Boy Scouts in the White Mountains: The Story of a Long HikeEaton, Walter Prichard
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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
“We’ve not time, I’m afraid,” Mr. Rogers replied. “We’d have to walk a
mile or more. It isn’t so impressive full face. In fact, this is the
only spot where the human likeness is perfect. At many points along the
road the full face view shows only a mass of rocks.”
Lou was still looking at the great stone face gazing solemnly down over
the valley.
“It’s like the Sphinx, somehow,” he said. “I’ve always thought of the
Sphinx looking forever out over the desert, and this old man of the
mountain looks just the same way forever down the Notch. It gives me a
funny feeling--I can’t explain it. But somehow it seems as if he ought
to be very wise.”
Peanut laughed, but Mr. Rogers didn’t laugh.
“Lou has just the right feeling about it,” he said. “Lou has just the
feeling they say the Indians had. To the Indians, the Great Stone Face
was an object of veneration. Did any of you ever read Hawthorne’s
story, ‘The Great Stone Face’?”
None of the boys ever had.
“Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves,” said the Scout Master.
“I’m going to see if Mr. Goodwin has the book, and read it to you. How
would you like to take to-morrow off, and climb up to his forehead, and
read the story there, and then go over to the Crawford House by train,
instead of hiking the twenty-five miles over, on a motor road full of
dust?”
“Hooray! Me for that!” cried Peanut.
“Me, too!” cried the rest of the Scouts.
“Well, we’ll do it, if I can borrow the book,” said Mr. Rogers. “Now,
back to make a camp!”
At the depot the boys shouldered their packs again, and Mr. Rogers
directed them to go north up the road till they came to Echo Lake.
“Leave your packs at the little store,” he said, “and go down to the
boat house and get the man to take you out in a launch. I’ll get a
shave and meet you there.”
The Scouts set off up the road, and the Scout Master went into the
hotel. When he had been shaved, he followed up the road, and as he drew
near Echo Lake, a beautiful little pond at the foot of a great cliff
just north of Eagle Cliff, he heard the long-drawn note of a bugle
floating out over the water, and echoing back from the cliff. He called
the boys in from the landing.
“Oh, that’s lovely!” Lou exclaimed. “The sound just seems to float
back, as if somebody was up on top of the cliff with another bugle,
answering you!”
They paid the boatman and went back to the little store, where the boys
had already consumed two sodas apiece, and Peanut had bought two pounds
of candy. From there they went still farther north up the road, and
suddenly plunged down a path to the left, into a ravine, with a brook
at the bottom, and in among a grove of gigantic hemlocks.
“There are real trees!” said Mr. Rogers. “They are relics of the forest
primeval. ‘This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the
hemlocks’--and so forth.”
“Only there’s no ‘deep-mouthed neighboring ocean,’” Rob laughed.
“There’s a brook,” said Lou.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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