5 July 1858 – 11 July 1858

Monday. Continue on through Senter Harbor and ascend Red Hillin Moultonboro. On this ascent I notice the Erigeron annuus, which we have not, me- thinks, 2. e. purple fleabane (for it is commonly purplish), hairy with thin leaves and broader than the strigosus. Notice the Comandra umbellata, with leaves in three very regular spiral lines. Dr. Jackson says that Red Mill is so called from the uva-ursi on it turning red in the fall. On the top we boil a dipper of tea for our din- ner and spend some hours, having carried up water the last half-mile.

Tuesday. 5.35 a. M.— Keep on through North Tamworth, and breakfast by shore of one of the Ossipee Lakes. Chocorua north-northwest. Hear and see loons and see a peetweet’s egg washed up. A shallow-shored pond, too shallow for fishing, with a few breams seen near shore; some pontederia and target- weed in it. Travelling thus toward the White Mountains, the mountains fairly begin with Red Hill and Ossipee Mountain, but the White Mountain scenery proper on the high hillside road in Madison before entering Con- way, where you see Chocorua on the left, Mote Moun- tain ahead, Doublehead, and some of the White Moun- tains proper beyond, 2. e. a sharp peak. We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the road- side in Madison.

Wednesday. Having engaged the services of Wentworth to carry up some of our baggage and to keep our camp, we rode onward to the Glen House, eight miles further, sending back our horse and wagon to his house. This road passes through what is called the Pinkham Notch, in Pinkham’s Grant, the land, a large tract, having been given away to Pinkham for making the road a good while since. Wentworth has lived here thirty years and is a native. Have occa- sional views of Mt. Washington or a spur of it, etc. Get by roadside, in bloom some time, Geum macro- phyllum; also, in a damp place, Platanthera dilatata, a narrow white spike. Turned off a little to the right to see Glen Ellis Falls. Began the ascent by the mountain road at 11.30 a. m. For about the first three quarters of a mile of steady (winding) ascent the wood was spruce, yellow birch (some, generally the largest, with a very rough, coarse, scaly bark, but other trees equally large had a beauti- © fully smooth bark, and Wentworth called these “silver birch;”’ it appeared not to depend on age merely), hem- lock, beech, canoe birch (according to Willey, “ most abundant in the districts formerly burnt”’), rock maple, fir, mountain maple (called by Wentworth bastard maple), northern wild cherry, striped maple, etc. At about a mile and three quarters spruce prevails, and rock maple, beech, and hemlock, etc., disappear. At three miles, or near the limit of trees, fir (increasing) and spruce chiefly prevail. And near by was the foot of the ledge and limit of trees, only their dead trunks stand- ing, probably fir and spruce, about the shanty where we spent the night with the colliers.

Though a fair day, the sun did not rise clear. I started before my companions, wishing to secure a clear view from the summit, while they accompanied the collier and his assistant, who were conducting up to the summit for the first time his goats. He led the old one, and the rest followed. I noticed these plants this morning and the night before at and above the limit of trees: Oxalis Acetosella, abundant and in bloom near the shanty and further down the mountain, all over the woods; Cornus Cana- densis, also abundantly in bloom about the shanty and far above and below it. At shanty, or limit of trees. began to find Alsine Grenlandica abundant and in prime, the first mountain flower.’ Noticed one return- ing, in carriage-road more than half-way down the mountain. It extended to within a mile of summit along path,’ and grew about our camp at Hermit Lake. The second mountain plant I noticed was the ledum,? growing in dense continuous patches or fields, filling broad spaces between the rocks, but dwarfish compared with ours in Concord. It was still in bloom. It pre- vailed about two miles below the summit. At the same elevation I noticed the Vaccinium uliginosum, a pre- vailing plant from the ledge to perhaps one mile or more below summit, almost entirely out of bloom, a procumbent bilberry, growing well, not dwarfish, with peculiar glaucous roundish-obovate leaves. About the same time and locality, Salix Uva-ursi, the prevailing willow of the alpine region, completely out of bloom and going or gone to seed, a flat, trailing, glossy-leaved willow with the habit of the bearberry, spreading in a close mat over the rocks or rocky surface. I saw one spreading flat for three or four feet over a rock in the ravine (as low as I saw it).4 Diapensia Lapponica (Menziesia cerulea),® beginning about same time, or just over the ledge, reached yet higher, or to within last mile. Quite out of bloom; only one flower seen. It grows in close, firm, and dense rounded tufts, just like a moss but harder, between the rocks, the flowers con- ’ According to Durand at 78° N. in Smith’s Sound. ‘ Durand in Kane places this at 65° N. in Greenland, but Kane (vol. i, p. 462) says that Morton and Hans saw it along the shore of Kennedy Channel, the furthest coast reached, and that with the south- ern Esquimaux it is reputed to cure scurvy. siderably elevated above its surface. Empetrum nigrum, growing somewhat like Corema, with berries green and some turning black.’ Mountain cranberry was abun- dant and in bloom, a very pretty flower, with, say, the Vaccinium uliginosum and to within last mile. Gold-thread in bloom, was abundant to within last mile. As high as the above, on this side or that ex- tended dwarf shrubby canoe birches and almost im- passable thickets of dwarf fir and spruce. The latter when dead exhibited the appearance of deer’s horns, their hard, gnarled, slow-grown branches being twisted in every direction. Their roots were singularly knotted and swollen from time to time, from the size of the finger into oval masses like a ship’s block, or a rabbit made of a handkerchief. Epigea.”? At this height, too, was a Lycopodium annotinum, a variety; and, prob- ably, there, too, L. Selago, as at edge of ravine; * sedges, sorrel, moss, and lichens. Was surprised not to notice the Potentilla tridentata in bloom till quite high, though common on low mountains southward.‘ Here it was above the trailing spruce, answering to top of Monad- nock, and with it came more sedge, 2. e. a more grassy surface without many larger plants. (George Bradford says he has found this potentilla on Cape Ann, at East- ern Point, east side Gloucester Harbor.*) About a mile below top, Gewm radiatum var. Peckii in prime, and * According to Durand at 79° N. ’ And Russell says in the college yard at Amherst. a little Szlene acaulis (moss campion), still in bloom, a pretty little purplish flower growing like a moss in dense, hard tufts.’ The rocks of the alpine portion are of about uniform size, not large nor precipitous. Generally there is no- thing to prevent ascending in any direction, and there is no climbing necessary on the summit. For the last mile the rocks are generally smaller and more bare and the ascent easier, and there are some rather large level grassy spaces. The rocks are not large and flat enough to hold water, ason Monadnock. I saw but little water on this summit, though in many places, commonly in small holes on the grassy flats, and I think the rocky portion under your feet is less interesting than at Monadnock. I sweated in a thick coat as I ascended. About half a mile below top I noticed dew on the mossy, tufted surface, with mountain cranberry in the sedge.

Friday. Walked to the Hermit Lake, some forty rods northeast. istera cordata abundant and in prime in the woods, with a hitle Platanthera obtusata, also apparently in prime. (The last also as far up as the head of the ravine sparingly.) This was a cold, clear lake with scarcely a plant in it, of perhaps half an acre, and from a low ridge east of it was a fine view up the ravine. Hoar tried in vain for trout here. The Vacci- nium Canadense was the prevailing one here and by our camp. Heard a bullfrog in the lake, and afterward saw a large toad part way up the ravine. Our camp was about on the limit of trees here, and may have been from twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet below the summit. I was here surprised to discover, looking down through the fir-tops, a large, bright, downy fair-weather cloud covering the lower world far beneath us, and there it was the greater part of the time we were there, like a lake, while the snow and alpine summit were to be seen above us on the other side, at about the same angle. The pure white crescent of snow was our sky, and the dark mountainside above, our permanent cloud. We had the Fringilla hyemalis with its usual note about our camp, and Wentworth said it was common and bred about his house. I afterward saw it in the valleys about the mountains. I had seen the white- throated sparrow near his house. This also, he said, commonly bred there, on the ground.

Saturday. Wentworth says he once col- lected one hundred pounds of spruce gum and sold it at Biddeford for forty cents per pound. Says there are “sable lines’ about here. They trap them, but rarely see them. His neighbor, who lives on the hill behind where we camped on the 6th, has four hours more sun than he. He can, accordingly, make hay better, but W. beats him in corn. The days are about forty minutes longer on top of Mt. Washington than at seashore, according to guide-book. The sun set to us here at least an hour earlier than usual. This ravine at the bottom of which we were, looking westward up it, had a rim somewhat like that of the crater of a volcano. The head of it bore from camp about N. 65° W., looking nearer than it was; the highest rock, with the outline of a face on it on the south rim, 5. 32° W.; a very steep cliff on the opposite side, N. 20° W.; and over the last we judged was the summit of Mt. Washington. As I understood Wentworth, this was in Pingree’s Grant; the Glen House in Pinkham’s Grant. To-day and yesterday clouds were continually drifting over the summit, commonly extending about down to the edge of the ravine. When we looked up that way, the black patch made by our fire looked like a shadow on the mountainside.

Sunday. Mizzling weather. Were visited by three men from Glen House, who thought it was well named “ Tucker's Ravine,”’ because it tuckered a man out to get to it! It rained hard all Sunday night, wetting us but little, however. One of the slender spruce trees by our camp, which we cut down, though it looked young and thrifty, being twenty-eight feet high and only six and a half inches in diameter, had about eighty rings, and the firs were at least as old. Wentworth said that he had five hundred acres, and would sell the whole with buildings for $2000. He knew a dead log on the fire to be spruce, and not fir, because the stubs of the lower part slanted downward, and also by its “straight rift.” He called a rotten cane “dozy.”’ After some observation I concluded that it was true that the base of the lower limbs of the spruce slanted down- ward more generally than those of the fir.