away in an almost sheer precipice for a thousand feet. At the bottom of that precipice was a perfectly level plateau, covered with forest, and apparently two miles long by half a mile wide, with a tiny lake, Lonesome Lake, at one end. Beyond it the mountain again fell away precipitously into an unseen gorge. From out of that gorge, on the farther side, rose the massive wall of Lafayette, Lincoln, Haystack and Liberty, four peaks which are almost like one long mountain with Lafayette, at the northern end, the highest point, a thousand feet higher than the boys. The whole side of this long rampart is so steep that great landslides have scarred it, and the last thousand feet of it is bare rock. It looked to the boys tremendously big, and the one blue mountain beyond it, to the east, which was high enough to peep over seemed very high indeed—Mount Carrigain.
Peanut drew in his breath with a whistle. Lou sighed. "That's the biggest thing I ever saw," he said. Then he added, "And the most beautiful!"
To the southeast, below Mount Liberty at the end of the big rock rampart, the boys could see off to the far horizon, over a billow of blue mountains like the wave crest of a gigantic sea—the Sandwich range, with the sharp cone of Chocorua as its most prominent peak. Facing due south, they could see, close to them, the south peak of Kinsman, perhaps
