Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long Hike — John Shaqi
Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long HikeEaton, Walter Prichard
General
Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long Hike
Eaton, Walter Prichard
Boy Scouts -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction; White Mountains (N.H. and Me.) -- Juvenile fiction
“The mountains almost always gather clouds, like a dew, at night in
summer,” the Scout Master said. “Well, boys, do you feel up to tackling
Bridal Veil Falls before we tackle Kinsman?”
There came a “Yes!” in unison. All packs and equipment were left in
camp, and shortly after six the party set out in light marching trim
up a logging road which followed the brook bed. It led over a high
pasture, and finally plunged into a thick second growth forest, where
the dew on the branches soaked everybody, but particularly Peanut,
who was leading and got the first of it. The path crossed the brook
several times on old corduroy log bridges, now nearly rotted away, and
grew constantly steeper. The boys were panting a bit. They hadn’t got
their mountain wind yet. After two miles, during which, but for the
steepness, they might have been leagues from any mountain for all they
could see, they began to hear a roaring in the woods above them. They
hastened on, and suddenly, right ahead, they saw a smooth, inclined
plane of rock, thirty or forty feet long, with the water slipping down
over it like running glass, and above it they saw a sheer precipice
sixty feet high, with a V-shaped cut in the centre. Through the bottom
of this V the brook came pouring, and tumbled headlong to the ledge
below.
“Up we go!” cried Peanut, tackling the smooth sloping ledge at a dry
strip on the side. He got a few feet, and began to slip back.
The rest laughed, and tackled the slide at various spots. Only the
Scout Master, with a grin, went way to the right and climbed easily up
by a hidden path on the side ledge. He got to the base of the falls
before the boys did.
“A picture, a picture!” cried Frank, as the rest finally arrived. All
the party but Frank scrambled up on a slippery boulder, drenched with
spray, beside the falls, and Frank mounted his tripod and took them,
having to use a time exposure, as there was no sun down under the
precipice.
“Now, let’s get to the top of the falls!” cried Peanut. “Is there a
path?”
“Yes, there’s a path, but it’s roundabout, and we haven’t time,” the
Scout Master answered.
“Ho, we don’t need a path, I guess,” Peanut added. “Just go right up
those rocks over there, clinging to the little hemlocks.”
He jumped across the brook from boulder to boulder, and started to
scramble up the precipice, on what looked like rocks covered with mossy
soil and young trees. He got about six feet, when all the soil came off
under his feet, the little tree he was hanging to came off on top of
him, and he descended in a shower of mould, moss, mud and evergreen.
“Guess again, Peanut,” the Scout Master laughed, when he saw the boy
rise, unhurt. “You can’t climb safely over wet moss, you know--or you
didn’t know.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Peanut, ruefully regarding the precipice.
“But I did want to get up there.”
“Forward march for Kinsman, I say,” Art put in. “That’s the business of
the day.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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