68 BALD REGION. [CHAP. V. 



or pendent branches, each tree covering a considerable area, ane 

 being closely interwoven with others, so that they surround the 

 mountain with a formidable hedge about a quarter of a mrlo 

 broad. The innumerable dead boughs, which, after growing fox 

 a time, during a series of milder seasons, to a greater height, 

 have then been killed by the keen blast, present a singular ap 

 pearance. They are forked and leafless, and look like the antlers 

 of an enormous herd of deer or elk. This thicket opposed a 

 serious obstacle to those who first ascended the mountain thirty 

 years ago. Dr. Francis Boott, among others, whose description 

 of his ascent in 1816, given to me in London several years 

 before, made me resolve one day to visit the scene, was com 

 pelled, with his companion, Dr. Bigelow, to climb over the tops 

 and walk on the branches of these trees, until they came to the 

 bald region. A traveler now passes so rapidly through the open 

 pathway cut through this belt of firs, that he is in danger, while 

 admiring the distant view, of overlooking its peculiarities. The 

 trees become gradually lower and lower as you ascend, till at 

 length they trail along the ground only two or three inches high ; 

 and I actually observed, at the upper margin of this zone, that 

 the spruce was topped in its average height by the common rein 

 deer moss (Lichen range ferinus). According to Dr. Bigelow,^ 

 the upper edge of the belt of dwarf firs is at the height of 4443 

 feet above the sea. After crossing it we emerged into the bald 

 region, devoid of wood, and had still to climb 1800 feet higher, 

 before arriving at the summit. Here our long cavalcade was 

 seen zigzagging its way in single file up a steep declivity of 

 naked rock, consisting of gneiss and mica schist, but principally 

 the latter rock intermixed with much white quartz. The masses 

 of quartz are so generally overgrown with that bright-colored 

 yellowish-green lichen, so common on the Scotch mountains 

 (Lichen geographicus), that the whole surface acquires a cor 

 responding tint, visible from a great distance. This highest 

 region is characterized by an assemblage of Alpine or Arctic 

 plants, now no longer in flower, and by a variety of mosses and 



* See his excellent account of an ascent of Mount Washington in 1816, 

 Boston Medical Journal, vol. v. p. 321. 



