fat lady on the back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist, a
scientific, green-spectacled figure in black, bearing a heavy
hammer, with which he did great damage to the precipices, and put
the fragments in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed young man,
who carried an operaglass set in gold, and seemed to be making a
quotation from some of Byron's rhapsodies on mountain scenery.
There was also a trader, returning from Portland to the upper part
of Vermont; and a fair young girl, with a very faint bloom like one
of those pale and delicate flowers which sometimes occur among
alpine cliffs.

They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine
forest, which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own
dismal shade. Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre,
surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine
long before it left the external world. It was here that we
obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the principal
group of mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when
contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the
long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather
than of towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to
Heaven: he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the
only cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head.
Let us forget the other names of American statesmen that have been
stamped upon these hills, but still call the loftiest WASHINGTON.
Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. They must stand while
she endures, and never should be consecrated to the mere great men
of their own age and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose
glory is universal, and whom all time will render illustrious.