226 Miscellaneous Notices of Mountain Scenery^ ^-c. 



for life. In this way they reached the bridge over the Amo- 

 noosuck near Crawford's, just in time to pass it before it was 

 carried down the current. On Wednesday, the weather be- 

 ing clear and beautiful, and the waters having subsided, six 

 gentlemen, with a guide, went to Mount Washington, and one 

 accompanied Mr. Crawford to the " Notch," from which 

 nothing had yet been heard. We met again at evening, 

 and related to each other what we had seen. The party 

 who went to the mountain were five hours in reaching the 

 site of the camp, instead of three, the usual time. The path 

 for nearly one-third of the distance was so much excavated, 

 or covered with miry sand, or blocked up with flood wood, 

 that they were obliged to grope their way through thickets 

 almost impenetrable, where one generation of trees after 

 another had risen and fallen, and were now lying across 

 each other in every direction, and in various stages of de- 

 cay. The camp itself had been wholly swept away ; and the 

 bed of the rivulet by which it had stood, was now more than 

 ten rods wide, and with banks from ten to fifteen feet high. 

 Four or five other brooks were passed, whose beds were en- 

 larged some of them to twice the extent of this. In several, 

 the water was now only three or four feet wide, while the 

 bed of ten fifteen or twenty rods in width, was covered for 

 miles with stones from two to five feet in diameter, that had 

 been rolled down the mountains, and through the forests, 

 by thousands, bearing every thing before them. Not a tree, 

 nor the root of a tree remained in their path. Immense 

 piles of hemlocks and other trees with their limbs and bark 

 entirely bruised off", were lodged all the way on both sides, 

 as they had been driven in among the standing and half 

 standing trees on the banks. While the party were chmbing 

 the mountain, thirty " slides" were counted, some of which 

 began near the line where the soil and vegetation terminate, 

 and growing wider as they descended, were estimated to 

 contain more than a hundred acres. These were all on the 

 western side of the mountains. They were composed of 

 the whole surface of the earth with all its growth of woods, 

 and its loose rocks, to the depth of fifteen, twenty, and thir- 

 ty feet. And wherever the slides of the two projecting moun- 

 tains met forming a vast ravine, the depth was still greater. 

 Such was the report which the party from the mountains 

 gave. The intelligence which Mr. Crawford, and the gen- 

 tleman accompanying him, brought from the Notch, was of 

 a more melancholy nature. The road, though a turnpike 



