The Great Stone Face

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Great Stone Face


Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley description as to form
quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the
homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had
encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of
the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the
rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his
paw.

I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them
before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony
of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle
of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all
into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.

It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in
the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was
built of rough stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree
for a backlog. A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is
at his very door. In the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we
held our hands before our eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow,
and began a pleasant variety of conversation. The mineralogist and the
physician talked about the invigorating qualities of the mountain air,
and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford's father, an old man of
seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The two brides and
the doctor's wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their frequent
titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials or
enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a
corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being
still in the odd predicament of bashfulness towards their own young
wives. The Green Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and
described the difficulties he had met with half a century ago in
travelling from the Connecticut River through the Notch to Conway, now
a single day's journey, though it had cost him eighteen. The Georgians
held the album between them, and favored us with the few specimens
of its contents which they considered ridiculous enough to be worth
hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a 'Sonnet to the
Snow on Mount Washington,' and had been contributed that very afternoon,
bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annals. The
lines were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar
sentiment, and cold as their subject, resembling those curious specimens
of crystallized vapor which I observed next day on the mountain top. The
poet was understood to be the young gentleman of the gold opera glass,
who heard our laudatory remarks with the composure of a veteran.

Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter
evening another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer
travellers were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a
month hereabouts, in sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen
of New England, who then elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds,
on their way to Portland. There could be no better school for such a
place than Ethan Crawford's inn. Let the student go thither in December,
sit down with the teamsters at their meals, share their evening
merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed has its three
occupants, and parlor, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers
around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his
greatcoat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan
a mile or two, to see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A
treasure of characteristic traits will repay all inconveniences, even
should a frozen nose be of the number.

The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere,
and we recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the
father and mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending
the peak of Mount Washington. The children of that pair have been
overwhelmed, and found no such refuge. In the mythology of the savage,
these mountains were afterwards considered sacred and inaccessible,
full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at lofty heights by the blaze
of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who sometimes shrouded
themselves in the snowstorm and came down on the lower world. There
are few legends more poetical than that of the' Great Carbuncle' of the
White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be
seen shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake,
high up among the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were
inthralled with an unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit
guarded that inestimable jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a
dark mist from the enchanted lake. Thus life was worn away in the vain
search for an unearthly treasure, till at length the deluded one went up
the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but returned no more. On this
theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.

The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions
of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre of the haunted
region. The habits and sentiments of that departed people were too
distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It
has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the
most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any
romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at
least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian
story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as
referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives
him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which
will sustain him there.

I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our
mineralogist had found the three 'Silver Hills' which an Indian sachem
sold to an Englishman nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of
which the posterity of the purchaser have been looking for ever since.
But the man of science had ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew
nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual with
men on the eve of great adventure, we had prolonged our session deep
into the night, considering how early we were to set out on our six
miles' ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a general
breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw but
little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the
first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb
above the clouds; nor when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed
through a broken pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered
chamber, did I anticipate much alacrity on my own part, though we were
to seek for the 'Great Carbuncle.'