FORGOTTEN ROADS 163 



swing to the north, and then a long swing to the 

 south, getting in behind a pine-clad promontory we 

 call the Fiddler's Elbow, and suddenly emerging 

 triumphant from the pines into the hardwoods of 

 the level shoulder-top. From this point it goes 

 straight west, by a more gradual ascent, passing just 

 north of the summit cone, and beside Guilder Pond. 

 This little pond, the highest in the state, is over 

 two thousand feet above the sea. It is perhaps a 

 third of a mile long, its shallow water over a leafy 

 bottom a rich, dark-brown color, its banks indented 

 with rocky coves and toothed with jutting ledges, 

 each sentineled by hemlocks which show the first 

 signs of storm-dwarfing in their twisted growth. (It 

 is a curious fact that on Mount Everett timber-line 

 is practically reached at 2,500 feet. Graylock, fifty 

 miles to the north, does not reach it at 3,500, and it 

 is at something like 4,000 feet in the White Moun- 

 tains.) The rocky shore-line, too, is pink and pict- 

 uresque with laurel in early July, and the calm 

 brown mirror of the pond holds the reflection of the 

 summit cone. It is a true mountain pond, and, for- 

 tunately, is now a part of the Mount Everett State 

 Reservation. From its shores the old road, re- 

 graded by the state at this point, drops down three 

 hundred feet to the township of Mount Washington, 

 a hamlet now boasting fourteen voters (some may 

 have died since this was written) , and situated on a 

 high plateau which again plunges down, on the 

 western side, past the wild and beautiful Bash Bish 

 Falls, to Copake Iron Works in New York State. 

 At present, to reach Mount Washington, except on 

 foot, I must either go nine miles south or five miles 



