Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/298

288 not know exactly how long we had seen one of the highest peaks before us in the extreme northwest, with snow on its side just below the summit, when a boy, a little beyond Conway, called it Mount Washington. If it were that, the snow must have been in Tuckerman's Ravine, which, methinks, is rather too low. Perhaps it was that we afterwards saw on Mount Adams. The road, which is for the most part level, winds along the Saco through groves of maples, etc., on the intervals, with little of rugged New Hampshire under your feet, often a soft and sandy road. The scenery is remarkable for this contrast of level interval having soft and shady groves with mountain grandeur and ruggedness. Often from the midst of level maple groves which remind you only of classic lowlands, you look out through a vista of the most rugged scenery of New England. It is quite unlike New Hampshire generally, quite unexpected by me, and suggests a superior culture. After leaving North Conway, the higher White Mountains were less seen, if at all. They had not appeared in pinnacles as sometimes described, but broad and massive. Only one of the higher summits, called by the boy Mount Washington, was conspicuous. At Bartlett Corner we turned up the Ellis River and took our nooning on its bank, by the bridge just this side of Jackson Centre,