the distance of a furlong we crossed another, which is the 

 head water of the Saco. The latter stream, turning to the 

 east, speedily enters a pond, about thirty rods in diameter, 

 lying at a small distance on the northern side of the road ; and 

 thence, crossing the road again and winding along the margin 

 of a meadow formed by a beaver dam, enters the Notch. 

 The northeastern cluster of mountains begins to ascend from 

 the pond. The diameter of the meadow is about a furlong. 

 The beaver dam was erected just below the Notch, in a place 

 happily selected for this purpose. The mountains were 

 scarcely visible at all until we came upon them. 



The weather had now become perfectly fine. The clouds, 

 assuming a fleecy aspect, rose to a great height, and floated in 

 a thin dispersion. The wind was a mere zephyr; and the sky 

 exhibited the clear and beautiful blue of autumn. 



The Notch of the White Mountains is a phrase appro- 

 priated to a very narrow deflle extending two miles in length 

 between two huge cliffs, apparently rent asunder by some vast 

 convulsion of nature. This convulsion was, in my own 

 view, unquestionably that of the Deluge. There are here, and 

 throughout New England, no eminent proofs of volcanic 

 violence; nor any strong exhibitions of the power of earth- 

 quakes. Nor has history recorded any earthquake or vol- 

 cano in other countries of sufficient efficacy to produce the 

 phenomena of this place. The objects rent asunder are too 

 great, the ruin is too vast and too complete, to have been ac- 

 complished by these agents. The change appears to have 

 been effectuated when the surface of the earth extensively sub- 

 sided ; when countries and continents assumed a new face and 

 a general commotion of the elements produced the disruption 

 of some mountains, and merged others beneath the common 

 level of desolation. Nothing less than this will account for 

 the sundering of a long range of great rocks, or rather of vast 

 mountains ; or for the existing evidences of the immense force 

 by which the rupture was effected. 



The entrance of the chasm is formed by two rocks, stand- 

 ing perpendicularly at the distance of twenty-two feet from 



27 



