306 Contributions to Physical Geogra/phy. 



seven miles to travel on foot, and six of them by a rugged 

 path through a gloomy forest. They ran as fast as their cir- 

 cumstances would permit ; but the dark evergreens around 

 them, and the black clouds above, made it night before they 

 had gone half the way. The rain poured down faster every 

 moment ; and the little streams, which they had stepped across 

 the evening before, must now be crossed by wading, or by 

 cutting down trees for bridges, to which they were obliged to 

 cling for life. In this way they reached the bridge over the 

 Amonoosuck near Crawford's just in time to pass it before it 

 was carried down the current. On Wednesday, the weather 

 being clear and beautiful, and the waters having subsided, six 

 gentlemen, with a guide, went to Mount Washington, and one 

 accompanied Mr Crawford to the " Notch," from which no- 

 thing had yet been heard. We met again at evening, and re- 

 lated to each other what we had seen. The party who went 

 to the mountain were five hours in reaching the site of the 

 camp, instead of three, the usual time. The path for nearly 

 one-third of the distance was so much excavated, or covered 

 with miry sand, or blocked up with flood-wood, that they were 

 obliged to grope their way through thickets almost impene- 

 trable, where one generation of trees after another had risen 

 and fallen, and were now lying across each other in every di- 

 rection, and in various stages of decay. The camp itself had 

 been wholly swept away ; and the bed of the rivulet by which 

 it had stood was now more than ten rods wide, and with banks 

 from ten to fifteen feet high. Four or five other brooks were 

 passed, whose beds were enlarged some of them to twice the 

 extent of this. In several, the water was now only three or 

 four feet wide, while the bed of ten, fifteen, or twenty rods in 

 width, was covered for miles with stones from two to five feet 

 in diameter, that had been rolled down the mountains, and 

 through the forests, by thousands, bearing every thing before 

 them. Not a tree, nor the root of a tree remained in their 

 path. Immense piles of hemlocks, and other trees with their 

 limbs and bark entirely bruised off, were lodged all the way 

 on both sides, as they had been driven in among the standing 

 and half standing trees on the banks. While the party wete 

 climbing the mountain, thirty " slides'' were counted, some of 



