the White- Hills of New- Hampshire. 33 



visitants have said, recede from the touch of the inqui- 

 sitive traveller * * * *. 



Upon the ridge of high lands directly south of Mount- 

 Washington, there is a pond, from which the Ammo- 

 noosuck takes its source. Were a house erected a 

 little way east of this, the ridge pole would become the 

 dividing line of a cloud, the waters on the one side of 

 which would be precipitated down the mountain, and 

 run through the channels of the Ammonoosuck, and 

 Connecticut, into Long- Island Sound ; while those on 

 the other side would flow, with the current of the Saco, 

 into the ocean, at Maine. 



One of the greatest curiosities presented by the White- 

 Hills is the Notch, which is a natural road, that has (to 

 all appearance) been carved out by the providential hand 

 of nature, from that range of hills, to favour a commu- 

 nication between the Coos-country and the Ocean. A 

 turnpike- road is now building from Bath, through the 

 Notch, to Portland. This will throw the trade of that 

 extensive and rapidly-settling country from Boston into 

 Portland. 



Approaching the Notch, from the north-west, after 

 travelling several miles through a wilderness, where the 

 eye becomes fatigued from the uniformity of prospect, 

 and the paucity of its objects, the traveller, on a 

 sudden, finds himself almost stopped, from an apparent 

 termination of his road, at the base of an inaccessible 

 mountain. Turning around, to the left, to extricate 

 .himself from the obstacles which bar his progress, his 



VOL. III. PART I. E 



