Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/150

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��MOOSILAUKE.

��school-house by Moosilauke falls on the Asquamchumauke.

It is a modest little school-house by the roadside, but it has a history such as few others can boast. Within thirty years, nearly a score of boys have been to school there, who have made preachers of the gospel. Heber C. Kimball, the celebrated Mormon, and Moses H. Bixby, an eloquent divine, are the most noted.

We go up\through Moosilauke district, climbing the hill all the time, past a swaley meadow-field on the right, where a hundred bob-oMinks titter, and laugh, and sing all through the month of June, pass another school-house and over Mer- rill brook, and we arrive at Nathaniel Merrill's, the last house high up on the northern marche or boundary of Warren.

We will get saddle horses here and go up the mountain slowly that we may en- joy the trip all the better. As we enter the woods we see the mountain summit rising 4,000 feet above us; the river is roaring in the ravine 500 feet deep, on our right ; the red eyed vireo and winter wren aae perpetually singing in the thick forest, and when we cross on rustic bridges two mossy streams, where a pair of solitary sand-pipers are feeding, we begin the sharp ascent of the mountain.

The forest is deep and dark. Deer yard in these woods every winter; bears prowl in them all summer long, there are sable-traps beside the path, traps in which wild cats are caught ; and it was near here that Joseph Patch, his son, and Captain Flanders killed the last moose that were ever found in this region.

Climbing, zigzaging up the mountain, the forest changes, the ash, beech, and maple disappear, and the spruce, fir, and silver birch take their places. We have reached a different zone, and the birds change, — the soft, sweet love note of the purple finch is heard up among the cones, the ivory-billed snow bird is startled from its nest by the path, Canada jays scream out from the fir shade, and sometimes cross-bills, yellow rumped warblers, pine grosbeaks and lesser red polls, birds that breed in Labrador, are found. The Can- ada grouse, with their brood of chicks, run from the path. Then there are nut hatches, kinglets, ruby crowned wrens,

��oven birds, and olive backed thrushes far in these woods.

Soon we are out on the bald mountain ridge that connects the two peaks ; on either hand are wild and hideous gorges, three thousand feet down into the depths below. Beyond to the west is the bright valley of the Connecticut, garden land, with silver river ; to the east the dark ra- vine of the Asquamchumauke, filled with the old piimitive woods, where the trees for thousands of years, like the genera- tions of men, have grown, ripened, and died.

Half a mile further on and we are at the Prospect House on the bald summit of the mountain. The most sensible thing that we can do is to hitch our horses un- der the ledge, on the eastern side, out of the way of the wind, and get a good cup of tea, or something of the sort. The house is a rude structure, built of stone. Darius Swain and James Clement built it in 1860.

We are now on top of the mountain, well wrapped up in shawls and quilts. It is a glorious day, but a little colder than when the Indian chief, Waternomee, sat on this summit, yet not so cold as when a century ago one of Robert Rogers's rangers died here. Chase Whitcher, the first white settler who came up here, thought it a cold place. But Mrs. Dan- iel Patch, the first white woman who ever stood upon this summit, thought it quite pleasant. She brought her tea-pot with her, and made herself a good cup of tea over a fire kindled from the hack- metacks, bleached white, so many of which you see standing like skeletons down on the shoulders of the mountain, just as though a great grave-yard had been shaken open by an earthquake. Mrs. Susan C. Little, wife of Dr. Jesse Little, was the first woman who rode a horse on to the mountain, and that was in 1859.

William Little was the first landlord of the Prospect House, then Ezekiel A. Clement kept it for one season, and af- terwards James Clement, for years and years, was mine hosl on Moosehillock. He was really the old man of the mount- ain. Many a night he has stopped alone up here among the clouds and the eagles.

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