Notices of Mount Washington and the vicinity. 79 
thickly around us, and disclosed the immense bosoms of the val- 
leys and the green forests that opened among this wild ocean 
of mountains; the trees on their sides, appeared minute and deli- 
cate as geraniums, while the deep and wide chasms produced by 
vast slides, presented horrid features of devastation, attesting the 
ravages of alpine floods, bearing down before them forest, soil, 
and rocks, with every movable thing, and thus gashing the solid 
frame work of the everlasting hills with the deep wounds of the 
olden and the modern time. 
Quite at the feet of the mountains, and along the opening vales 
and plains, ran in full view, silver streams, among cultivated fields, 
gracefully bordering the works of man—his houses, farms, and 
villages. 
Again, the clouds of flying ice, resembling tufts of cotton, closed 
thickly around, and hung an impenetrable veil between us and 
the world below; a wintry tempest now raged around, and with 
great difficulty we mounted the last rocks, and saw that there was 
nothing higher than ourselves. Here the wind blew a furious 
gale, and the strongest man among us céuld not keep his stand- 
ing without holding fast by the rocks, while those who neglected 
this precaution were instantly prostrated by the storm, which, as 
if in exultation, roared and howled with a truly savage grandeur, 
over this wild alpine solitude. ‘The cold was so severe and the 
pelting of the storm so violent, that a few minutes at a time was 
all that we could give to the mountain peak. We were glad to 
step under a covert, where the rocks afforded a partial shelter 
from the tempest, and here we finished our little remaining store 
of refreshments. 
For science there was little to survey. The piles we trod on 
were the ruins of the stupendous granite mountains, elevated in 
ancient time, lashed by the storms, cracked by frost, and mutilated 
for untold ages by the sure, although slow agencies of nature. 
The very peak of the mountain is mica slate supported by granite. 
There could be no doubt, that the immense masses of loose rocks, 
of every size, which we saw around us, were once united in a 
connected summit, and that these ruins are only evidence of the 
mighty work of demolition, which is always going on with a real 
although imperceptible progress. As to organic remains, it were 
vain to look for them in this primitive region, and almost equally 
vain is it to expect to find any living animal in these wild and bar- 
ren solitudes. It is, however, a satisfaction to have trod on the 
