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Thy cradle decks;-to chant thy birth, thou hast
No meaner Poet than the whistling Blast,

And Desolation is thy Patron-Saint!

She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare
Those mighty forests, once the bison's screen,
Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair
Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green;
Thousands of years before the silent air

Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!

Mr. Champney, who visited these falls about a fortnight after their discovery, is inclined to ascribe to them a nobler beauty than any others thus far known among the mountains. He describes the picturesque rock-forms as wonderful, and their richness in color and marking, in mosses and lichens, as more admirable than any others he has had the privilege of studying in the mountain region. And this cascade is only a sample, probably, of the uncelebrated beauties in the wilderness around the White Hills. With the exception of the hunter who gave the rumor of them at the Crawford House, they had not, probably, been looked upon by human eyes until Mr. Ripley and his party detected them. When Mr. Champney came down from his first study of their picturesqueness, to which we are indebted for the sketch here given, the comet was blazing above the jagged rocks of Mount Webster. And when that comet, on its preceding visit, hung over a world upon which no representatives of our race had appeared, to admire the majestic curve of its trail and to compute its orbit, the music of the waterfall was still flowing, it may be,

Through the green tents, by eldest Nature drest,

and its cool spray was sprinkled, as now, upon

the unplanted forest floor, whereon

The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone;

Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.

Indeed, only a short distance from the Crawford House, not more than a fifteen minutes' walk through the woods, a succession of little cascades were discovered, in the same month, which Nature had cun

ningly kept from human knowledge. These being so easily accessible, and yet so wild and charming, must add very much to the attractions of the hotel at the Notch. Perhaps it is these cascades that feed the "Basin," which has attained celebrity from Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's bath in it, after his return from the top of Mount Washington. Indeed, it is possible, that, without knowing it, Mr. Beecher was the discoverer of these falls. If so, they found their poet when they first gave hospitality in their crystal bowl to a human figure, as the following passage, which is as good as a bath to the mind, will abundantly testify :

"We went toward the Notch, and, turning to the right at the first little stream that let itself down from the mountains, we sought the pools in which we knew such streams kept their sweetest thoughts, expressing them by trout. The only difficulty was in the selection. This pool was deep, rock-rimmed, transparent, gravel-bottomed. The next was level-edged and rock-bottomed, but received its water with such a gush that it whirled around the basin in a liquid dance of bubbles. The next one received a divided stream, one part coming over a shelving rock and sheeting down in white, while the other portion fell into a hollow and murmuring crevice, and came gurgling forth from the half-dark channel. Half way down, the rock was smooth and pleasant to the feet. In the deepest part was fine gravel and powdered mountain, commonly called sand. The waters left this pool even more beautifully than they entered it; for the rock had been rounded and grooved, so that it gave a channel like the finest moulded lip of a water-vase; and the moss, beginning below, had crept up into the very throat of the passage, and lined it completely, giving to the clear water a green hue as it rushed through, whirling itself into a plexus of cords, or a kind of pulsating braid of water. This was my pool. It waited for me. How deliciously it opened its flood to my coming. It rushed up to every pore, and sheeted my skin with an aqueous covering, prepared in the mountain water-looms. Ah, the coldness;-every drop was molten hail. It was the very brother of ice. At a mere hint of winter, it would change to ice again! If

the crystal nook was such a surprise of delight to me, what must I have been to it, that had, perhaps, never been invaded, unless by the lip of a moose, or by the lithe and spotted form of sylvan trout! The drops and bubbles ran up to me and broke about my neck and ran laughing away, frolicking over the mossy margin, and I could hear them laughing all the way down below. Such a monster had never, perhaps, taken covert in the pure, pellucid bowl before!

"But this was the centre-part. Not less memorable was the fringe. The trees hung in the air on either side, and stretched their green leaves for a roof far above. The birch and alder, with here and there a silver fir, in bush form, edged the rocks on either side. As you looked up the stream, there opened an ascending avenue of cascades, dripping rocks bearded with moss, crevices filled with grass, or dwarfed shrubs, until the whole was swallowed up in the leaves and trees far above. But if you turned down the stream, then through a lane of richest green, stood the open sky, and lifted up against it, thousands of feet, Mount Willard, rocky and rent, or with but here and there a remnant of evergreens, sharp and ragged. The sun was behind it, and poured against its farther side his whole tide of light, which lapped over as a stream dashes over its bounds and spills its waters beyond. So it stood up over against this ocean of atmospheric gold, banked huge and rude against a most resplendent heaven! As I stood donning my last articles of raiment, and wringing my over-wet hair, I saw a trout move very deliberately out from under a rock by which I had lain, and walk quietly across to the other side. As he entered the crevice, a smaller one left it and came as demurely across to his rock. It was evident that the old people had sent them out to see if the coast was clear, and whether any damage had been done. Probably it was thought that there had been a slide in the mountain, and that a huge icicle or lump of snow had plunged into their pool and melted away there. If there are piscatory philosophers below water half as wise as those above, this would be a very fair theory of the disturbance to which their mountain homestead had been subjected. As I had eaten of their salt, of

course I respected the laws of hospitality, and no deceptive fly of mine shall ever tempt trout in a brook which begets pools so lovely, and in pools that yield themselves with such delicious embrace to the pleasures of a mountain bath."

About five miles from the Crawford House, driving on a downward grade, on a road more pleasantly bordered with foliage, perhaps, than any other among the hills, we come to another resting-place for travellers, called "The White Mountain House." The White Mountain range itself, though it is ascended from the public-house at the Notch, is not visible from that point. It is only when we drive out into the open plain, from which the huge mound rises, called "The Giant's Grave," not far from the White Mountain House, that the chain itself comes into view. Here every summit but one is in sight, and a very favorable opportunity is afforded for observing the effects of the land-slides, which seem to have plundered the lower mountains of the range of a large proportion of their substance, and have left traces of ravage in fantastic lines, deeply engraved upon their thin sides.

The distance, in a straight line from the plain at the foot of The' Giant's Grave to the top of Mount Washington, is nearly seven miles and a half. The height of the summit over this level area is less than five thousand feet, although it rises more than six thousand two hundred feet above the sea. A very noble view of Mount Washington itself is gained by approaching near its base on this area, and seeing it separated from the rest of the ridge.

The mighty pyramids of stone,

That, wedge-like, cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen and better known,

Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear

Their solid bastions to the skies,

Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

From the Notch, the ascent of Mount Washington is made by mounting gradually the steps of Clinton, Pleasant, Franklin and Munroe,—each

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