of the While Moimtains. 85 



Tuckerman's ravine, where there is no path, but merely the bed 

 of a brook, whose cold clear water tumbles in a succession of 

 cascades over huge polished masses of white gneiss, while on both 

 sides of it the bottom of the ravine is occupied by dense and al- 

 most impenetrable thickets of the mountain alder (Alnus viridis.) 

 Tuckerman's ravine has been formed originally either by a 

 subsidence of a portion of the mountain side or by the action of 

 the sea. It is, like most of the ravines and '* gulfs " of these 

 hills, a deep cut or depression bounded by precipitous sides, and 

 terminating at the top in a similarly precipitous manner. It 

 must at one period have been in part filled with boulder clay, 

 steep banks of which still remain in places on its sides ; and ex- 

 tensive landslips have occurred, by which portions of the liniiting 

 cliflfs have been thrown toward the centre of the valley, in large 

 piles of angular blocks of gneiss and mica slate, in the spaces 

 between which grow gnarled birches and spruces that must be 

 used as ladders and bridges whereby to scramble from block to 

 block, by every one who would cross or ascend one of these rivers 

 of stones. 



At the head of the ravine we paused to rest, to admire the wild 

 prospect presented by the ravine and its precipitous sides, and 

 to collect the numerous plants that flower on the surrounding 

 slopes and precipices. Here on the 19th of August were several 

 large patches of snow, one of them about an hundred yards in 

 length. From the precipice at the head of the ravine, poured 

 hundreds of little rills, and several of them collecting into a brook, 

 had excavated in the largest mass of snow a long tunnel or 

 cavern with an arched and groined roof. Under the front of 

 this we took our mid-day meal, with the hot August sun pouring 

 it^ rays in front of us, and icy water gurgling among the stones 

 at our feet. Around the margin of the snow the vegetation pre- 

 sented precisely the same appearances which are seen in the low 

 country in March and April, when the snow banks have just 

 disappeared — the old grass bleached and whitened, and many 

 perennial plants sending up blanched shoots which had not yet 

 experienced the influence of the sunlight. 



The vegetation at the head of this ravine and on the precipices 

 that overhang it, presents a remarkable mixture of lowland and 

 mountain species. The head of the ravine is not so high as the 

 limit of trees already stated, but its steep sides rise abruptly to a 

 plateau of 5000 feet in height intervening between Mount Wash- 



