One of the beauties of the Notch is the Flume, a brook that goes leaping
through its curious zigzag channel of rock on the side of Mount Webster,
hastening on its way to join the deeper current of the Saco. Then here
is "Silver Cascade," which is above the Flume, a series of leaping,
dashing, turning waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened
foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a
swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause
by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from the scene.

The White Mountain Notch, after Mount Washington, is the great natural
feature of the range. For three miles the road follows the bottom of a
chasm between overhanging cliffs, in some places two thousand feet in
height, and at others not more than twenty-five feet apart. This is the
great thoroughfare of travel, from the northern towns on the Connecticut
to Conway and the Saco valley, and _vice versa_; and through it
pass the headwaters of the Saco, which afterwards broadens out into a
great river, and flows with rapid course through the loveliest of
valleys to the sea. Much of the natural wildness and grandeur of the
pass has been destroyed by laying the line of the Portland and
Ogdensburg Railroad, which has been graded through the ravine. Railroads
serve a great utilitarian purpose, but they have their defects; it seems
out of place to ride across Egypt or the Holy Land behind a locomotive;
a prancing steed or a camel with tinkling bells seems the most fitting
motive power. There is nothing sentimental about a railroad, but after
all who would care to return to the old methods of locomotion?

The Willey House, famous in story, stands upon the Notch road nestling
under the steep acclivity of Mount Willey, which rises some two thousand
feet behind the house.