Letters from
'The Old Man of the Mountain'
Rogers wrote
these letters to Horace Greeley's New York Daily Tribune in approximately the last year of his
life. He wrote in the "persona" of a famous natural landmark: The Old
Man of the Mountain in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. They are
transcendentalist essays in the Emerson/Thoreau tradition in many ways,
celebrating common people, labor, and above all the natural world. They are
written, however, in a kind of vernacular New Englandish which occasionally shows
up in Rogers's other writings. I seem unable to find numbers 2 and 3 on the
microfilm. It seems that Greeley just didn't publish them. If anyone has any
information on these items, I'd appreciate it. The letters pick up steam as
they go along, so give them a chance.
The Old Man of the Mountain in
Franconia Notch, NH, collapsed in 2003.
From the New
York Daily Tribune April
18, 1846 (edited by Horace Greeley).
Mr. Tribune: I
am a lone and desolate 'man.' My 'preeminence' up here is more 'painful' than
the man's I heard tell of who was "above life, its weakness and its
comforts too." I am up above Life itself - high above all human habitation
and existence. The only companions I have with me are the drifting clouds,
unless I may reckon as my associates the starts of the sky and the tops of the
mountains about me. Poor company these for a social-natured 'man.' They never
speak from one age to another, only a sort of 'music of the spheres' I hear
humming over among the stars, and the old peaks reply to the thunder that
breaks over their bare heads. I get a smile now and then from the Great
Haystack, as the sun touches the gray summit after he has set. - My lot is hard for a
naturally sociable man, and it must always be so for all I can see. I never can
be among folks - no mortal can ever get to me. There is a guide-board, they
tell me, set up down in the Notch, pointing to where I am. But it is a guide
only to the eye, not
to the foot, of the
traveler. It doesn't point level, Mr. Tribune, like the guide-boards you have
up on Broadway Road. It is pointed like the tube of the star-gazer, when he
lifts it, some night, to look at the stars, or the midnight Moon, "to
descry woods and mountains in her spotly globe." A piece of rough board,
they tell me, fixed up on the body of as young moose-wood, and on it writ, 'Old
Man of the Mountain.' A high way indeed it must be when they lay
one out to my abode -
one the very eagles could not travel, much less the mortal foot.
It was long, long time
before any of your race got sight of me, Mr. Tribune; and longer before any of
them spoke with me. I've a good mind to tell you who it was I first changed a
word with, of mortal men. I don't know as you will care about it, friend
Tribune, living there in a thick-settled place, as you do, about my old Notch
cronies, here - The Old Teamster, and "Uncle 'Quiller," the Mail
Carrier, - Though they tell me folks are folks with you, let them be who they
will. They are with me, and especially such folks as "Uncle 'Quiller"
and The Teamster. "Uncle
'Quiller carried the first Mail that was ever carried through the Notch. It was
before there was any road. His real name was Aquila Davis. And the first man
that ever drove through was "The Teamster." He used to drive pung
through here, long before there was any road.[1]
He loaded down from 'The Iron Works,' up back here, with hardware,
potash-kettles and so on - and up, with cider. When the snow lay over six foot
deep, which it generally did from along last of November till into the middle
of May, the old fellow had to carry his potash-kettles on his head, and fill
his pockets with light ware, stoves, and so on. He was a master stout man - the
Teamster. I've seen him, before now, take a hogshead of cider up off of the
pung, and drink at the bung-hole.
I had seen men go through here
before these two, but they were not men I cared about speaking to; the were the
Red Men. They see me, but never spoke to me, nor I to them. I've seen them
pause in the woods and look at me. I reckoned they thought I was the Great
Spirit, and that they stopped as they did, to worship. They were
glorious-shaped men, Mr. Tribune - those Red Men. It was a sight to me to see
them, going through the woods, and to see them stand. I saw one, one time,
standing alone on a little point that ran out into the pond. He had a bow and
arrow in his hand. It was a maple bow, more than six foot long. He bent it and
sent an arrow across the pond into a moose that was stopping to drink on the
other side. It was a sight, just to see him, as he bent his bow and shot his
arrow, and to se him stand, after he shot. A better shaped people they were
than the Teamster and Uncle 'Quiller, but not so sociable-looking. It's now
over a hundred years since I have seen one of these Red Men going through the
Notch. I got acquainted with the Old Teamster, first sight. He didn't seem to
know anything about these Great Spirits that troubled the Red Man. There was spirits to be familiar with, and they
made him act, sometimes, as if they were 'familiar spirits.' He had been having
to do with them the first time he spoke to me, and I thought it made him so
familiar and free with me as he was - Though, aside from drinking, The Teamster
was the driest man
I've ever heard speak. "Uncle 'Quillen" was a dry man, but it was
further down in his mouth. I said he carried the first Mail ever carried
through the great Franconia Notch, and he literally carried it - on his back -
and drove his old white mare before him through the woods. I seem to see him
now, trudging along, with his head down, the old mare on a rod or two before
him. I would get gleams
of her, now and then, through the openings in the woods. "Uncle
'Quiller" must have took her along for company, as she would be the only
civilized creature he'd be likely to meet, through a stretch of thirteen miles
of woods. There wasn't a house, nor even a post office, all that way. It's
thicker settled, Mr. Tribune on the Broadway Road, if I've any right idea of
the place, and it is thicker settled here now.
The old man halted to bait
one day, down where the guide-board now stands, and took some oats out of one
end of his mail-bag for
the old mare, and some sausages,'
Mr. Tribune, for himself, and set down on a green knoll, as green as a leek,
with the dark Notch moss. "Hello!" says I. I spoke a little sharper
than I meant to, for it rung like thunder through the Notch, and after a while
I heard halfway up the Great Haystack, scaring up echoes there that had slept
ever since "the morning stars sang together." 'Uncle Quiller' looked
as if thunder had struck him, and the old mare snorted as though she smelt a
catamount! I helloed again, - not quite so sharp, - and put in the direction, and the old man looked right straight
up at me, and when he see me he set up a horse-laugh that you might have heard
from one end of the Notch to the other, and showed me a set of teeth you could
see to go through the woods by, the darkest night. I never saw a set of teeth
equal to 'Uncle Quiller's.' After that, always - as long as he carried the Mail
- he never failed to stop there and bait; and many and many's the chat I had
with him and the news he told me - for 'Uncle Quiller' was a man that knew
every body and every thing for five-and-thirty mile below the Notch, and he
never knew a thing but what he told of it, and he never told a lie.
But he is gone now, and The
Teamster. They have long disappeared from the Notch, and the old pung and the
old white mare. The state has made a great road through here, and the mail
stage coaches, with four wheels and four horses, [races] through every day of
the week, Sunday and all, and I hear now the shouts of the passengers, and the crying of the driver, and the
ring of his loud whip, - and a long time after they first began to run, the
stage-driver's horn. They left off blowing the horn soon after they began to go
through, - Why, I never learnt, - and I never was sorrier for any thing - for
tho' you wouldn't think it, Mr. Tribune, I have a great ear for music. and
there was music in that stage-driver's horn. I'd hear 'em blow it as they
entered the Notch of a clear, frosty morning, and it sounded, the wild bugle of
it, like some wild heifer, lowing in the Rams de Veche - The Swiss Cow Chorus, as the herds
come down home from pasture, to the [peasants] of the high Alps. It was the
first music, too, I had ever heard, unless you call thunder music, or the wind
in the hollows of the mountains, or the fall of a slide, or the like of that.
I've heard music since that, now I think on't, that I don't know but went
before it. The same kind of music, only they put in the words. It was summer
before last. There was some you people - New Hampshire people, mr. Tribune - went through here
to the White Hills. They had heard tell of me and they stopped to see me. They
were a 'family' of singers -natural singers. There were three brothers of them
and a sister, and they said they had left about a dozen brothers more at home.
Their names was Hutchinson. After a while they stood up together, along by the
side of the pond, and sang. Their song went up by me towards Heaven, and I
thought I should have gone there with it. They sang about their dear old father
and mother, and the brothers and sisters they'd left behind, and where they
come from, and the Old Granite State. Mr. Tribune - you never heard such
singing - not if you'd heard the same singers sing if you never heard them in
the Franconia Notch. One of them had a bass like the wind in the hollow of the
Notch before a storm. - And there was another 'family' with them - younger
people, a good deal, they seemed to be -
almost children - four of them - three sisters and a brother, and they
had sunny hair. I didn't learn their names, but they too were New Hampshire people, going to see the Mountains.
After the Hutchinsons had sung, they wanted these children to sing, and after a
while persuaded them to. I didn't think they could have been heard up above the
tops of the woods, but I could hear every sound and every word, clear as the
voice of a bird. I don't say how it sounded, Mr. Tribune. I am not a man easily
moved. I never shed a
tear. But I seem to feel heavy
ever since I heard those children sing, with the sun-bright hair. I thought the
Hutchinsons cried while they were singing. - But I'm running on here, I don't
know where nor how long. - I haven't writ you any thing I set out to. I will
stop short, and when I get a chance to send, you shall hear again from your
friend,
THE
OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Franconia
Notch, April 14, 1846
notes: links to
Hutchinsons, Greeley
Number Four
[New York
Daily Tribune: May 9,
1846]
I spoke to you, in my letters I
sent you a while ago, about the great Lawyers of my little granite world here.
A sort of mountain pride I suppose I felt in the towering creatures - I didn't
tell you of a hundredth part of them. May be I shall, by and by, if I keep on
writing.
But I would not have
you think I thought more of the Lawyers than I do of the rest of the people. I
don't think so much. I hear they are more thought-of down among you - they and
other men that don't work. But they are not by me. I think of professional men, as you call them, as I do of
profession. I don't think so high of it as I do of practice and doing. The people, of all others, in my
judgment, are the ones that raise the Corn and make the plows and things. I
don't want Corn. I live on clouds and thunder and so on; but among you, eating
and drinking mankind, the important folks, I should think, would be the ones
that provided - the
men that tilled the ground and the women that kept house, not forgetting the
glorious boys and girls that helped. I'm afraid I'm almost alone in this
opinion, friend Tribune; and the working people themselves, I'm afraid, don't
agree with me - They don't think well of themselves or their calling, I'm
afraid. And when a stranger comes into a place, you'll hear him, they tell me,
asking who the Lawyers are, and what Minister they've got settled over them, or
who they've got for Doctors. Never who the great Farmers are, or the great
House-Carpenters, or Blacksmiths, or the great Housewives. Those, friend
Tribune, I look upon as the great stay and staff and mankind - a kind of
Providence, - They provide
for the world. The others only help eat, or shift what is raised from hand to
hand, and generally away from the hands that have any hand in raising it. The
working people help God provide for mankind - and I look upon them as the chief
people. I wish they knew a little more - They will, when they come to think
right of Labor, and from what I can see I judge that time's a comin'. It will
be a knowing world, friend Tribune, when the working people come to be the
thinking people. People think amazing deep and wholesome, when they think at
work; that is, when they don't work too hard, and feel above board.
I told you about some of our Lawyers. I've a good mind to
tell you of our Farmers here. I will, about one I have in my mind's eye, as the
Teamster used to say; in my memory's eye, for he is dead. He wasn't born in New
Hampshire. He come from Connecticut. He lived just below me, here, in a little,
hard town, called
Campton. I don't know, friend Tribune, as you'll like to have me tell of our
old Farmers, living in a thick-settled, popular place as you do, and printing a
paper every day. But you haven't a man in all York state, much less in your
town, that you would have said, if you had known him, was a likelier man, or a better man, or more of a man, than Colonel Holmes of Campton!
Colonel Sam Holmes! -
all but the Colonel. That I don't think any thing of, - nor he didn't, though it was just
after the old Revolutionary War, when it was something to be a Colonel, to what
it is now. They forced it on him. I don't know but you are a Colonel, friend
Tribune. The Tribune used to be a sort of Colonel, I've heard say. Any way, old
Colonel Holmes was one of the likeliest men, I don't know but I may say the
very likeliest, I have ever seen among men. Though he was, all his days, a
Farmer here among the rocks, and scarce ever went off his farm in fifty years.
He begun down here in Campton, when there had hardly been a stroke struck in
the woods. There was a little spot of clearing, I believe, on the lot he'd went
on to - and a log barn had been put up on it. He and his wife lived in the barn
all Summer, the first Summer they come up here from Connecticut. They come all
the way - he a-foot, with his ax on his shoulder, and she a-horseback, with the
bed bound on behind her, and the copper kettle hanging by the old mare's side.
It was all they had, and the roads weren't near so good as they are now -
Colonel Holmes was a young man then - just 'out of his time.' He lived on that
land fifty years, and died on it. He was hardly ever out of town or off of his
farm. They teased him to go to General Court one year, I believe, but couldn't
make him go again. "It was small business," he said, "to any
body who had any other to mind." And he said "it was a bad thing to
have so many laws, and be tinkering them over so often." He cared nothing
about office, or politics, or party. He never read the newspapers or took any
of them, I've understood, and didn't read any books. He didjn't need to. He
said but little, but what he said was always right. He was as sensible a man,
friend Tribune, as ever Ben Franklin was, and a much better man, to my mind -
and a greater, take all the circumstances. He lived there, all alone as it
were, and cleared up his farm, unseen, and for the sheer good and beauty of it,
as I hardly believe Ben Franklin was man enough to have done. He had a grand
old-fashioned farm, and grew forehanded and finally rich, without ever trying
to, or caring any thing about money. He never was a hard-working man. Hardly
ever worked till he got tired. Never hurried. He wouldn't hurry for a
thunder-shower in hay time - "Let it rain," he would say, - "it
will do somebody some good. What signifies killing ourselves for a load of
hay?" He never drove his men, and never hurried them, except at table, and
then to have them get done. "Come," he would say, "all hands,
take hold - there's enough." And it was royal to see him sit at the head
of his old, long kitchen table, with his twenty men, and as much the equal of
the humblest of them all as he could possibly be, with his great, generous
heart and princely head, - He had a head, friend Tribune, worth going a journey
to see - an old Connecticut, Roger Sherman sort of head, by the tell - for I
never saw Roger Sherman's head - though I have seen Colonel Holmes's, when he
was at work, bare-headed, in the field among his men. It wasn't a head like
Daniel Webster's or 'Zekiel's - not one of these high, precipice sort of heads.
It was a middling forehead for hight, but wide and beautifully covered over
with hair as fine as silk, and laying in tufts, like feathers on the neck of an
eagle - and along after he was sixty, as white as Mooreshillock of a November
morning.
It was princely to
see the old man working among his men. He had a small, gray eye - all sense and
honesty- and looking though he couldn't bear anything ungenerous or small. And
that was his nature. His leading
trait of character was a great generosity. And there never was his equal, to my
knowledge, among the poor people. I never saw any thing equal to the way he
would help the Poor. "Give him good measure, David," the old man
would say to a queer sort of man that always lived with him - "give him
good measure, don't streak it - he's come a good ways, and there's enough of
it." He always had plenty of corn, the scarcest years. The Earth, as if
aware of his great nature, never put him off with a stingy harvest. He never,
those years, would sell a kernel of Corn to any body that could bring the money
for it. He said "there was Poor round, that couldn't pay, that must be
seen to." And to them he turned out the yellow Corn, and the Hay. With his
barns full, in the scarcest seasons, he would never sell a lock of Hay to any
body but the Poor - and to them always at the prices of times of plenty, and
"to pay in work when they could." He used to take their little, old
due bills for it it, payable "in help," and never call on them -
though they generally remembered to turn out and help him when it came to Hay
time. But numbers of the old due bills were found among the old man's few papers, after his death, writ in his own
plain, honest hand - not after any business form - and always spelt so as to be
understood, and many of them yellow with age. He wasn't what you call a
tender-hearted man, that he was so considerate of the Poor. It was generosity
and sheer greatness. He felt it beneath a man, "that any body should
suffer when there was enough" - and he knew "they hadn't calculation
enough, many of them, to bring the year about, especially in cold
seasons," and he said "they must be seen to." - And he did see
to them, the glorious old man. It wasn't for the name of it - for he didn't
seem to know any thing about the name of doing things - And it wasn't for salvation -
"giving to the poor" because it was "lending to the Lord."
He wasn't a religious man - that is, never made a profession. Religious people
about him didn't like it that he didn't, though their chief uneasiness was that
he did so well that it made them appear to disadvantage. He always was right in
all he did and said. I don't believe he did or said any single wrong thing, or
a thing that was out of the way, or that was unhandsome, all the time he lived
in Campton. All that time, for fifty years, no man ever said a loud word against him. And it grew to a
proverb, that a man's "words was as good as Colonel Holmes's."
I should love to tell
you, friend Tribune, how it looked where he lived. His grand old house - I
forget whether it was ever painted - set up on a rising ground just South of a
beech-wood, at the head of a long meadow, the clear little Beebe's River
running through it, and the great wide pastures on the hills that bordered it.
It is all in plain sight from here, and within thirty miles. The hills covered
with cattle and long-tailed colts.
But the dear old man is dead, and the people never were sorrier for any
thing that took place in that region.
I haven't made up a
story here to tell you, friend Tribune, nor colored it any, nor told you half
the truth, though Colonel Holmes never went to College, nor to Congress, nor to
General Court (more than once, if he did that), and was nothing but a working,
home Farmer, all his days. Ask the
people of Campton, and the young people too, and they'll all tell it is just as
I've told you - only more so. Tears of admiration come to my heart when I
remember the beautiful, honest old man. - He was a great man too - as great as
Washington - greater than Washington could have been, alone on that Campton
Farm - but glorious most for his Honesty, and his providing for the Poor. - But he was only a Farmer. I think
more of him for that. If you don't, friend Tribune, you've a right to your
opinion. But if you won't print this, because it is about a working man, and
one that you never heard of and that nobody has ever heard of, and that hadn't
any learning - nothing but goodness and greatness - you'll hear no more from
THE
OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Franconia
Notch, April 21, 1846
Number 5
{New York
Daily Tribune, May 22,
1846]
Friend Tribune: I should like you, and
the people who read my letters, could only see how it looks up here about me -
the lay of the land and the look of the mountains. I'm afraid you won't be able
without, to see much in some things I say. I would write it all down to you,
so's't you could see it, right before you, just as it is writ down here on the
leaves of Creation, but I'm not handy with a pen. I never went to school a day
in my life, of course, and if I had, and was as bright as they tell me you are
yourself, I never could write it down. It can't be put down on paper, as it is
writ here, and I can't see it all myself. I can't look but one way, and that is
always straight ahead. I've a roundish eye, to be sure, and it sees both right
hand and left, and up and down - I can see all round, from Moosehillock to on
the right, to the Great Haystack on the left, and the sky above me, and the
world below. And I can see it all at once. And it is well I can. I can't turn
my head round like a weathercock, as your people can (and some of your coats as well as your heads - and sometimes
these get turned
[?]). I always have looked one way - about Sou'east. I have wanted sometimes to
look around, if I could, once - just to see what was up behind me here - Canada
way. But I give it up, and they tell me, now, I wouldn't see any thing if I
did. They say all behind me, and for many hundred feet above my head, rise the
sloping hips of the great Elephant Mountain, whose head is true Moosehillock,
and his stupendous rump turned up toward the Notch. - The first mountain, west
of the Notch, they say, is the very image of an overgrown elephant trampoosing
among the hill tops off to the South-West. And I half way down the slope of his
left hip, so if I looked round North, it would be right into the mountain, and
I should see nothing. I hear earthquakes jarring them sometimes.
Off South-East I can
see ever so far - the valley, as it begins, below the Notch, to widen out and
stretch off down the Pemigewassett, and the Merrimack away to the country that
sinks to the Sea - I can see the silver-threaded rivers as they run together
and and pour into each other all the way. The Middle Branch here, out of the
Pond, and the East branch from among the 'Haystacks,' and the Moosehillock
branch from the West. All of them mountain-streams - torrents - cold as ice and
all the way white. I see where they come together and where the streams begin
to look riverish, and have little margins of intervals by its sides. I can see
where Mad River (rightly named) hurries into it from the blue Thornton Hills,
and the Sandwich Mountains, and the little Beebe's River, that run, I told,
friend Tribune, through old Colonel Holmes's Farm, and farther down Baker's River, creepin
between the Rumney Mountains down from Wentworth, where Doctor Whipple used to
live. (I'll tell you about Doctor Whipple, friend Tribune, in one of these
letters.) It creeps sixteen miles without a rapid and almost without a ripple,
along the way of the Railroad they talk of, up from Boston to Montreal. Just
before you get to it, I can see the white of "Livermore's Falls" -
old Judge Livermore, I told you about. Beautiful Falls, friend Tribune, and
worth a journey to see, and right on your way to the Notch here. Just below where Baker's River comes
in, is the bridge Pont-Fayette, over the Pemigewassett. It was named after
Lafayette, a Frenchman, who came over here a-visiting, twenty years ago. He had
been over, I believe, once before that. I forget on what business. Something, I understood , that
made the Country invite him to come again. He was a smart, active business man,
and they named this bridge after him. Why they put the Pont in, I do not know.
The bridge is in the town of Plymouth. - Not where the "Forefathers landed," but where
some of their posterity landed.
A charming looking spot. The Pemigewassett winds about in the valley there,
like a struggling serpent. I can see North Hill, peering above it. A little
below comes in the Squam River, from the beautiful Holderness Lakes, the most
beautiful lakes on the whole earth, I venture to say. I only guess at it; but
let travelers see, and then ask them. Squam Lakes - Big Squam and Little Squam.
Oh, they look beautiful to me!
And on further down comes in the Winnipesockee River
tumbling along in from New Hampshire's Lake, the peerless Winnipesockee - the
water of the river as warm as dishwater, they tell me. It meets the cold Pemigewassett,
raving mad from the mountains. They marry and both lose their names, instead on one, and become the
Merrimack. It is in the town of Franklin, that used to be Salisbury, where
'Zekiel and Daniel Webster were born, and Ichabod Bartlett, and where Parker
Noyes and Richard Fletcher was Lawyers, and Hale Pettengill, who could write as
poetic as Shakespeare. A famous town, that town of Salisbury, friend Tribune. The Merrimack journeys
along below it, no longer a mountain stream, but slow and majestic, with wide
meadows at its margin, on straight into Massachusetts, taking the shortest cut
to the Sea. But it scarcely gets over the line of the Bay State, when it sheers
East, and runs along as near as it can get to New Hampshire soil, all the way
again until it loses itself in the Sea. It is near a town they call
Newburyport. Why it should be so shy of Massachusetts I couldn't say. unless it
was on account of the plitics of the State, - though this couldn't have been
it, for it run so before there was any politics in either of the States, or any
States. These States, friend Tribune, are a new thing. But the Rivers have
always been running.
I can see the Sea. It looms up
beyond the country like a dark mountain. I can see the ships climbing up its
sides. I can see them plain when the sunset touches their white sails. I see
some ships there without any sails. They seem to have smokes instead, like the
smokes out of a burning chimbley. A new way of making them go, I have reckoned,
for they go right in the teeth of the wind, by the looks of the smokes, and not
a sign of any sails. I've noticed, late years, three or four of them with
reddish chimbleys, and the smoke coming out of them black as pitch - not the
blue smoke I see curling out of chimbleys where they burn fire wood - and they seem to steer farther out to
sea than the general run of ships that go by smoke. I reckoned whether or not
they weren't ships from the Old Countries. And they seemed to come out from the
sea when they come in. They come and went about every fortnight. It couldn't
be, though, that they were from the Old World - for ships wouldn't think about
going across the Sea without sails, and they couldn't go and back in a month,
as these appeared to. But I don't know. May be you've seen these things with
chimbleys, friend Tribune - or don't the Salt Water come up to where you live?
All about me here used to be woods - for hundreds of miles. Off to the East - on the Grants and Locations - where they hadn't made towns of it, the old aboriginal forests are still left standing. - They've pretty much cut it off in the towns. These Yankees are dreadful enemies to trees - they'll hack 'em down, friend Tribune, whenever they come across one, with an ax on their shoulder - and if they can't stop to cut it down, they'll girdle it - so as to see them dying by and by - and if they are in too much of a hurry to girdle it, they'll hack into it, a notch or two - just to show how they feel disposed. They seem to have a perfect lignum-phobia, friend Tribune- though they haven't such a dread of trees as I wish they had - I wish they didn't dare go near enough to cut into it, - but were as 'fraid of it as a mad dog is of a cataract! I can't bear to have 'em cut down these glorious old woods. I wish you could see some of them, friend Tribune, off here, under the Haystacks - the South side of them, where the sun comes to warm. The great Spruces run up there taller than your Trinity steeple, and straight as an Indian's arrow, and they stand as thick as a field or rye. And the Pines - the White Pines - they shoot up there, six foot thro' at the butt, and a hundred feet before you come to a limb - Pines, no great Admiral had a ship could ride with one of them for a mast - Pines, to equal which the tallest ever hewn on Norwegian hills (as the old Teamster us'd to say) was but a wand. I hear 'em fall down the sides of the mountains, like these slides, and makes me think, when I hear them, of the old Trojans and Greeks the Teamster used to tell us about, fell at the siege of Troy. - You've heard of the siege of Troy, friend Tribune. There was an old blind man that went about the country made some verses about it. And there's been terrible cutting and slashing among them, these two winters past, friend Tribune. If it's kept up awhile longer, there won't be a White Pine left standing here. There's been a Dragon of a Down-Easter up here, these two winters, with a company of red-shirted fellows from the banks of the Penobscot, making terrible havoc among the woods. His name is Norcross. They call him the Timber King. He is a perfect Bonaparte among the pines - he's felled a hundred thousand of 'em I should guess by the noise these two winters past, and has got 'em all down into the river this Spring. driving them down to a town in the old Bay State by the name of Lowell, where they've put up a factory, they tell me. Norcross has built him a steam saw mill down there, a purpose to saw up those Pines. He got 'em down out of the mountains on the top of last Spring's freshets, and they lay in the Pemigewassett at the head of log navigation, all last Summer. He kept them there in a basin. This Spring he has tapped his basin and let the logs all loose down stream. The Pemigewassett is alive with them now for miles and miles, and Norcross and his Red Shirts are after 'em down the river like so many hounds. It is a sight to see 'em, friend Tribune, ride them mill logs down the rapids. They'll jump from one to another of 'em - fifteen or twenty feet to a jump - right in among the white water, and they'll stay on a jamb where the water runs like a mill-tail, till the very instant it starts, and then they're off, with their long, iron-shod hand-spikes. The Norcross is every where among them, and he has got an eye like a Kingfisher. Queer, friend Tribune, isn't it, these Down-Easters up here after timber. Coming all the way from the state of Maine - from the most "eastern lands," where the "great pine-timber speculation" was carried on a year or two ago - up here among the New Hampshire mountains, after timber! They have to come to New Hampshire, friend Tribune, for every thing, - for tall timber and for tall men, and I am sorry that they can get one away about as easy as they can the other - and for the same purpose - to market! The stage-driver's a-waiting, friend Tribune, and I writ you more than I set out to, already, so no more till another week, when, if you need, you shall hear again from
THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Franconia Notch, April
29, 1846
Number 6
[New York
Daily Tribune, June 3,
1846]
Friend Tribune:
I have writ you about 'The Notch,' here. They call it the Notch, every body. -
Now you'll, may be, think it is one, a small cut like, such as you make in a stick, or so
- cut a notch, as you
may say. But it isn't so. It isn't anything small, this mountain passage here.
I don't know why they should call it by so little a name - a thing so big -
without it is to make it seem the bigger - When a thing is not very big in
itself, they sometimes call it by a great name, to make it up. I've heard of
little people standing on tiptoe when they spoke, to appear tall, and make
themselves think they were
small; - and of great people stooping and trying to seem small, to make other
other folks feel at home when they were about. It may be they call the Great
Way through the Franconia Mountains, by the little name of 'Notch,' on some
such ground. But, friend Tribune, there is no notch. Why, the two sides of it - the calves
of it as they say,
chopping wood, "cutting down a calf" (scarf, like enough) the calves are of the Notch are two mighty mountain
sides, to which the biggest Pyramids on the Nile are mere notch-sides a boy
cuts in his willow-whistle. Notch! friend Tribune, you go down here and stand
back of the Lafayette Housee, they call it, the great new Tavern they are
putting up down between the two ponds here - for there is two ponds down here
in the Notch - sizeable ponds; one of them heads the Pemigewasstt River, the
other the wild Ammonoosuck. One river runs right South the other right North,
and goes into the River Connecticut, and after running I don't know how far,
falls at last into a strip of salt water by the name of Long Island Sound. If
you know the geography, friend Tribune, you may know whereabouts it is. Well;
down between these ponds, right in the throat and narrows, as we may say of the
Notch, they're putting up a great Tavern House, a hundred and fifty foot long,
for folks to put up at who come to see the Notch - a purpose to see it - and some folks that lives in it. You would hardly call
it a notch, that had such a tavern in the bottom of it, and a wide highway
running along beside it, and a glorious piece of woods by the side of the road,
all hard wood - the Rock maples, and the Beeches, and the great Notch Birches.
You never saw such Birches grow, friend Tribune, as stand here in the Notch. As
I say, you go back behind the Tavern House there, and just look up! Not up
Great Haystack - for you can't begin to. What you see is nothing but the underpinning of the old
Mountain, before you come to the bottom of his side, where it begins to be one the sides of the
Notch. You look up there, a thousand feet, sheer up - right up and down like a
wall, or the underpinning of a building, straight up as the side of a house.
The Mason that laid that underpinning, friend Tribune, built the everlasting
Hills and made the World! See the shelf, that juts out over the top of the
wall. And see the spruces, growing all the way up, anchored in the crevices and
searns [?] of the precipice, tier above tier of 'em, the tops of one coming up
to the roots of the others, clinging close as though they was afraid, they
should fall, like the eagle-hunters on the crags of the Orkne's Look up there,
friend Tribune, to what don't begin
to be toward going up
the great, gray headed Mountain, and see if you'd think of it as a notch! Why, the bottom of the cut, come to get
into it, is wide enough for an army to pass through in 'loose array' and 'with
spread ensigns, marching.' Old Bonaparte, if he'd found such a passage through
the Alps, he crossed, needn't have
made such a fuss as he did about it, or the other little fellow who crossed
there before him, going all the way from Carthage to see the city of Rome.
You'd think you was anywhere but in a notch, and yet, they tell me it looks from a
distance exactly like one, cut in the ridge of blue mountain. Come to get to
it, it looks more like an open gate-way - a part of the Ridge broke off at one
end and swung half round on the other, like a half open gate. A great wall,
taller than any they ever laid in China, run once, as it looks, right across
the passage - from the North-East - from the White Hills that was part of it,
right along here by the Haystack, along the Mossehillock, and so on South West.
Old Kearsarge and the Old Monadnock was parts of it, and seem as if they had
been left standing when the main wall had been taken away. Here a gate way was
made in it and gate was swung round half-way open to the North East. It is wide
enough, friend Tribune, for the nations. And it's a gate never'll be shut to
again. You needn't feel afraid, going through it, that the gate will swing to!
And it isn't one they'll ever take toll at, as they tell me they do at some of
your roads at the gates. Make a man pay for traveling - a tired man! It would
be a pretty place for you to come to, friend Tribune, and put up at the
Lafayette House a day or two in the hot months. You might take your fish-hook
and line along with you, for they say there's glorious trouts in the
Ammanoosuck Pond, and boats on it. Though I guess I wouldn't bring the hook and
line, on the whole. I guess I'd let the trouts be. It's a cool, pretty, shady
place in the woods for them - and clear water and life must be pleasant to the
spotted creatures there. I wouldn't bring any fish-lines. There isn't any
trouts, they tell me, in the other pond. The outlet runs so steep, they say the
trouts never could get up, and they are the spryest fish the swims. Pity
someone wouldn't bring a live one up and put him into the Pond - it's a place
the trouts love so well. A couple of them. One would be lonesome there all
alone.
Lafayette House - they call
the tavern - after the same old Frenchman they named the bridge for, I told you
of, down in Plymouth. And if they'd stopped by naming their bridges and
tavern-houses after him, I shouldn't have cared. But they undertook to name the
mountains after him. Friend Tribune, I'm a little jealous for the mountains.
I'm akin to them myself. I'm willing they should name the mountains - name 'em
once - when they first behold them, but not name them over again. The first
people that ever get sight of 'em, I'm willing they should give them a name.
They called my neighbor here "Great Haystack," but about the time the
Frenchman came over they undertook to name it over again. I don't know but I've
told you about it, friend Tribune, I shouldn't be surprised if I have, for I am
getting old. They
called it "Mount Lafayette," the stupid creatures. I guess they'd
been drinking. Finally, I know they had. I see 'em when they went up to the
mountain, a parcel of 'em, twenty years ago. It was one Summer - in July -
along the fore part
of the month - about a dozen of them - they got into a frolic up there and
drinking and finally undertook to christen the old Mountain over again, there,
on his bare forehead, and they christened him "lafayette." But the
name didn't go. It had been named long before. - Its name was "Great
Haystack. Haystack is the name a thousand people running would all name it,
seeing it for the first time, sixty miles off, traveling North. It isn't the color of a hay-stack, they tell me, but blue, but exactly the shape. And Haystack
shall be the name so long as it stands there. Friend Tribune, you must come and
see it. Come in July or along first of August, when it is dry traveling through
the Woods; and if you want to go through the White Hills and on to Mount
Washington. I should rather be on top of Great Haystack, of the two. It isn't
quite so high up, but high enough in all conscience. You'd think so by the time
you got up above the woods, and it is more apt to be clear on the peak of the
Haystack. Mt. Washington is sometimes all covered with mist and cloud for days
together. Haystack is never shrouded a day at a time when it's fair weather
below. The sight from it isn't quite so grand, they tell me, when you can have
a fair day on Mt. Washington, but it is prettier to see. I call it prettier, -
may be you wouldn't call anything so you see up here. You'd call it pretty here
in the Notch, or beautiful like, after you'd been and seen the gap in the White
Mountains and come back. Every thing would look soft and beautiful here to you
then. Things look solemn and dreadful, they tell me, there. They call it a
"Natch" there - the passage through the Mountains - though it is
twelve miles through and the sides of it awful mountains all the way. They are
dreadful high and desolate, and tore all to pieces with slides and thunder. It
looks as if thunder had struck 'e,, one time and another, all the way down, and
all along their sides, and clouds broke on 'em. The Teamster said once he was
going through there alone, and he looked up and see a single wild pigeon flying
across the Notch - he said the solitary creature seemed to hurry as if it was
afraid to be there alone. It is awful lonesome there, and folks are glad to get
through. They say it looks melancholy there, everything is so great and still.
Oh, it is beautiful!
And the infant Saco sings through there, in the Summer, all alone. A little
brook, only in times of the mountain rains; then it is a sea thundering through
the Notch and filling it like the Floom of a mill, and tearing the bowels out
of the mountains, what little has been left by thunder and the slides.
Come up and see the whole,
friend Tribune - Come by way of Franconia, and be sure you don't go without
calling to see your true friend,
THE
OLD MAN IN THE MOUNTAIN
Franconia
Notch, May 1 1846.
Number 7
Dear Friend
Tribune: I call you dear,
though I haven't ever seen you, nor got a word of answer to any of my letters
to you; but they tell me you print 'em, which is all as one sending me letters,
and seems kind of sociable and friendly. I feel awkward, writing letters every
week so, but then it is but lately, I got a chance or found out I could write
letters, and I've considerable I want to say, friend Tribune. I've not been
without my thoughts these ages I've been up here alone, or without an eye out
on what has been going on as the centuries went by here in the woods. Why,
friend Tribune, I've seen changes that it takes more ages to happen in than all
your books tell of. And your antiquities don't go back with my freshest
recollections. Indeed, I can
remember things that took place ever so many thousands years ago, better than I
can what took place no longer ago than a hundred. I don't but as it is because
I'm growing old. I don't know as I am growing old - older than I was. I was
always old, "as old as the hills," as they say among you. though you
don't know how old the hills are. I ain't so old as I am tired. I don't take the notice I did, I don't
seem to take the notice I did no longer ago than five-and-twenty or thirty
hundred years. But, friend Tribune, I've "seen strange mutations."
There's been changes going on that you men and nations have had no hand in. The
Teamster us'd to say ever about the sea's doing things that man hadn't a hand
in - His control," the Teamster would say, "stops at the shore. Upon
the watery plain the wrecks are all thy deed." And so on. There was a good
deal more of it the Teamster us'd to have over as he was driving through alone.
And it was the plan, down here in the Notch, to say them sort of verses over.
And the old Teamster would walk high when he said them over. The old sea did things
that men hadn't any hand in. And so have the old woods, friend Tribune, and the
desert land. Why I can remember when the dry land between me and the great
ocean yonder was all blue sea. I can remember farther back than that. I may not
tell you friend Tribune, all I can remember, or how things were here at
first. But the mountains
and the woods have done great things here, "when there was no man."
And, most likely, things that I never see, and that were done before I was
here. I was born of the Earth. They tell me the old mother quaked when I was
born. But I'll come down and speak of things more easy to understand. I'll
speak of things of late, as you say. I hardly know what you call long time ago,
or short time. There has been no what I call long time since there were signs
of the man kind here in my precinct. I was going to say it was but short time
since there were red men here, but I'll take that back. There was always red
men about as long as I have been here, till very lately. They were here along with
the Catamount and the Moose. They hunted them out - the red men did - as your
white men have crowded out the red men. After you hunted them out, the Moose
came back and browsed her undisturbed about the bases of the mountains. The
great gray Moose. It would do you good, friend Tribune, to see them trot up the
mountain sides, and along the hollows of the Notch. What you call fences
wouldn't break their trot. The red men hunted them out, but after they
disappeared, the Moose, as I said, and were here a hundred years, until till
your Yankees settled
in among the New Hampshire hills. The Moose are gone now and the Deer are
scarce, and by and by there'll be hardly a sable or a fisher. There won't be a tree, friend Tribune.
- They're hunting down the very woods, and if they go on "God save
the" mountains, I say.
The Pines and great
Spruces are going like the snow before the sun. The timber hunters are in among
them. Norcross and his Down-Easters are slaughtering them hip and thigh. Their
red shirts "shine like fire" through the openings they make in
forest. There isn't a pine in the remotest recesses - away in beyond the
farthest "Grant," and up back of the backmost "Location,"
that is safe from their axes. It won't be ten years at the rate they've gone on
this two years past, before the woods will all be gone, and the streams will go
next. They'll dry up when the woods are hacked down and the hot sun let
in. And what will become of the
Pemigawassett and the Meriimack when their sources are dried up? And the
mountains will go next. Strip them of the woods and the great rains will wash
them all down - all but the rocks, and there'll be slides that will carry them
all down, as they are split from time to time by the thunder, and all will
follow that can be moved. Norcross and red shirts had better stay their hand
and clear out. I'll scare 'em, friend Tribune, and you may tell them so in your
paper, if I hear the sound of their axes again in these mountains. - They'kk
hear of it if you put it in your paper. They are not my shade trees they are cutting down, but then
they shade the streams and the mountain sides. They are the protectors of the
streams. They are the glory of my wide landscape. They preserve the sides of
the mountains from caving
away and sliding into the vales. My prospect is everything with me. It is a
wilderness mostly, to be sure, right around me. Nut a wilderness of woods is
beauty compared to the bare earth, or even a wilderness of people. The was some
"pleasure" to me "in these pathless woods," a rapture on
"these lonely" hills. "Society" here "where none
intruded," as the Teamster us'd to say. They are breaking it up. I will
scare them, friend Tribune, if they repeat it, and I do wish you'd give them
warning.
I told you, now i
think on't, in my last letter, where Doctor Whipple lived, and that I would
tell you more about him. You must let me tell you of things, friend Tribune,
when they come across me. Did you know Doctor Whipple? Thomas Whipple, Jun.? He
was a doctor, in the little village of Wentworth, out here under Mossehillock
Mountain. But he was a lawyer, too, and what they call a statesman. He went to
Congress, and was almost the brightest man there was in it. He didn't go to
college to learn. He was a poor boy, and bound out, and bad used, and run away
from his master. He always had a sad look, as if he had been hard used when he
was little. - But his eye was as knowing as the fox's - the knowingest look he
had, friend Tribune, you ever see in a man's head; and his head, they said, was
the second head in Congress, at the time he was there; second for size and
make, so a head-handler told them who came along, and felt their heads round.
Daniel Webster was first, and Whipple's next, though Ichabod Bartlett was
there, from New Hampshire. He was a little mite of a man, but he had a head
hardly any man's hat would go on to. A beautiful head Ichabod Bartlett's was,
shaped like Apollo's, and put as well onto his neck. But they put Whipple's
before it and there was everything, most, in it. Daniel Webster speaking about
him to the Teamster, said, "Whipple is a great man. He went to Congress a
narrow man, but he expanded. Sir," said he, " he was a pillar in Mr.
Adams's administration. His services, particularly on Indian affairs, were
truly invaluable." Oh, he was a masterly man, the Doctor. They said no man
living had such a memory. When the doctors examined him, to see if he was fit,
they found he knew more than all of them, and her examined them, and they were
glad to get away from him. He had most of the books by heart, and one large
doctor book, they said, he repeated from the beginning to the end! - and he had a judgment equal to his
memory; and he could talk, I've heard them say who hear him, equal to
Shakespeare, and from what I've heard of Shakespeare, I should think he could,
though I never heard Shakespeare talk. They said he never forgot any thing. The
Teramster asked how he could remember so. He replied, by taking notice of
things. "Any body can remember," said he, "if they'll take notice.
The reason people forget is, they don't pay attention, or take any notice at
the time. Take notice," said the doctor, "and you can't forget."
He was assessor of "direct taxes," as they called it - laid in the
time of the last war. He had some land sold, and many years afterward the title
was disputed in the courts. The lawyers all said the title couldn't be
sustained - for the business was hardly ever half done, there was so many steps
to be taken, and if it was done right, nobody could possibly remember to tell
it. The Doctor had become intemperate (athousand pities, friend Tribune, for so
bright a man!) and very much broken down, as people thought. But he was called
into court to testify. He stood up and looked down on the floor, and told of
every step he had taken, the order of them, the year, the day, the time o' the
day, and the plave, years and years after, all as if it was right present
before his eyes. The lawyers never asked him a single question. They didn't
need to. He knew better what they wanted than any of them; and his memory was
so clear and conclusive, they did not dare doubt him. He got through - nobody
said a word - and he walked quietly away, as if he was still amid the times he
had been telling of. The land
title was settled, and the law case ended. They sent him to General Court
before he went to Congress. He was quite young then, and not known any. He
started in General Court what was called the Toleration Law. Before it was
passed, every body had to pay a minister tax in town to the settled minister.
The Doctor's law left every man free to pay who he was a mind to, and put an
end to settling ministers by the town. There were great men in the General
Court who opposed it, but young Whipple was an overmatch for them, and carried
the law; and they said it turned out very useful and different from what his
opposers said it would. I believe Jre. Mason was against him in it. Governor
Hubbard was, who wasn't so great a man as Mason - though he was a smart man,
and pretty forward. Ichabod Butler was there, and I believe took side with
Whipple. But Whipple was the starter of the act, and the champion. Whipple was
riding in the stage coach from the city of Washington, one day, when he was in
Congress, to sewe the tomb of a man named Washington, to or three miles off.
There was a number of Congress members in, some of them from the South. The
driver saw a little negro child ahead in the road. He gathered up his reins,
and said "I'll run over that little devil, and started his horses into a
full run. Whipple sprung forward, and dashing through the forward window,
seized the driver like a lion, and told him he'd tear him limb from limb, if he
ran over that child! It is true, he was a resolute man, Doctor Whipple was, and
a great hand for human rights, and wouldn't see any body abused. I wish I had a
memory like him, friend Tribune, I'd give you the facts of the world in my day
- 't would be worth your hearing. The Doctor died. He was a great Doctor, but
couldn't cure himself. If he had lived, friend Tribune, and hadn't been
intemperate, he would have been a man as much heard of as any ever raised in
the State. I am your friend
THE
OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Franconia
Notch, May 7, 1846