Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/436

 398 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

streams alive with trout, the ponds and lakes well stocked with land-locked salmon, or the long stretches of forest where sport the partridge, deer, moose, caribou, and bear. Why should they render popular the locality which offers fair sport until the inroad of others mars it?

The gateway to this section is North Stratford, a station on the Grand Trunk Railway, on the banks of the Connecticut river. Here a six-horse Concord coach awaits the arrival of the north bound train, and soon after dashes gaily away up the valley for a journey of a dozen miles or more to the favored village of Colebrook. Lofty hills hem in the valley on either side and sentinel moun- tains guard its approaches. The wide intervale through which the' river flows is highly cultivated, and dotted by farm houses. There are two hotels at Colebrook, at either of which the traveler will be welcomed, the Parsons House, E. F. Bailey, proprietor, and the Monad nock House. T. G. Rowan, proprietor. From either of these hostelries, as a base, one can visit the attrac- tions of the neighborhood provided with a good team, a rod, a gun, and if necessary, a guide. Colebrook is the business centre of this section. It is a thriving village situated in the midst of fertile fields and overlooked by Monad- nock mountain over in Vermont, and high hills on the New Hampshire side.

A ride of ten miles brings one to the famed Dixville Notch. Its beauties and attractions are well described in " Eastman's White Mountain Guide" :

"The last two miles of the ride wind through the grandest forest one will find in his mountain travels. Every variety of tree is represented along the way, and generally of much larger growths than are met before. A person will be- gin to doubt whether there is any mountain magnificence near, so closely is the road shut in by the forest. Suddenly the heavy walls of the Dixville range be- gin to show themselves ahead. And while one is admiring their dark and grave sides of shadowed foliage, wondering where the pass he is in search of can open, a turn of the road to the right brings the wagon in front of the bare and savage jaws of the Notch, at its western entrance.

"The first view of it is very inpressive. It opens like a Titanic gateway to some region of vast and mysterious desolation. The pass is much narrower than either of the more famous ones in the White Mountains, and, through its whole extent of a mile and a quarter, has more the character of a Notch. One can not but feel that the mountain was rent apart by some volcanic con- vulsion, and the two sides left to tell the story by their correspondence and the naked dreariness of the pillars of rotting rock that face each other. So nar- row is the ravine (it can hardly be called a pass), that a rough and precarious roadway for a single carriage could only be constructed by building up against the mountain's side a substructure of rude masonry, while the walls slope up- ward so sharply on either hand that a considerable outlay is demanded of the state every year to clear it of the stones and earth which the frosts and rain roll into it every winter and spring.

" No description can impart an adequate conception of the mournful grandeur of the decaying cliffs of mica slate which overhang the way. They shoot up in most singular and fantastic shapes, and vary in height from four hundred to eight hundred feet. A few centuries ago the pass must have been very wild, but the pinnacles of rock, which give the scenery such an Alpine character, are rapidly crumbling away. Some have decayed to half their original height ; and the side walls of the Notch are strewn with debris, which the ice and storms have pried and gnawed from the decrepit cliffs. The whole aspect is one of ruin and wreck. The creative forces seem to have retreated from the spot, and abandoned it to the sport of the destructive elements. One might entertain the thought that some awful crime had been committed there, for which the region was blasted by a lasting curse. The only life in the Notch

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