Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: Part 1 from Volume VI of The Works of John Greenleaf WhittierWhittier, John Greenleaf
History
Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: Part 1 from Volume VI of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Biography
"To the south stretched a broken, swelling upland country, but champaign
from the top of North Hill, patched all over with grain-fields and green
wood-lots, the roofs of the farm-houses shining in the sun. Southwest,
the Cardigan Mountain showed its bald forehead among the smokes of a
thousand fires, kindled in the woods in the long drought. Westward,
Moosehillock heaved up its long back, black as a whale; and turning the
eye on northward, glancing down the while on the Baker's River valley,
dotted over with human dwellings like shingle-bunches for size, you
behold the great Franconia Range, its Notch and its Haystacks, the
Elephant Mountain on the left, and Lafayette (Great Haystack) on the
right, shooting its peak in solemn loneliness high up into the desert
sky, and overtopping all the neighboring Alps but Mount Washington
itself. The prospect of these is most impressive and satisfactory. We
don't believe the earth presents a finer mountain display. The Haystacks
stand there like the Pyramids on the wall of mountains. One of them
eminently has this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate a pyramid to the
eye as any in the old valley of the Nile, and a good deal bigger than any
of those hoary monuments of human presumption, of the impious tyranny of
monarchs and priests, and of the appalling servility of the erecting
multitude. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh does not more finely resemble a
sleeping lion than the huge mountain on the left of the Notch does an
elephant, with his great, overgrown rump turned uncivilly toward the gap
where the people have to pass. Following round the panorama, you come to
the Ossipees and the Sandwich Mountains, peaks innumerable and nameless,
and of every variety of fantastic shape. Down their vast sides are
displayed the melancholy-looking slides, contrasting with the fathomless
woods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account