by black bears. That there was a district in New England
containing mountain scenery superior to much that is yearly crowded
by tourists in Europe, that this is to be reached with ease by
railways and stagecoaches, and that it is dotted with huge hotels
almost as thickly as they lie in Switzerland, I had no idea. Much
of this scenery, I say, is superior to the famed and classic lands
of Europe. I know nothing, for instance, on the Rhine equal to the
view from Mount Willard down the mountain pass called the Notch.

Let the visitor of these regions be as late in the year as he can,
taking care that he is not so late as to find the hotels closed.
October, no doubt, is the most beautiful month among these
mountains; but, according to the present arrangement of matters
here, the hotels are shut up by the end of September. With us,
August, September, and October are the holiday months; whereas our
rebel children across the Atlantic love to disport themselves in
July and August. The great beauty of the autumn, or fall, is in
the brilliant hues which are then taken by the foliage. The
autumnal tints are fine with us. They are lovely and bright
wherever foliage and vegetation form a part of the beauty of
scenery. But in no other land do they approach the brilliancy of
the fall in America. The bright rose color, the rich bronze which
is almost purple in its richness, and the glorious golden yellows
must be seen to be understood. By me, at any rate, they cannot be
described. They begin to show themselves in September; and perhaps
I might name the latter half of that month as the best time for
visiting the White Mountains.

I am not going to write a guide book, feeling sure that Mr. Murray
will do New England and Canada, including Niagara, and the Hudson
River, with a peep into Boston and New York, before many more
seasons have passed by. But I cannot forbear to tell my countrymen
that any enterprising individual, with a hundred pounds to spend on
his holiday--a hundred and twenty would make him more comfortable
in regard to wine, washing, and other luxuries--and an absence of
two months from his labors, may see as much and do as much here for
the money as he can see or do elsewhere. In some respects he may
do more; for he will learn more of American nature in such a
journey than he can ever learn of the nature of Frenchmen or
Americans by such an excursion among them. Some three weeks of the
time, or perhaps a day or two over, he must be at sea, and that
portion of his trip will cost him fifty pounds, presuming that he
chooses to go in the most comfortable and costly way; but his time
on board ship will not be lost. He will learn to know much of
Americans there, and will perhaps form acquaintances of which he
will not altogether lose sight for many a year. He will land at
Boston, and, staying a day or two there, will visit Cambridge,
Lowell, and Bunker Hill, and, if he be that way given, will
remember that here live, and occasionally are to be seen alive, men
such as Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and a host of others, whose
names and fames have made Boston the throne of Western literature.
He will then, if he take my advice and follow my track, go by
Portland up into the White Mountains. At Gorham, a station on the
Grand Trunk Line, he will find a hotel as good as any of its kind,
and from thence he will take a light wagon, so called in these
countries. And here let me presume that the traveler is not alone:
he has his wife or friend, or perhaps a pair of sisters, and in his
wagon he will go up through primeval forests to the Glen House.
When there, he will ascend Mount Washington on a pony. That is de
rigueur, and I do not therefore dare to recommend him to omit the
ascent. I did not gain much myself by my labor. He will not stay
at the Glen House, but will go on to--Jackson's I think they call
the next hotel, at which he will sleep. From thence he will take
his wagon on through the Notch to the Crawford house, sleeping
there again; and when here, let him, of all things, remember to go
up Mount Willard. It is but a walk of two hours up and down, if so
much. When reaching the top, he will be startled to find that he
looks down into the ravine without an inch of foreground. He will
come out suddenly on a ledge of rock, from whence, as it seems, he
might leap down at once into the valley below. Then, going on from
the Crawford House, he will be driven through the woods of Cherry
Mount, passing, I fear without toll of custom, the house of my
excellent friend Mr. Plaistead, who keeps a hotel at Jefferson.
"Sir," said Mr. Plaistead, "I have everything here that a man ought
to want: air, sir, that aint to be got better nowhere; trout,
chickens, beef, mutton, milk--and all for a dollar a day! A-top of
that hill, sir, there's a view that aint to be beaten this side of
the Atlantic, or I believe the other. And an echo, sir!--we've an
echo that comes back to us six times, sir; floating on the light
wind, and wafted about from rock to rock, till you would think the
angels were talking to you. If I could raise that echo, sir, every
day at command, I'd give a thousand dollars for it. It would be
worth all the money to a house like this." And he waved his hand
about from hill to hill, pointing out in graceful curves the lines
which the sounds would take. Had destiny not called on Mr.
Plaistead to keep an American hotel, he might have been a poet.

My traveler, however, unless time were plenty with him, would pass
Mr. Plaistead, merely lighting a friendly cigar, or perhaps
breaking the Maine liquor law if the weather be warm, and would
return to Gorham on the railway. All this mountain district is in
New Hampshire; and, presuming him to be capable of going about the
world with his mouth, ears, and eyes open, he would learn much of
the way in which men are settling themselves in this still
sparsely-populated country. Here young farmers go into the woods
as they are doing far down West in the Territories, and buying some
hundred acres at perhaps six shillings an acre, fell and burn the
trees, and build their huts, and take the first steps, as far as
man's work is concerned, toward accomplishing the will of the
Creator in those regions. For such pioneers of civilization there


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