Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/437

 NORTHERN COOS. 399

belongs to the raspberry vines. It seems to be the paradise of this dehcious fruit.

" One should climb the highest pinnacle, called Table Rock, which juts out from the southerly wall of the pass, and stands about eight hundred feet above the road. It is no easy task to keep the footing in the steep ascent over the loose and treacherous ruins of slate that strew the way. Hands and feet are necessary. Table Rock is a narrow, projecting ledge, only some six or eight feet wide at the summit, and about a hundred and fifty feet long, rising in an almost unbroken precipice on each side for several hundred feet. The decent is even more arduous than the ascent. It will be found, however, that the view from the summit repays the toil of the scramble. It is no small trial for weak nerves to walk out upon the side of the Notch upon this cliff, not more than six feet wide and eight hundred feet sheer down. No part of the ride up Mt. Washington makes the head swim so giddily. From it one can easily see into Maine, Vermont, and Canada. Only a few miles east lies Lake Umbagog, where the moose congregate in the evening to stand up to their necks in water and ' fight flies,' as the guides express it. About ten miles north is lake Con- necticut, a beautiful sheet of water, mother of the noble river which is the pride of New England. A tourist might spend a few days very profitably in explor- ing the novelties of the districts that lie around the Notch. On the face of this cliff, seen from below, some locate the usual Profile, without which a moun- tain pass is regarded as incomplete.

" After about an hour's stay upon the pinnacle, one should decend and ride through the pass to a flume just before the eastern gateway is reached. Nearly opposite the entrance to the flume will be found a remarkably cold spring. On the opposite side of the road, in the woods, just beyond the Notch, there is a series of beautiful cascades, extending nearly a mile, surpassed in beauty and volume by none in the whole White Mountain region. There is no path to these, and it will be found a difficult task to reach them.

'•The grand distinctive features of Dixville Notch are desolation and decay. How charming, then, the surprise, in passing through the Notch eastward, to ride out from its spiky teeth of slate into a most lovely plain, called ' The Clear Stream Meadows,' embosomed in mountains, luxuriantly wooded to the crown. It is something like descending from the desolation of the Alps into the foliage and beauty of Italy. The only house near was accidentally burned a few years since. The graves of the earliest settler and his wife are there, fenced off rudely, and overgrown with the tall weeds which nature wears for them. How many of the great and wealthy of our land will find such a cem- etery? A mountain range for a monument; a luxuriant valley for a grave; such silence to sleep in as no Mt. Auburn can assure, and their story told to visitants, from far-off portions of the land !

" Returning through the whole length of the Notch, Colebrook is reached again by supper-time."

At the western gateway is situated the Dix House, a new, clean, com- fortable, well furnished and well kept hotel, of which George Parsons is pro- prietor.

Following up the Connecticut river, one arrives after a drive of twenty-five miles, at the Lake House, on the borders of Connecticut Lake. Nor yet has he left civilization behind him. All through Stewartstown, Clarksville and Pittsburg, ihe valleys and hillsides are settled and cultivated, and large herds of cattle and sheep find excellent pasturage.

Connecticut Lake is a surprise to the traveler It forms the out-post of pioneer settlements, for along its northern side a itw farms nestle, while all the" land beyond is covered by the primeval forest. The surface of the lake is one

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