Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/175

 The White and Franconia Mountains.

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���GIANT'S GRAVE, NEAR CRAV/FCRD

" Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around, Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires, And glittering towers and gilded streams. The stretching landscape into smoke till all decays.

One of the beauties of the Notch is the Flume, a brook that goes leaping through its curious zigzag channel of rock on the side of Mount Webster, hastening on its wav to join the deeper current of the Saco. Then here is " Silver Cascade," which is above the Flume, a series of leaping, dashing, turning waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from the scene.

The White Mountain Notch, after Tvlount ^^'a5hington, is the great natural feature of the range. For three miles the road follows the bottom of a chasm between overhanging cliffs, in some places two thousand feet in height, and at others not more than twenty- five feet apart. This is the great thorough- fare of travel, from the northern towns

��on the Connecticut to Conway and the Saco valley, and vice versa ; and through it pass

��the headwaters of the Saco, which after ■ wards broadens out into a great river, and flows with rapid course through the loveliest of valleys to the sea. Much of the natural wildness and grandeur of the pass has been destroyed by laying the line of the Portland and Og- densburg Railroad, which has been graded HDJ3E. through the ravine.

Railroads serve a great utilitarian pur- pose, but they have their defects ; it seems out of place to ride across Egypt or the Holy Land behind a locomotive ; a prancing steed or a camel with tink-

��ling bells seems

��the

��most fitting motive

��power. There is nothing sentimental about a railroad, but after all who would care to return to the old methods of locomotion?

The Willey House, famous in stor}', stands upon the Notch road nestling under the steep acclivity of Mount Willey, which rises some two thousand feet behind the house.

'• Why don 't some of our authors use more of the historical material of this region in story writing than they do? " asked Fritz.

" The material is so romantic that ro- mance can add nothing to it," answered Mollv. '• But vou forget Hawthorne. His Ambitious Guest has imparted a weird interest to the event. He makes a young man, travelling through the Notch, partake of the hospitality of the family on the fatal night. At the fire •

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