the White-Hills of New-Hampshire. 31 



data from which those calculations have been made 

 must, in that case, be false. Dr. Cutler, some years ago, 

 made the altitude of Mount- Washington 5000 feet 

 above its eastern base. Were I to form, from the eye, 

 an opinion of the comparative altitude of the mountain 

 above its eastern, in relation to its altitude above its 

 western, base, I should think the western some hun- 

 dreds of feet more elevated than the eastern base. Dr. 

 Cutler, however, acknowledges his liability to error in 

 the above calculation, from the violent agitation of the 

 mercury in the barometer while it was carried up the 

 hill, and from his not having a barometer at its base, 

 with which simultaneous observations could have been 

 made. His calculations, upon the whole, are probably 

 pretty near the truth. 



This ground is decidedly more elevated above the 

 ocean than any other in New-England. It presents a 

 prospect truly grand, and often awfully sublime. In a 

 clear day, the naked eye can measure a distance of sixty 

 miles. The horizon forms an ellipsis, whose transverse 

 diameter is from one hundred to one hundred and 

 twenty miles, and whose conjugate is from forty to sixty 

 miles, in the direction of the poles. Mooshillock bounds 

 the prospect upon the south. The peak of this is second 

 in point of elevation in the range of high lands, between 

 Connecticut- River, on the one hand, and the head- waters 

 of the Merrimac, the Saco, and the Amei iscoggin, on 

 the other. The sources of the three last rivers, and of 

 the Ammonoosuck, are but a little way distant from each 

 other. We had a very good spy- glass, with which we 

 could, very readily, descry the variously-shaped dwell- 



