Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/164

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144

��TIic 1 1 lute and J<'ranconia Mountains.

��niuilly assemble, build their camp fires, recount old scenes, fight mimic battles, and close up their ranks thinned by time. The approach to Iheir camp is guarded by cannon, used to salute some' honored comrade, and overlooked by an cbser\'atory on which stands no sentinel.

We had made up our minds " to do" the White Mountains, Molly, Fritz and I, the latter being an indefinite person, and we calculated on going prepared. We had spent a fortnight reading Starr King's " White Hills," studying hand- books and Hitchcock's Geology of New Hampshire. Then it took us a week to

��Fritz, " but I had rather have been born

there."

Following up the valley by the river- road through the towns of Campton, Thornton, and Woodstock, one sees himself surrounded on either hand by towering mountains and the most ex- quisite rural scenery. Another road fol- lowing the Indian trail from Canada to the coast, over which the weary feet of many a captive passed in the old time, driven ruthlessly from their homes to the wilderness by their savage captors, passes through Rumney and Wentworth to Warren summit, the lowest land in the " divide " between the Connecticut

���WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE, FROM JEFFERSON.

��do the packing. One bright summer day we started ; night found us at Ply- mouth on the banks of the Pemigewas- set, at the very gate -way of the moun- tains. We slept at the Pcmigewasset House, where we were shown the room in which Hawthorne died twenty years ago, while on an excursion for health with his friend Franklin Pierce. That will be what Plymouth will be famous for one hundred years hence — the place where Hawthorne died. '• It is a pleasant place at which to die," said

��and Merrimack valleys, yet a thousand feet above the ocean. Moosilauke, the ancient Moosehillock, here stands sen- try, almost five thousand feet above the sea level. It is the western outpost of the mountain region and deserves a visit. A good carriage road leads from the station to Breezy Point House, at its base, where buck-boards are char- tered for the ascent. At first the road leads through rocky pastures, thence into primeval woods in which the way becomes more and more precipitous ;

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