skinner, who in the early nineteenth century performed prodigious feats of skill in eluding the revenue officers. Near the boundary is Skinner's Island, having a spacious cavern on its northwestern side. The smuggler usually disappeared near this island, which came in time to be named for him, and it is related that one night the officers, having had a long chase, found his boat on this island and turned it adrift on the lake. The smuggler never appeared afterwards, but some years later a fisherman, seeking shelter from a squall under the lee of the island, discovered the cave hidden under foliage and explored it.

SOURCES OF THE CONNECTICUT.

The Connecticut River comes from the northeast to its confluence with the Passumpsic, a stream of reduced volume, flowing down rapids. There is only sparse population above, and in New Hampshire, some distance east of Colebrook, is the famous Dixville Notch. This is an attractive ravine about ten miles long, cut through the isolated Dixville Range. It is not a mountain pass in the usual sense, but a wonderful gorge among high hills, the cliffs being worn and broken down into strange forms of ruin and desolation. Theodore Winthrop describes the Dixville Notch as "briefly, picturesque—a fine gorge between a crumbling, conical crag and a scarped precipice—a place easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels." Approached from Colebrook to the westward, the view is disappointing, as it is entered at a high level, but after an abrupt turn to the right, the tall columnar sides are seen frowning at each other across the narrow chasm; cliffs of decaying mica slate presenting a scene of shattered ruin that is mournful to behold. To the right of the Notch, Table Rock rises five hundred and sixty feet above the road, being elevated nearly twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, and is ascended by a rude stairway of stone blocks called Jacob's Ladder. Its summit is a narrow pinnacle only eight feet wide, with precipitous sides. It gives an extensive view over the Connecticut Valley northward to the Connecticut Lakes, and over the upper Androscoggin Valley to the southeastward. Its most impressive sight, however, is much nearer, the narrow dreary chasm immediately below, with its broken palisades that seem almost ready to fall. Beyond is the Ice Cave, a deep ravine where snow and ice remain throughout the summer. Washington's Monument and the Pinnacle, remarkable rock formations, rise high on the north side of the Notch. Beyond the Notch southeastward is the Androscoggin, which small steamboats ascend to Lake Umbagog on the Maine boundary. Still farther eastward and deep in the Maine forests are the noted fishery waters of the Rangeley Lakes, which have polysyllabic names, such as Mooselucmaguntic, Mollychunkamunk, and Welokenebacook. They are elevated fifteen hundred feet above the sea and cover eighty square miles of surface.

We have now ascended the picturesque Connecticut River to its mountain sources. It has become only a brook, and having followed it up to the Canadian boundary of Vermont, it is found to come out of Northern New Hampshire, flowing westward from the Connecticut Lakes. The main lake of this group is twenty-five miles northeast of Colebrook, covering about twelve square miles, a favorite haunt of anglers, and navigated by a small steamboat. The second lake, four miles farther northeast through the forest, has about five square miles of surface, and the third lake is to the northward, covering two hundred acres. The Canadian northern boundary of New Hampshire is a low mountain range, and on its southern slope is the fourth and highest lake, at twenty-five hundred feet elevation above the sea, a pond of about three acres, in which the great New England river has its head. These Connecticut Lakes are in an almost unbroken forest.

THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

To the eastward of the Connecticut River, which we have explored from its mouth to the source, lies one of the most attractive regions in America, the White Mountain district. It covers about thirteen hundred square miles, stretching forty-five miles eastward from the Connecticut to the Maine boundary, and being thirty miles wide from the Ammonoosuc and Androscoggin on the north to the base of the Sandwich range on the south. There are some two hundred of these mountains rising from a plateau elevated generally sixteen hundred feet above the sea. They cluster mainly in two groups, separated by a broad table-land ten to twenty miles wide, the western group being the Franconia Mountains and the eastern group the Presidential range, or White Mountains proper. Their great mass is of granite, overlaid by mica slate; their scenery is varied and beautiful; and the country has nowhere a more popular resort than these mountains in the summer. They send out from their glens and notches various rivers, westward to the Connecticut, eastward to the Androscoggin and Saco, and southward to the Merrimack. The Indians called the White Mountains Agiochook, meaning "the Mountains of the Snowy Forehead and Home of the Great Spirit," and held them in the utmost reverence and awe. They rarely ascended the peaks, as it was believed no intruder upon these sacred heights was ever known to return. The legend was that the Great Spirit once bore a blameless chief and his squaw in a mighty whirlwind to the summit, while the world below was overspread by a flood destroying all the people. It was said that the great Passaconaway, the wizard-king at Pennacook, was wont to commune with celestial messengers on the summit of Agiochook, whence he was finally borne to heaven. The first white man who visited these mountains was Darby Field, who came up from Portsmouth on the seacoast in June, 1642, by the valley of the Saco. The Indians tried to dissuade him, saying he would never return alive, but he pressed on, attended by two seashore Indians, passing through cloud-banks and storms, reaching the highest peak, whence he saw, as he related, "the sea by Saco, the Gulf of Canada, and the great lake Canada River came out of;" and he found many crystals that he thought were diamonds, from which the range long bore the name of the "Chrystal Hills." Towards the close of the eighteenth century colonists began moving into the outlying glens; in 1792 Abel Crawford lived on the Giant's Grave, now Fabyan's; in 1803 a small inn was built there; and in 1820 a party of seven ascended and slept on the summit of Mount Washington, giving the principal peaks the names they now have.

From the Connecticut River the chief route of entrance to the White Mountain region is by railway up the Ammonoosuc River alongside its swift-flowing amber waters, and through the villages of North Lisbon and Littleton, then coming to Bethlehem Junction, whence a short narrow-gauge railroad leads steeply up the hill-slope westward to Maplewood and Bethlehem. This is one of the most populous resorts of the district—Bethlehem Street—a well-kept highway, stretching two miles along a plateau upon the northern hill-slope at an elevation of almost three hundred feet above the river. When old President Dwight, in his early wanderings over New England, first saw this place, it was known as the "Lord's Hill," and he recorded it as remote and sterile, having "only log huts, recent, few, poor and planted on a soil singularly rough and rocky," but he saw "a magnificent prospect of the White Mountains and a splendid collection of other mountains in this neighborhood." It is now an aggregation of fine hotels and summer boarding-houses, the whole "Street" having a grand view of the imposing Presidential range, seen nearly twenty miles to the eastward over the Ammonoosuc Valley, while other mountain ranges are to the north and west, so that Bethlehem is in a vast amphitheatre, presenting, when the clouds permit, an environment of unsurpassed magnificence. To the southward, the visitors climb Mount Agassiz, rising twenty-four hundred feet, formerly known as the Peaked Hill, and get an unrivalled view of mountains all around the horizon, the Green Mountains of Vermont being plainly visible beyond the Connecticut River to the westward. The southern flanks of Mount Agassiz are drained by the pretty little Gale River, flowing through a deep glen westward to the Ammonoosuc at North Lisbon. Down in this glen, to the southwest of Bethlehem, is the village of Franconia, with numerous hotels and boarding-houses, while to the southwest of the glen rises Sugar Hill, another popular resort, with its great hotels set high on the hilltop, and having superb views of the Franconia and White Mountains to the eastward, and far away westward over the Connecticut Valley where the horizon is enclosed by the long line of the Green Mountains. It is a breezy and health-giving place.

THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

To the southward of Bethlehem is the Franconia group, of which Mount Lafayette is the crowning peak, its pyramidal summit rising fifty-two hundred and seventy feet. A notch is cut down into the group, and through this, the Franconia or Profile Notch, another narrow-gauge railway going up-hill for ten miles in the forest, traverses the flanks of Lafayette and leads to the Echo Lake and Profile House, the most extensive hotel in the region. This is in CoÖs County, the mountain county of northern New Hampshire, getting its strangely pronounced name from the Indian word cooash, meaning the "pine woods," with which almost the whole country was then covered. Here lived the Abenaqui tribe, known as the "swift deer-hunting Coosucks." At the highest part of the Notch, where its floor broadens sufficiently for a few acres of smooth surface between the enormous enclosing mountains, is built the hotel and its attendant cottages, standing between two long, narrow lakes at the summit of the pass, the waters flowing out respectively north and south, from the one, Echo Lake to Gale River and the Ammonoosuc, and from the other, Profile Lake to the Pemigewasset, seeking the Merrimack. The Pemigewasset means "the place of the Crooked Pines," and Profile Lake used to be called the "Old Man's Washbowl." On its western side rises Mount Cannon, forty-one hundred feet high, on the southeastern face of which is the "Old Man of the Mountain," the noted Franconia Profile. The mountain rises abruptly from the edge of the lake, and twelve hundred feet above the water is this "Great Stone Face," about which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote so famously. It is a remarkable semblance of the human countenance, and can be properly seen from only one position. Move but a short distance either north or south from this spot, and the profile becomes distorted and is soon obliterated. It is composed of three distinct ledges of granite projecting from the face of the mountain, one forming the forehead, another the nose and upper lip, and a third the chin. These three ledges are in different vertical lines, the actual length of the profile being forty feet, and they make an overhanging brow, a powerful and clearly-defined nose, and a sharp and massive projecting chin, the very mark of complete decision of character, so that the realism of the profile is almost startling. The Old Man's severe and somewhat melancholy gaze is directed towards the southeast over the lake, as if looking earnestly down the Notch.

The white man's discovery of this profile was made in the early nineteenth century by two road-makers, mending the highway through the Notch. Stooping to wash their hands in the lake, just at the right spot, they casually looked up and saw it, being struck instantly by the wonderful facial resemblance. "That is Jefferson," said one of them, Thomas Jefferson then being President of the United States, and the stern countenance certainly looks like some of his portraits. There he is, gazing far away, with sturdy, unchanging expression, as he has done for thousands of years. Thomas Starr King, who has so well described these mountains, regards the "Great Stone Face" as "a piece of sculpture older than the Sphinx—an imitation of the human countenance which is the crown of all beauty, that was pushed out from the coarse strata of New England, thousands of years before Adam." Yet a slight change from the proper position for view greatly alters the profile. Move a few paces northward, and the nose and face are flattened, only the projecting forehead finally being seen. Go a short distance to the southward, and the Old Man's decisive countenance quickly deteriorates into that of a toothless old woman wearing a cap, and soon the lower portion of the face is so distorted that the human profile is obliterated. The Cannon Mountain bearing the famous profile is a majestic ridge named from a spacious granite ledge on its steep slope, presenting, when observed from a certain position below, the appearance of a cannon ready for firing. Its summit rises seven hundred feet above the profile.

From the Profile Lake, the Pemigewasset River flows southward, deep down in the narrow Franconia Notch, the stream descending over five hundred feet in five miles. Here is the "Flume," and beyond it the gorge widens, giving a view which Thomas Starr King has described as "a perpetual refreshment," for it extends far away southward over the broadening intervale, one of the fairest scenes in nature, stretching many miles to and beyond Plymouth. The "Flume" is made by a brilliant little tributary brook dashing along the bottom of a fissure for several hundred feet, bordered by high walls rising sixty to seventy feet above the torrent and only a few feet apart. The water rushes towards the Pemigewasset between these smooth granite walls, and the awe-struck visitor walks through in startled admiration. The "Pool" is beyond, a deep, dark basin, into which the Pemigewasset falls, surrounded by a high rocky enclosure, making an abyss over a hundred feet across and one hundred and fifty feet deep. There is also another pellucid green basin below, into which the river tumbles by a pretty white cascade, this being a huge pothole originally ground out by the action of boulders whirled around in it by the current. A galaxy of peaks environ this pleasant glen in the Franconia and Pemigewasset ranges, the highest of them, Mount Lincoln, rising fifty-one hundred feet, and having Mount Liberty, a lower peak, to the southward.

TO PLYMOUTH AND BEYOND.

Emerging from the Franconia Notch, the broadened valley reaches the attractive village of North Woodstock, another cluster of hotels and summer boarding-houses in an attractive location. The Pemigewasset receives its eastern branch, passes other villages, is swollen by the brisk torrent of the Mad River, and then, amid lower mountains and broader vales, but still with the most delicious views, comes to the typical White Mountain outpost town of Plymouth, at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Baker Rivers, the latter coming in from the northwest. Captain Baker with a company of Massachusetts rangers, early in the eighteenth century, attacked an Indian village here, and his name was given the tributary stream. The Puritan colonists, however, did not actually settle Plymouth until 1764. The town is full of summer cottages and boarding-houses, is noted for its manufacture of fine buckskin gloves, and has as its chief relic the little old building, then the court-house, in which Daniel Webster made his first speech to a jury. It was here that Nathaniel Hawthorne suddenly died in May, 1864. He was travelling with his intimate friend, ex-President of the United States Franklin Pierce, and stopping overnight at a hotel, was found dead in his room next morning, having passed quietly away while sleeping. Far away beyond Plymouth the bright Pemigewasset flows, receiving the outlets of the Waukawan Lake, and of the beautiful and island-dotted Squam Lake, its enclosing hills being most superb sites for summer villas. This is the "mountain-girdled Squam" of which Whittier sings, and a giant pine tree is pointed out on its banks where the poet used to sit and watch the lake by hours, and in honor of which he wrote the Wood Giant, one of his most admirable poems. The Pemigewasset joins the outlet stream of Lake Winnepesaukee at Franklin, and they together form the noble Merrimack, which, in its useful flow to the sea, turns so many New England mill-wheels. The Pemigewasset and its branches drain the southern slopes of the Franconia ranges in a vast primeval forest, whose inner solitudes are rarely explored. Upon its eastern verge, far up on the southwestern slope of Mount Willey, is Ethan's Pond, said to be the most elevated source of the Merrimack, twenty-five hundred feet above the sea. Its most remote source is the Profile Lake, at the head of the Pemigewasset, over which the "Great Stone Face" mounts guard. Thus writes Thoreau of the Merrimack:

"At first it comes on, murmuring to itself, by the base of stately and retired mountains, through moist, primitive woods, whose juices it receives, where the bear still drinks it and the cabins of settlers are far between, and there are few to cross its stream; enjoying in solitude its cascades still unknown to fame; by long ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam, slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of Moosilauke, the Haystacks and Kearsarge reflected in its waters; where the maple and the raspberry, those lovers of the hills, flourish amid temperate dews; flowing long and full of meaning, but untranslatable as its name, Pemigewasset, by many a pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses haunt, tended by Oreades, Dryads and Nereids, and receiving the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene:

"'Such water do the gods distil,

And pour down every hill,

For their New England men.

A draught of this will nectar bring,

And I'll not taste the spring

Of Helicon again.'