94 IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 



and on and on, through a magnificent forest, 

 and then over more magnificent rocky heights, 

 until I stood at last on the platform of the hotel 

 at the summit. True, the path, which I had 

 never traveled before, was wet and slippery, 

 with stretches of ice and snow here and there ; 

 but the shifting view was so grand, the atmos- 

 phere so bracing, and the solitude so impressive 

 that I enjoyed every step, till it came to clam- 

 bering up the Mount Washington cone over the 

 bowlders. At this point, to speak frankly, I 

 began to hope that the ninth mile would prove 

 to be a short one. The guide-books are agreed 

 in warning the visitor against making this as- 

 cent without a companion, and no doubt they 

 are right in so doing. A crippling accident 

 would almost inevitably be fatal, while for sev- 

 eral miles the trail is so indistinct that it would 

 be difficult, if not impossible, to follow it in a 

 fog. And yet, if one is willing to take the 

 risk (and is not so unfortunate as never to 

 have learned how to keep himself company), 

 he will find a very considerable compensation 

 in the peculiar pleasure to be experienced in 

 being absolutely alone above the world. For 

 myself, I was shut up to going in this way or 

 not going at all ; and a Bostonian must do 

 something patriotic on the Seventeenth of June. 

 But for all that, if the storm which chased me 



