Berlin Falls is hardly a wet-day resource, but the day on which we saw it changed its mind after we left the hotel, and from clouds and promise of sunshine turned into clouds and certainty of rain. For all that, the drive along the river, within sound of its roaring and gurgling and rippling and laughing overflow of joy, with occasional glimpses of it through the trees, with gray cloud-curtains constantly dropping, then suddenly lifting, and gray sheets of rain fringing down before us, and the thirsty, parched leaves, intoxicated with their much mead of the mountains, slapping us saucily on the check, or in mad revel flinging into our faces their goblets of honey-dew,--ah! it was a carnival of tricksy delight, making the blood glow like wine. The falls, which chanced to be indeed no falls, but shower-swollen into rapids, are one of the most wonderful presentations of Nature's masonry that I have ever seen. It is not the water, but the rock, that amazes. The whole Androscoggin River gathers up its strength and plunges through a gorge,--a gateway in the solid rock is regular, as upright, as if man had brought in the whole force of his geometry and gunpowder to the admeasurement and excavation,--plunges, conscious of imprisonment and the insult to its slighted majesty,--plunges with fierce protest and frenzy of rage, breaks against a grim, unyielding rock to dash itself into a thousand whirling waves; then rushes on to be again imprisoned between the pillars of another gorge, only less regular, not less inexorable, than the first; then, leaping and surging, it beats against its banks, and is hurled wrathfully back in jets of spray and wreaths of foam; or, soothed into gentler mood by the soft touch of mosses on the brown old rocks, it leaps lightly up their dripping sides, and trickles back from the green, wet, overhanging spray, and so, all passion sobbed away, it babbles down to its bed of Lincoln green, where Robin Hood and Maid Marian wait under the oaken boughs.
In the leaden, heavy air the scene was sombre,--tragic. In sunshine and shadows it must have other moods, perhaps a different character; I did not see the sunshine play upon it.
But the day of days you shall give to the mountain. The mountain, Washington, king of all this Atlantic coast,--at least till but just now, when some designing Warwick comes forward to press the claims of an ignoble Carolinian upstart, with, of course, a due and formidable array of feet and figures: but if they have such a mountain, where, I should like to know, has he been all these years? A mountain is not a thing that you can put away in your pocket, or hide under the eaves till an accident reveals its whereabouts. Verily our misguided brethren have much to do to make out a case; and, in the firm belief that I am climbing up the highest point of land this side the Rocky Mountains, I begin my journey.
Time was when the ascent of Mount Washington could be justly considered a difficult and dangerous feat; but the Spirit of the Age who has many worse things than this to answer for, has struck in and felled and graded and curbed, till now one can ascend the mountain as safely as he goes to market. I consider this road one of the greatest triumphs of that heavily responsible spirit. Loquacious lovers of the "romantic" lament the absence of danger and its excitements, and the road does indeed lie open to that objection. He who in these latter days would earn a reputation for enterprise--and I fancy the love of adventure to be far less common than the love of being thought adventurous--must have recourse to some such forlorn hope as going up the mountain on the ice in midwinter, or coasting down on a hand-sled. But I have no inclination in that direction. I am willing to encounter risks, if there is no other way of attaining objects. But risks in and of themselves are a nuisance. If there is no more excellent way, of course you must clamber along steep, rugged stairways of bridle-paths, where a single misstep will send you plunging upon a cruel and bloody death; but so far as choice goes, one would much more wisely ride over a civilized road, where he can have his whole mind for the mountain, and not be continually hampered with fears and watchfulness for his own personal safety. It is a great mistake to suppose that discomfort is necessarily heroism. Besides, to have opened a carriage-way up the mountain is to have brought the mountain with all its possessions down to the cradle of the young and the crutch of the old,--almost to the couch of the invalid. I saw recorded against one name in the books of the Tip-top House the significant item, "aged eight months." Probably the youngster was not directly much benefited by his excursion, but you are to remember that perhaps his mother could not have come without him, and therein lay the benefit. The day before our ascent, a lady over seventy years old ascended without extreme fatigue or any injury. Several days after, a lady with apparently but a few weeks of earth before her, made the ascent to satisfy the longings of her heart, and gaze upon the expanses of this, before the radiance of another world should burst upon her view. If people insist upon encountering danger, they can find a swift river and ford it, or pile up a heap of stones and climb them, or volunteer to serve their country in the army: meanwhile, let us rejoice that thousands who have been shut away from the feast may now sit down to the table of the Lord.
This road, we were told, was begun about eight years ago, but by disastrous circumstances its completion was delayed until within a year or two. Looking at the country through which it lies, the only wonder is that it ever reached completion. As it is, I believe its proprietors do not consider it quite finished, and are continually working upon its improvement.
