The White Mountains
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
Summary
“Hast thou entered the store-houses of the snow?”
Book of Job.One of the charms of such travelling as that of the English in the United States, is its variety. The stopping to rest for a month at a farm-house after a few weeks of progress by stage, with irregular hours, great fatigues and indifferent fare, is a luxury which those only can understand who have experienced it: and it is no less a luxury to hie away from a great city, leaving behind its bustle and formalities, and the fatigues of sight-seeing and society, to plunge into the deepest mountain solitude. I have a vivid recollection of the dance of spirits amidst which we passed the long bridge at Boston, on our way out to New Hampshire, on the bright morning of the 16th of September. Our party consisted of four, two Americans and two English. We were to employ eight or ten days in visiting the White Mountains of New Hampshire, returning down the valley of the Connecticut. The weather was brilliant the whole time; and I well remember how gay the hedges looked this first morning, all starred over with purple, lilac, and white asters, and gay with golden rod; with which was intermixed, here and there, a late pale brier rose. The orchards were cheerful with their apple-cropping. There was scarcely one which had not its ladder against a laden tree, its array of baskets and troughs beneath, and its company of children picking up the fruit from the grass.
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- Retrospect of Western Travel , pp. 56 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1838