the hill the veterans of the Grand Army have erected barracks, and there
they annually assemble, build their camp fires, recount old scenes,
fight mimic battles, and close up their ranks thinned by time. The
approach to their camp is guarded by cannon, used to salute some honored
comrade, and overlooked by an observatory on which stands no sentinel.

We had made up our minds "to do" the White Mountains, Molly, Fritz and
I, the latter being an indefinite person, and we calculated on going
prepared. We had spent a fortnight reading Starr King's "White Hills,"
studying handbooks and Hitchcock's Geology of New Hampshire, Then it
took us a week to do the packing. One bright summer day we started;
night found us at Plymouth on the banks of the Pemigewasset, at the very
gateway of the mountains. We slept at the Pemigewasset House, where we
were shown the room in which Hawthorne died twenty years ago, while on
an excursion for health with his friend Franklin Pierce. That will be
what Plymouth will be famous for one hundred years hence--the place
where Hawthorne died. "It is a pleasant place at which to die," said
Fritz, "but I had rather have been born there."

[Illustration: WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE, FROM JEFFERSON.]

Following up the valley by the river-road through the towns of Campton,
Thornton, and Woodstock, one sees himself surrounded on either hand by
towering mountains and the most exquisite rural scenery. Another road
following the Indian trail from Canada to the coast, over which the
weary feet of many a captive passed in the old time, driven ruthlessly
from their homes to the wilderness by their savage captors, passes
through Rumney and Wentworth to Warren summit, the lowest land in the
"divide" between the Connecticut and Merrimack valleys, yet a thousand
feet above the ocean. Moosilauke, the ancient Moosehillock, here stands