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��The White and Franconia Alountains.

���most others in be- ing purely of a primitive origin. They are probably the most ancient mountains in the world ; not even the organic re- mains of the tran- sition period have ever been discov- ered near them ; and they are es- sentially of gran- itic formation. Underneath these coherent and in- durate ledges the most valuble ores exist, but coal and fossils are searched for in vain. Many a change during the geological pe- riods have these granite mountains looked upon. They have seen fire and water successively sweep over the surface of our globe. Devastat- ing epochs passed,

continents sunk ~' « old man OF the mountains."

and rose, and mountains were piled on obscurity shadows the whole historical mountains in the dread chaos, but these life of this region till the advent of the stood firm and undaunted, though white men. The red man held the scarred and seamed by glaciers, and mountains in reverence and awe. What washed by the billows of a primeval sea, Olympus and Ida were to the ancient presenting nearly the same contour that Greeks, what Ararat and Sinai were to they do to-day. They are the Methu- the Jews, what Popocatapetl and Ori- selahs among mountains. zaba were to the Aztecs, so were the

The Indians generally called these summits of the AVhite Mountains to the mountains Agiocochook, though one of simple natives of this section. An an- the eastern tribes bestowed upon them cient tradition prevailed among them the name of Waumbek Ketmetha, which that a deluge once overspread the land signifies White Mountains. A mythic and destroyed every human being but a

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