312 I GO A- FISHING. 



On Monday morning, having a favorable report from 

 our explorers, we pushed on for Dixville Notch. The 

 roads are good in all this part of New Hampshire. Our 

 route lay up the Mohawk River, which, flowing from the 

 Notch and receiving other streams, empties into the Con- 

 necticut at Colebrook. As we rode along we noted that 

 trout were rising in the pools visible from the road. ( It is 

 doubtless a stream well worth fishing. 



At length we began to ascend toward the Notch. The 

 forest closed in. The trees not only met above the road, 

 but they fairly closed the road with long, slender, leaf- 

 covered branches, so that the carriage sailed through a 

 sea of leaves, parting them on either side as a boat parts 

 the water. Thus for two miles, when suddenly we came 

 out of the thicket and found ourselves at the gate of the 

 Notch. 



It is one of the wildest and most imposing pieces of 

 rock and mountain scenery on the Atlantic side of our 

 country. Totally different from, and therefore not to be 

 compared with any of the passes among the White Mount- 

 ains, it has peculiar characteristics which are not equaled 

 elsewhere. In general it may be said that the Notch looks 

 as if it had been produced by a convulsion of nature, 

 which broke the mountain ridge from underneath, throw- 

 ing the strata of rocks up into the air, and letting them 

 fall in all directions. The result is that the lines of strat- 

 ification in the solid part of the hills point upward, some- 

 times nearly perpendicularly, and several pinnacles of 

 rock, like the falling spires of cathedrals, stand out 

 against the sky. On Saturday the Baron had made the 

 ascent of one of these pinnacles or spires, and came near 

 being converted into a St. Simeon Stylites, for the rock 

 crumbled behind him, and left him no visible way of re- 



