# Down East Latch Strings/Chapter 22

North Conway has been the principal rendezvous for tourists to the White Mountains ever since the tribe began its peregrinations.
Its extra-broad bottom-lands attracted settlers so early that when the Revolution began there were nearly 300 people in the town (of which this part is the northern edge), who not only offered recruits to the Continental army, but maintained a company of rangers scouting in their own woods. By this time a road had been built northward to Gorham and Lancaster, and upon the close of the war, when the turnpike through the Notch was completed, Conway became an important and busy station.
Those were its best days, but by the time the long trains of freight wagons ceased to roll through its streets, superseded by railways, the town had been adopted by summer boarders and excursionists from the cities, and a new kind of prosperity began. There are four villages within the town, of which North Conway enjoys a preeminence due to its position at the intersection of the Boston and Maine with the Portland and Ogdensburg railroads, or, perhaps yet more, to its relation to the mountains and to the valley-lands of the beautiful Saco.
The village occupies a terrace on the eastern side of the Saco meadows, where the soil is sandy and easily drained. "The green hills guard it on the east, forming a double line of low shaggy summits near the street; and on the west, across the Saco valley, is the long and massive Moat mountain, noble and imposing in its colors and outlines, and the most conspicuous object seen from the village. A little east of north, and about four miles distant, is the crest of the graceful pyramid of Mt. Kearsarge, whose long slopes approach within two miles of the street. To the north-northwest, about sixteen miles distant, is the peak of Mt. Washington, about which several of the other main mountains are clustered. In an opposite direction the valley of the Saco opens to the south, over long stretches of fertile lowlands, ​banded by the groves that enclose the river. The village is 521 feet above the sea, or 32 feet lower than Centre Harbor. North Conway is the chief summer-resort among the White Mountains, and is occupied by city people from early May until late October. The height of the season is in August, when over 3,000 tourists are sojourning here. During the heated term it is warmer than Bethlehem, but cooler than the villages of the lake-country. Evening gayeties are much patronized, and there are hops, concerts, and readings in the halls of the chief hotels. The adjacent roads are visited, every pleasant day, by riding parties; and rambling pedestrians explore the neighboring forests and
hills, or fish for trout along the falling brooks. It is the beauty and variety of its environs that gives North Conway the foremost rank among the mountain villages, added to the fact that it is at the proper focal distance from Mt. Washington."
The village is hardly more than a community of hotels and boarding-houses, great and small, antique and modern, elaborate and simple. On the edge of the terrace-bluff, near the station of the Boston and Maine (the station of the other road is on the other side of the village, while the junction of the two roads is half a mile northward) stands ​the Kearsarge, an immense hostelry, ranking among the "great" hotels. Another large and older house, from which the White Mountains are visible, as they are not from the Kearsarge, is the Intervale, half a mile northward. Between these two, hotels line the street on either hand, while still others have more remote locations. Style, a rate of expense, and classification of companions, may be found, therefore, to suit every requirement. There is no doubt, however, that among all these houses the very best is the—
"What I read was written by Mr. Sweetzer; but the idea in that particular phrase is Starr King's. Hand me, if you please, his White Hills. Thank you. Now,—let me see,—oh, here it is, on page 175: 'North Conway,' he instructs us, 'lies at the proper focal distance from the hills that enclose it, and from the Mt. Washington range, to command various and rich landscape effects, and this no doubt is the great charm of the place.' In another place, he assures us that a most accurate report of the meadow-forms and mountain-guards of the village would give no suggestion of its loveliness, and goes on: 'One always finds, we think, on a return to North Conway, that his recollections of its loveliness were inadequate to the reality. Such profuse and calm beauty sometimes reigns over the whole village, that it seems to be a little quotation from Arcadia, or a suburb of Paradise. Who can tell how it is that the trees here seem of more aristocratic elegance,— ​that the shadows are more delicately penciled,—that the curves of the brooks are more seductive than elsewhere? Why do the nights seem more tender and less solemn? What has touched the ledgy rocks with a grace that softens the impression of sublimity and age? What has made the twilight parks of pine dim with a pensive, rather than a melancholy, dusk?…The atmosphere and the outlines of the hills seem to lull rather than stimulate. There are no crags, no pinnacles, no ramparts of rock, no mountain frown or savageness brought into contrast, at any point, with the general serene beauty. Kearsarge is a rough and scraggy mountain, when you attempt to climb it, but its lines ripple off softly to the plain. Mt. Washington does not seem so much to stand up, as to lie out at ease across
"Why, that," said my wife, "is pure rhapsody."
"It may be, but it is the honest impression which familiarity with this spot must make, more or less distinctly, on every sensitive soul. I could support it by an immense quantity of testimony from all sorts and conditions of men, and women too, had I the time to bring it together."
​Our first excursion was the regulation drive "around the Ledges" in one of the trim black buckboards that go kiting over Conway's hills from May to October. There are single buggies and landaus, phætons and waggonettes, carryals and gigs, Concord coaches and mountain wagons; but the buckboard has the mast fresh air, exercise, and gayety to the mile in it,—and we choose it every time.
The Ledges are two conspicuous knolls of forest-hidden granite
forming a low saddle-shaped hill at the foot of Moat mountain, on the ether side of the Saco, and some three miles distant. Into their hitherward wall the strong current, freshets, and ice-packs of that primeval Saco that once filled all this intervale with the milky meltings of Mt. Washington’s glaciers, cut so deeply, that now, in place of the bending ​slope that originally curved down to the plain, is left only a precipitous face. This front has a total height of 960 feet on the southern or White Horse ledge, and of about 740 on the northern, or Cathedral ledge.
The name of the former is given in recognition of the appearance (in a whitish incrustation) of the forepart of a horse prancing up the face of the ledge, with all the energy be would need to summon were it reality. Mr. Sweetzer sardonically remarks that "newcomers at North Conway are seldom allowed to rest until they have seen, acknowledged, and complimented the equine form of this amorphous spot;" but, as for me, I am forced to confess that I saw this "equine form" very plain at the first glance, without any previous guidance whatever; and I acknowledge this with reluctance, because I detest these chance resemblances which catch the eye and disturb the harmonious whole of a scene, save where, as in the case of the Old Man of the Mountain, a really remarkable contour becomes the predominating interest. I am informed that "all marriageble ladies, maiden or widow, run out to look at it, in consequence of the belief current in New England that if, after seeing a white horse, you count a hundred, the first gentleman you meet will be your future husband!" And, apparently, the poor victim has no way to rid himself of this dreadful spell!
The bold, naked face of the northern crag, in particular, with its rounded, elephantine forehead, streaked and damp, often wears a purplish lustre, as though a draping of rich, gray satin, with rosy reflections in the high lights, were flung over the face of the bluff, so that it is a very striking and beautiful object.
The contiguous ledge takes its name from an arched cavity in its front which you may or may not feel repaid in visiting. Still further north this same protrusion of granite forms Humphrey's ledge, a spur of Mt. Attitash, whence a glorious view is given up and down the Saco. If a person can climb neither Kearsarge nor Willard, he may feel that he has not missed the most beautiful quality of their views after he has looked off Humphrey's ledge.
Just in front of these cliffs lies their mirror,—Echo lake. "The tremendous shadow the cliff flings down," says Drake, "seems lying deep in the bosom of the lake as if perpetually imprinted there. Slender birches, brilliant foliage, were delicately etched upon the surface, like arabesques on polished steel. The water is perfectly transparent and without a ripple. Indeed, the breezes playing around the summit or humming in the tree-tops, seem forbidden to enter this haunt of the Dryads. The lake laps the yellow strand with a light, fluttering movement. The place seems dedicated to Silence itself.
"To destroy this illusion a man came out of a booth and touched off a small cannon. The effect was like knocking at half-a-dozen doors at once. And the silence which followed seemed all the deeper. Then the aged rock was pelted with questions, and made to jeer, laugh, ​menace and curse by turns, or all at once. How grandly it bore all these petty insolences! How presumptious in us thus to cover its hoary front with obloquy! We could never get the last word. We did not even come off in triumph. How ironically the mountain repeated, 'Who are you?' and 'What am I? With what energy it at last vociferated 'Go to the devil!' To the Devil's Den we accordingly go." One of North Conway's cascades.
This abode of supposed evil is a cavern among fallen fragments, underneath the Cathedral, reminding one of Herbert's remark, "No sooner is a temple built to God but the devil builds a chapel hard by." Not far beyond, a gay torrent comes tumbling down the side of Moat, and hurls itself over the ledge into a series of deeply-rounded basins, called Diana's Baths,—a proof that this is a good sporting region, else why should Diana and her hounds have come here? A plain path strikes up to the top of the ledges, whence you survey all the loveliness of the valley and its eastern wall.
​The next morning, Baily and I hired saddle-horses and took a long ride, first to Humphrey's ledge, and then around toward Jackson. When we came back, we found that Prue, instead of gossiping on the porch all day, or playing lawn-tennis on "Sunset bluff," had gone off for a walk by herself toward the Green hills, or Rattle-snake range, directly behind the village. She found an obscure road that crossed the Portland and Ogdensburg tracks near their station, and led into a pine grove filling the hollow beyond, which brought her out, half-a-mile farther on, at the rear of the Artist's Falls Hotel and near the Mineral Spring. Here she might have followed a divergent path up the rocky glen of Artist's brook for three-quarters of a mile to the falls, which have been made famous by so many painters, and which are well worth a visit when the brook is full of water; but instead, she pursued the old wagon-road toward the hills, until she had reached a grassy shoulder where there were some smooth rocks to sit upon. Here the Saco valley was spread out nicely beneath her gaze. Moat mountain, of course, filled all the front of the picture, trees cutting off what lay at its right, but at the left, beyond the dark knoll of The Haystack, rose "the superb crest" of Chocorua,—double-peaked and lofty; and at his left, and beyond him, stretched the blue and crowded summits of Ossipee and the Sandwich mountains.
The air was misty, and she did not think it worth while to take the easy path that leads from the rear of the Artists' Falls House to the top of Middle mountain; but had she done so, and had the air been clear, one of the best views in the neighborhood of Conway would have been her reward. The prospect is, indeed, but little short of that from Mt. Kearsarge itself, for it reaches Sebago lake, near Portland, the Green mountain in Effingham, the Ossipee range, and many heights beyond Chocorua. The noble outlines of Moat rise to the sky on the west, to the right of which the Presidential range sweeps around the north to where Kearsarge obstructs the view.
Among the arrivals at the hotel that evening we were delighted to greet an artist whom we knew very well, and whom before long the world generally will want to know better. Only a few days previous he had made a rapid reconnoisance of the Swift River valley, beyond Albany. This secluded stream lies over behind Moat mountain, and flows eastward from Trypyramid, down through the Albany intervales to the Saco at Conway.
"I have had many and various pleasant rides over the country this summer," he replied to our queries, "but none that equalled that ride of forty miles in a buck-board—twenty out and twenty back."
"Were you gone only one day?"
"Only one day, but the excursion deserves a week at the least. I started about seven in the morning, with strong indications of rain in the air. The first four or five miles of the road led through the ​meadow-lands you see out there towards Moat mountain, after which it passed into shady woods, very cool and still,—no noise save now and then the call of a hermit thrush, and a running fire of comments from squirrels that followed us on the walls and fences. At last we came suddenly upon the Swift river, rushing over countless bowlders and making a tremendous racket. No more lonesomeness after that!"
"Is its whole course like that?"
"Pretty much; and how refreshing is the sound of rushing water, on a hot day, as this had turned out to be! It is a drink, by proxy, so to speak."
"How was the road?”
"More pleasing to you, as an artist," I suggest, "than to you or anyone else, as an owner."
"Decidedly. As a general rule a house that is picturesque is more. or less ruinous. Presently, to go on with my narrative, a louder roar of water warned us of our approach to the falls of Swift river. They didn't amount to much, but in the seasons of freshets must be magnificent. There was a deep, narrow cleft in the rock through which the water was pouring, and I thought it worth a ten-minute sketch."
This he showed us, drawn on a page of his sketch-book in water colors; explaining that the high rocks on top of, and beside the chute, were worn and polished, proving what a volume of water must come ​down through their interspaces at certain times. The foreground showed the road set between borders of golden-rod and blackberries, the mingled profusion of which produced a most charming effect in black and gold.
"Above the falls we plunged into thick woods, and I was beginning to be discouraged, when suddenly,—and the more effectively by the contrast,—the Albany intervale opened upon my astonished view. It was an oval of meadow-land, something over two miles long and about one in width, as level as a floor and dotted along the road with farmhouses. It was fine!"
"What mountains were in sight?" asked Prue, eager most of all on this point,—
Note.—Luckily I saw this in proof, though he didn't mean I should. The idea! As though I had no enjoyment in, not to speak of any appreciation of, the scenery, and the songs of birds, and that sort of thing, until he "taught" me! I hate to "speak right out in meetin'" this way, but I won't be so misunderstood,—yes, misrepresented by that horrid man, to all the dear friends we made up in those perfectly delightful mountains.—P. ​"Mountains? Oh, lots of 'em. You remember when you were on Lake Winnipesaukee all those big peaks northward,—Chocorua, Passaconaway, Paugus, White-face and the others?"
"What a question! of course we do."
​That night there was a terrific storm, but it lulled soon after midnight, and the morning broke clear and still. Our first look was towards Kearsarge, which we meant to climb; and as I saw it I quoted those lines in Lucile:—
"Snow,—really?" Prue cried, going to the window.
"Only a thin dusting. It will melt away in an hour or two."
The ascent of Kearsarge (or Pequawket, as I wish the people would consent to call it), is not a difficult matter. You are driven from the hotel to a farm house at its base, some three miles distant, where you can hire saddle-horses for the ascent, or can walk up a path which is in excellent condition, though pretty steep in some places. Hundreds of persons tramp over it every season. The distance to the top is nearly three miles, and an hour and a half is usually allotted to the task.
Every feature of this "queenly" peak, whose perfect cone is one of the most satisfying outlines New Hampshire's mountains can show, was distinctly visible in the well-washed air of that morning, as we rode toward the mountain. Each separate tree seemed visible, and we could see the windows in the little house on the summit, and the the shadow-line under the eaves, though it was more than 2,500 feet above us. The road wound between substantial stone walls and past neat houses—how neat!—through Kearsarge Village scattered along a brook whose furrowed rocks, bearing witness to terrific spring-freshets, were now almost bare. Beyond the picturesque little hotels a farm-house stood against the lowest slope of the mountain, where our driver put us down and agreed to meet us again in four hours. Behind the house was an orchard, and behind the orchard a narrow lane entered by a wicket gate. The lane led us to a pasture lot, across which the trail, much gullied-out by rains, conducted us to another gate at the margin of the woods; and having entered them we were fairly started on our climb.
This wood consisted wholly of small second-growth, damp with last night's rain and redolent with the pleasant odor of sweet fern. Ferns of all kind, indeed, were exceedingly abundant, and had been turned to a rich, warm brown in all open spaces, where the frost could ​get at them. Two or three hundred feet up we surmounted a fine shoulder, whence a noble view down the valley was given; but we only glanced at it, and then set ourselves to a very stiff pull, wasting no breath in talk, but cheered by the chippering of some tardy warblers just starting southward, and taking notes from this high outlook as to their route ahead.
"I suppose," says Prue, with a deep breath between each word, they—mean—to take—the—air-line."
Our next outlook was gained just below the Spring, which is half way to the top, they say; and here the Ossipee range shone plainly above a long line of distant highlands in the south, while westward the rude bulk of Carrigain towered chieftain of the Pemigewasset wilds. We took but a swallow at the spring, into whose clear depths a fine bottle-green frog went diving, for it is a mistake to drink much on such a tramp; and then strode on, the blood playing like a trip-hammer in the back of the head, until, 500 feet higher, we could again begin to look out of the woods, and catch enticing glimpses of sharp Chocorua over the bristling crest of Moat's long bulwark. On again! Soon the forest is left behind and the whitish conglomerate of the top of the mountain is underfoot. In its crevices only stunted spruce and red cedar, flattened down (perhaps by the weight of snow) out of the way of the wind, can exist, save where, here and there, a better-rooted and sturdier tree manages to keep its foothold; but there is a plentitude of huckleberry bushes and hardy plants. Among this timber-line shrubbery a most inquisitive kinglet came to make our acquaintance, and shriek his zee zee zee at us in the sharpest, thinnest, sauciest tone I ever heard an animal utter. I haven't mentioned half the birds (chiefly sparrows, woodpeckers, and titmouses, of various kinds) that we saw and heard, nor the ubiquitous and querulous squirrels always in sight. ​The rock was bare nearly everywhere over the top of the mountain, and most curiously gnarled and compounded. It lay in ledges which the path surmounted so steeply that it was like going up a vast ruined stairway. Within the allotted time we arrived at the small house on the summit, which replaces the more pretentious hostelry destroyed some years ago, where we were welcomed by a solemn young man, who was both proprietor and cook in this lone restaurant, 3,000 feet above Beacon hilltop.
Buying a bottle of ginger ale and some sandwiches and cookies, made by his wife at the foot of the mountain, we rested while we consumed them. Then we went out prepared to enjoy the view. It was enjoyable,—more pleasing, I think, than even that from Mount Washington. Over that kingly height, which ordinarily, of course, is in plain view, hung massive bundles of struggling vapor, cutting off all the northern peaks down to a certain limit marked by a line as straight and level as the horizon of the sea. The bases of the northern peaks, together with all the valleys and foothills from Mount Pleasant around to Wildcat, were in deep shadow, and dull indigo in color, becoming purple on the lower slopes, where the red of the colored leaves shone through. The clouds overhead in that quarter, had gathered thick and gray-white, streaked by horizontal folds of a dark blue, or, higher up, of a pure sepia tone. Now and then there would be a break, and some portentous head would frown through, but in general the Presidential group was hidden from us.
At Washington's left, where the Pemigewasset peaks were tumbling aloft, the sky was full of great cumuli, shining white as marble palaces in the azure, dappling the nearer hills with queerly shaped shadows, and casting the splendid outlines of innumerable tall mountains toward the west into solid masses of dark purplish blue. Lafayette was just visible,—white plumes of cloud waving about his chapeau.
Farther south, Whiteface, Passaconaway, Chocorua, and the rest of the Sandwich chieftains stood out sharp and clear against a fleecy sky; and to their left, between masculine Chocorua and feminine Ossipee, a vista opened across the basin of Lake Winnipesaukee.
Southward, the vision swept a whole quadrant of broken hills, none lofty enough to cut the horizon more than do the tossing waves at sea, but showing, nearer at hand, the ample sweep of the Saco, with its sinnous current, prairie-like savannas, its richly colored terraces and sloping boundary-hills. The sides of the latter, and of our own mountain and all the foothills near by, were carpeted with a Persian pattern of foliage,—the dark coniferous trees in masses separated by lines and clumps of brilliant hard-wood trees, which were richly toned even in shadow; but where the sunlight struck through they glowed like the patches of wild crimson poppies you see in May on the verdant plains of southern California. All down the centre of this gay picture ran the smooth meadows, dotted with gipsy encampments of ​elms and maples, exceedingly green in the sunlight, while here and there glistening spaces or ribbons showed where a pond slept or a river wandered. The nearer hillsides were fairly ablaze with color,—not in solid masses of flame; that would have been too much; but in innumerable points of carmine, orange and yellow, evenly scattered among white-and-green birches and the richly dark spruce and pine. One can trace the waters of the Saco almost continuously from its source to its mouth, but no part of it is so lovely as those exquisite green intervales at Conway, encircled by the autumnal hillsides.
There are ponds by the score, each reflecting the clouds or flashing the sunlight. Sebago seems quite near, and a strong glass discerns the smoke of Portland and the glimmer of light upon the sails in Casco bay. The ocean itself is readily visible in a proper light; and, farthest of all, Monadnock, 100 miles distant, straight south, sketches
a faint blue crescent upon the horizon. Eastward, Maine stretches away comparatively level, yet not monotonously so, the foreground spangled with irregular lakelets and embroidered with streams and shadowy glens, and the horizon notched with pale blue summits. The loftier groups toward the Rangeley lakes are hidden from sight. In Ticknor's Guide an elaborate description of all that is to be seen from this peak is written out, supplemented by a panoramic sketch.
Toward sunset that evening, we left the hotel and sauntered down the road to the covered bridge. "The sky was serene and beautiful. The sun shone with a soft and elegant lustre, such as seems peculiar to that delightful weather which, from the 20th of September to the 20th of October, so often elicits from the mouths of mankind the ​epithet of charming. Mildness tempered the heat and serenity hushed the world into universal quiet."
The hither end of this bridge has always been a favorite lounging place with Conway lovers. The village itself looks well from here, grouped upon the terrace, ensconced, in trees and sheltered under the rude and hirsute strength of Middle mountain. But the view up the river toward the White Hills is the main attraction to this spot.
The Saco winds toward you in a double curve. The bank upon your right is a bluff, the top of which is an emerald-turfed meadow. The further bank is low, and bordered by a thick line of maples and alders, overhanging the water and reflected in its placid surface. On the right, the meadow-level is narrow,—the terrace crowned with woods that in the micelle quite reach the bend of the river in shapely copses. Light-leaved birches form the front of this bushy line, but behind them stands a dark and stately rank of spruces. Thus on each side beautiful banks of trees shut in the view toward the centre, whence comes most gracefully the dimpled river; and across this opening, far above its foothill spurs, is erected the massive pointed arch of Washington, isolated from its neighbors, grand and lonely.
This is the picture sketched in the accompanying illustration; but at best, that can only show the fine composition and effects of light and shade. You cannot see how blue were the sky and the river; how rich the green of the meadow-grass and fresher foliage; how splendid the sunlight and shadow on the noble background of crags and summits, nor how the fiery torches of the maple boughs, waving here and there among the verdant leaves of shrubbery, or conical masses of hemlock and pine, served as points of brilliance accentuating and glorifying the sketch. This wonderful and delicate display of color, nothing less than the brush and palette of a master hand could show. The best of wood-cuts can only suggest the beauty it holds.
The air was flooded with sunshine when we looked out next morning, and tingled upon our checks like a tonic as we walked rapidly down to the station. In this exhilarating way, therefore, we bade good-by to the mountains.
With eyes satisfied for the present, and carrying away a rich store of food for memory, we rushed southward, giving farewell glances to many and many a familiar peak and notch,—"the wavy lines of far-receding hills."
Then came the knightly vigor and mailed strength of Chocorua, towering right beside us for final admiration; the mirror-plates of Ossipee and Silver lakes; and the pretty villages scattered in the valleys that seem so green and spacious to us after the narrow and rocky defiles; the clustered peaks of Ossipee, the lone hill in Effingham, the symmetrical cone of Copple Crown,—and so good-by to the White Hills!