EXPLORATIONS AMONG THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 69 



level. The first party consisted of Adino N. Brackett, John W. Weeks, 

 Gen. John Wilson, Charles J. Stuart, Noyes S. Dennison, and Samuel A. 

 Pearson, of Lancaster, with Philip Carrigain and E. A. Crawford, the 

 latter acting as pilot and baggage-carrier. This party gave names to Mts. 

 Pleasant, Franklin, Monroe, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. They called 

 the Lake of the Clouds " Blue pond ; " and the locality since named after 

 Bigelow was by them called " Carrigain's lawn." The dead, gnarled trees, 

 which are especially conspicuous on Moosilauke and common on all the 

 mountains, received special notice. They were called by some members 

 of the party buck's horns, and by others bleached bones. The cause of the 

 death of these trees they supposed to have been the cold seasons which 

 prevailed from 1812 to 18 16, saying, "It can hardly be doubted that 

 during the whole of the year 18 16 these trees continued frozen." This 

 was the year long remembered as the "year without a summer." About 

 a month after this visit, Weeks, Stuart, and Brackett, accompanied by 

 Richard Eastman, spent seven days in levelling to the tops of all these 

 mountains from Lancaster, encamping on them four nights ; that of 

 August 31st on the summit of Mt. Washington. They must have been 

 the first party who ever spent the night upon the summit. They made 

 Mt. Washington 6,428 feet above the sea, or 5,850 feet above the river at 

 Lancaster. An interesting account of these visits is found in the " New 

 Hampshire Historical Collections" for 1823. During the year following 

 these visits, Capt. Partridge again computed the height of Mt. Washing- 

 ton from barometrical observations, giving 6,234 f eer - The observations 

 of Dr. C. T. Jackson, in 1840, were quite accurate for the difference in 

 height between Mt. Washington and the notch. Correcting the error for 

 the height of the notch, his figures would stand 6,303, instead of 6,228, 

 only ten feet in excess of the correct height. Prof. Arnold Guyot, in 

 185 1, from barometrical observations, gives the figures of 6,291 feet. In 

 his memoir of the "Appalachian Mountain System," published in 1861, he 

 has altered these figures to 6,288. In 1853, Capt. T. J. Cram levelled to 

 the summit of Mt. Washington, under the direction of the United States 

 Coast Survey, and reported its height to be 6,293 feet, which may be 

 assumed to be the true altitude. 



The Indians are said to have been restrained by awe and fear from 

 climbing to the summits of these mountains. Their traditions repre- 



