through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a
wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans,
was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside
as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand
directly across his intended road. He tarries not for such an
obstacle, but, rending it asunder a thousand feet from peak to base,
discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all
the secrets of the mountain's inmost heart, with a mighty fracture
of rugged precipices on each side. This is the Notch of the White
Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to describe it by so mean
an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes
which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception,
of Omnipotence.

. . . . .

We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the
appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice in the
solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and
precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few
evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is
the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, the extremity, of
the romantic defile of the Notch. Before emerging from it, the
rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled
out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a
smart driver, in a drab great-coat, touching the wheel-horses with
the whip-stock and reigning in the leaders. To my mind there was a
sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior to what would
have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war-party gliding
forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a very