Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/149

 top of it, looking southward down the valley, was, indeed, the Old Man of the Mountain—a huge knob of rock thrust forth from the pinnacle of the precipice, and shaped precisely like a human profile, with sunken eye under a brow like Daniel Webster's, sharp nose, firm mouth, and, as Mr. Rogers said, "quite literally a granite chin."

The boys looked at it in silence for a moment, and then Peanut said, "But it looks so much bigger in all the pictures in the geographies. Why, it really looks as small up there as—as the moon."

"That's because the photographs of it are taken with a telescope lens, I guess," said Frank. "My camera would make it look about six miles off."

"How big is it?" asked Lou.

"They say about eighty feet from forehead to chin," the Scout Master replied. "And it's about fifteen hundred feet up the cliff."

"I'd like to see it in full face," Lou added. "Could we walk down the road and see it that way?"

"We've not time, I'm afraid," Mr. Rogers replied. "We'd have to walk a mile or more. It isn't so impressive full face. In fact, this is the only spot where the human likeness is perfect. At many points along the road the full face view shows only a mass of rocks."

Lou was still looking at the great stone face gazing solemnly down over the valley.