The steamboat journey upon the lake discloses its beauties, the gentle tree-clad shores with higher hills and mountains behind them, the many pleasant cottages, and the wonderfully clear green waters. It is a curious place, all arms and bays and great protruding necks of land, the open spaces dotted with islands, so that everywhere there are long vista views across the water and far up into the inlets of the shores, while the large double peak of Mount Belknap stands up massive and impressive at the southwestern border, and opposite in the northeast is the proud white summit of Chocorua. Edward Everett, speaking of his extensive travels in Europe, says, "My eye has yet to rest on a lovelier scene than that which smiles around you as you sail from Weirs Landing to Centre Harbor." The Weirs Landing is at the head of a deep bay made by the outlet stream, and is a popular summer camping-ground, the edge of the water fringed with cottages and the adjacent groves used by the camps. Many fish ascended the outlet stream in the early times seeking the clear waters, and the shallows at the outlet were availed of by the Indians to set their nets, so that it naturally got the name of the Weirs. Here, adjoining the shore, is the ancient "Endicott Rock," which was marked by the first surveyors sent up by Governor Endicott of Massachusetts to find the source of the Merrimack. The outlet stream goes through a region of many ponds and lakes bordered by large icehouses, the chief of these waters being Lake Winnisquam, and all these extensive reservoirs help to supply the great river of mill-wheels. The longest fiord indented in the southern shore of Winnepesaukee is narrow and five miles long, called Alton Bay, and it has a most attractive environment, with Mount Belknap rising to the westward twenty-four hundred feet high. Upon the northern shore, grandly encircled by the Sandwich Mountains, the most extensive bay running up into the land is Centre Harbor, and here is a popular place of summer sojourn. Its background is a grand mountain amphitheatre from Red Hill to the westward around to the dark Ossipee range to the east, while in front, over the lake, is one of the most charming views in nature, with its many islands, long arms, deep bays, and strangely protruding elongated necks of wooded land. Thus the delicious water scene stretches for over twenty miles away, having in the distance the twin peaks of Belknap and the long and wavy summits of the attendant ridges nestling low and blue at the southern horizon. Climbing to the top of Red Hill, rising over two thousand feet, this magnificent view is got in a way which one charmed observer says "defies competition, as it transcends description; it is the perfection of earthly prospects." Whittier, who was passionately fond of this whole region, after admiring it from Red Hill, wrote the noble invocation: