Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852

A mile below the Basin, and five miles from the Notch, we come to the termination of the defile of the Franconia Mountains. At this point the Flume House, kept by Mr. Taft, offers the most admirable accommodations to those who wish to linger in this noble region. From the hotel the tourist can enjoy a magnificent review of the majestic summits he has just passed – the Profile Mountain filling the left of the view with one broad rounded mass, while the right is broken up with a series of pointed peaks, whereof Mount Lafayette and Eagle Cliff are duly prominent. This view of the Notch often assumes strange characteristics. Frequently in stormy weather, when the clouds elsewhere are, flying swiftly, "like cars for gods to travel by," the masses of vapor caught in the "Notch" seem too entangled to escape – nay, seem to lose their very motion between those peaks, while their brethren overhead are scudding past. And often, when the Notch is completely enshrouded in motionless cloudy gloom, we may see the landscape and the heavens north and south of the Notch, reposing in cloudless calm – the "bridal of the earth and sky!" By stepping to the south piazza of Mr. Taft's hotel, the tourist meets a prospect wholly unlike the stern grandeur he has left. He looks down upon the valley into which the defile debouches, and sees its gently sloping hills and glimmering meadows receding in airy perspective, and melting in a strip of tenderest azure at a distance of forty miles. The effect of this beautiful vista upon eyes long fatigued with frowning crags and shadowy ravines is inexpressibly cheering.

Within easy distance of the Flume House we find the three remaining curiosities of the Franconia Mountains. These are the Pool, the Cascade, and the Flume. The first of these is formed by another and heavier cascade on the Pemigewasset, and is but an enlarged idea of the Basin, with considerable grandeur, but with none of the fantastic picturesque loveliness of the latter. The Pool is very wonderful, but it does not win our affection as does the Basin, whose exquisite beauties sink with peculiar interest into the traveler's heart that will, long after his return to the grave duties of town, be haunted with the music of its cascade, be illumined with the emerald flash of its crystal waters, and be linked with the memory of the pleasant chance-acquaintances made within the influence of its bewitching loveliness. Will those whose eyes have been gladdened by this choice work of nature, deem our eulogy aught but well-merited enthusiasm?

Crossing the Pemigewasset, and following up one of its little mountain tributaries, we come to the foot of a steep slope some two hundred feet in height, the smooth granite face of which has been washed bare to a width of forty feet by the violent freshets of spring. At ordinary times, merely a thin rivulet slides noiselessly over the slope, here and there leaving little pools whirling round in the shallow basins scooped out of the smooth granite. This is the Cascade– only deserving the name when a freshet occurs, and then its heavy volume of water is said to be fearfully sublime, bringing down ice and gigantic trees which, catching in the margin of the smooth bed, are often flung up on end by the force of the current, and momentarily standing erect, then plunge headlong and broken down the terrible declivity. When the stream is low nothing can be gentler than this singular granite slope, fringed with trees. Those ascending to the Flume, will be glad to rest awhile on a rustic bench near the top of the slope, and refresh themselves with a draught from the cool stream sliding noiselessly past.

Above the Cascade, the stream is almost hidden among vast rocks and fallen trees of a ravine, becoming deeper, larger, and damper with every step. Crossing and recrossing its numerous little waterfalls by means of rustic bridges, decayed logs, and rocks dripping and hung with the richest moss, we suddenly emerge from the dense wood, and stand in front of a stupendous narrow ravine which, from its fancied resemblance to the flume of a mill, has acquired its well-known name.

The Flume is about two hundred yards in extent, its greatest height is sixty or seventy feet, and has a general width of about twenty feet. Its smooth sides have been excavated with the most singular evenness, and its bed is littered up with rocky rubbish, over which brawls the mountain brook that leaps into sight at the further end of this remarkable corridor. At that end we find the most wonderful feature of the Flume, for there it suddenly contracts to a width of not more than ten feet, and in its jaws holds suspended over the cascade a huge rock twelve feet in height, and which, being undoubtedly a boulder, has rolled from above into the chasm, and there been held by its slight excess of breadth – not more than two inches at the utmost.

There being neither trees, nor shrubs, nor herbage of any sort, save the luxuriant mosses nourished by the eternal moisture, to break the long vista of the Flume, it presents a very novel appearance to the visitor issuing from the dense wood below, and catching a sudden and complete view of its steep, dripping walls, and rocky bed, terminating with the suspended boulder and the Cascade flashing underneath; while the tall hemlocks above the cliffs, shut out all save a small patch of blue sky. Ordinarily the stream is very low, and visitors can not only pick their way over rocks and logs to the foot of the Cascade, but can clamber over the granite ledges and pass under the suspended boulder that looks as if at any moment it might slip through upon them. This feat of passing under the rock is always a very damp one, though during the season, troops of damsels may be seen bravely accomplishing it, scornful of the rock above and the wet below – and doing it too without the confident freedom of the Bloomer dress! As the Flume is little penetrated by the sun's rays, the eternal moisture of its depths makes it advisable for those disposed to linger in them, to take abundant extra clothing; fur during the warmest summer-day, when an artist issues from its damp walls after a long siege of its curiosities with canvas and colors, he looks as if he were rehearsing the favorite circus-feat of throwing off multitudinous jackets and vests! By following up the ravine beyond the suspended rock, the visitor can ascend the cliffs overhanging the Flume; and if he or she have nerve enough, a large hemlock fallen across the chasm affords spacious footing whence a fine bird's-eye view of the ravine may be enjoyed. In winter and in spring the Flume is said to present a scene of fearful interest – now bearded with icicles, and anon, from melting snows, filled with a torrent of ice and fallen timber crashing in thunder through its jaws, to be launched more freely over the broad slope of the Cascade below. Until very recently this extraordinary ravine was wholly unknown, and it is to be regretted that we have no authentic chronicle of the gradual cutting of the Flume by the action of its stream; and also when and by what changes the suspended boulder has been caught in its present singular position.

We can not recross the Pemigewasset, on our return from the last great lion of the Franconia Mountains, without another notice of that exquisite mountain-stream. Though from its being so over-fished, it now holds out few inducements to enthusiasts in trouting, yet the prospect of having even "a glorious nibble," should tempt the angler to explore its beauties – its picturesque cascades, and deep, slumbrous pools above and below the bridge leading to the Flume. The accompanying sketch shows one of these numerous fairy nooks, overlooked by Mount Liberty– the fine peak directly opposite the Flume House.

This sketch of the attractions of the great Franconia Notch must not be closed without mention of the view from Mount Lafayette, considered by many far more interesting than that from Mount Washington; for, though less extensive than the latter, it embraces a far more picturesque and beautiful region lying distinctly under the eye. Hitherto this noble panorama has not been generally enjoyed, owing to the difficulty of its only mode of ascent – on foot. The coming season, however, will supply tourists with two bridle-roads, from the Lafayette House and the Flume House, at both of which well-kept hotels, every convenience in the way of horses and vehicles can always be had for the purpose of visiting the various curiosities scattered along this romantic defile. Throughout the five miles of the Franconia pass, there is not, excepting these two hotels at either end, a single human dwelling. The growing season is too short here to allow any thing to be raised on the patches of easy soil dotting the defile, that would, therefore, present, were it not for the public houses and the passing stage-coaches loaded with tourists, a scene of primeval nature and solitude. Would that its stupendous scenery were linked with mighty incident, and that its rare loveliness were clothed with the sacred vestment of traditionary lore! But alas! its magnificent grandeur and picturesque beauty, so fitted to figure in Indian romance or the settler's legend is sadly deficient in the hallowing charm of historic or poetic association!

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 1

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTTMARENGO

Napoleon, finding his proffers of peace rejected by England with contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France. The hostile fleets of England swept the channel, utterly annihilating the commerce of the Republic, landing regiments of armed emigrants upon her coasts, furnishing money and munitions of war to rouse the partisans of the Bourbons to civil conflict, and throwing balls and shells into every unprotected town. On the northern frontier, Marshal Kray, came thundering down, through the Black Forest, to the banks of the Rhine, with a mighty host of 150,000 men, like locust legions, to pour into all the northern provinces of France. Artillery of the heaviest calibre and a magnificent array of cavalry accompanied this apparently invincible army. In Italy, Melas, another Austrian marshal, with 140,000 men, aided by the whole force of the British navy, was rushing upon the eastern and southern borders of the Republic. The French troops, disheartened by defeat, had fled before their foes over the Alps, or were eating their horses and their boots in the cities where they were besieged. From almost every promontory on the coast of the Republic, washed by the Channel, or the Mediterranean, the eye could discern English frigates, black and threatening, holding all France in a state of blockade.

One always finds a certain pleasure in doing that which he can do well. Napoleon was fully conscious of his military genius. He had, in behalf of bleeding humanity, implored peace in vain. He now, with alacrity and with joy, roused himself to inflict blows that should be felt upon his multitudinous enemies. With such tremendous energy did he do this, that he received from his antagonists the most complimentary sobriquet of the one hundred thousand men. Wherever Napoleon made his appearance in the field, his presence alone was considered equivalent to that force.

The following proclamation rang like a trumpet charge over the hills and valleys of France. "Frenchmen! You have been anxious for peace. Your government has desired it with still greater ardor. Its first efforts, its most constant wishes, have been for its attainment. The English ministry has exposed the secret of its iniquitous policy. It wishes to dismember France, to destroy its commerce, and either to erase it from the map of Europe, or to degrade it to a secondary power. England is willing to embroil all the nations of the Continent in hostility with each other, that she may enrich herself with their spoils, and gain possession of the trade of the world. For the attainment of this object she scatters her gold, becomes prodigal of her promises, and multiplies her intrigues."

At this call all the martial spirit of France rushed to arms. Napoleon, supremely devoted to the welfare of the State, seemed to forget even his own glory in the intensity of his desire to make France victorious over her foes. With the most magnanimous superiority to all feelings of jealousy, he raised an army of 150,000 men, the very élite of the troops of France, the veterans of a hundred battles, and placed them in the hands of Moreau, the only man in France who could be called his rival. Napoleon also presented to Moreau the plan of a campaign, in accordance with his own energy, boldness, and genius. Its accomplishment would have added surpassing brilliance to the reputation of Moreau. But the cautious general was afraid to adopt it, and presented another, perhaps as safe, but one which would produce no dazzling impression upon the imaginations of men. "Your plan," said one, a friend of Moreau, to the First Consul, "is grander, more decisive, even more sure. But it is not adapted to the slow and cautious genius of the man who is to execute it. You have your method of making war, which is superior to all others. Moreau has his own, inferior certainly, but still excellent. Leave him to himself. If you impose your ideas upon him, you will wound his self-love, and disconcert him."

Napoleon, profoundly versed in the knowledge of the human heart, promptly replied. "You are right, Moreau is not capable of grasping the plan which I have conceived. Let him follow his own course. The plan which he does not understand and dare not execute, I myself will carry out, on another part of the theatre of war. What he fears to attempt on the Rhine, I will accomplish on the Alps. The day may come when he will regret the glory which he yields to me." These were proud and prophetic words. Moreau was moderately victorious upon the Rhine, driving back the invaders. The sun of Napoleon soon rose, over the field of Marengo, in a blaze of effulgence, which paled Moreau's twinkling star into utter obscurity. But we know not where, upon the page of history, to find an act of more lofty generosity than this surrender of the noblest army of the Republic to one, who considered himself, and who was deemed by others, a rival – and thus to throw open to him the theatre of war where apparently the richest laurels were to be won. And we know not where to look for a deed more proudly expressive of self-confidence. "I will give Moreau," said he by this act, "one hundred and fifty thousand of the most brave and highly disciplined soldiers of France, the victors of a hundred battles. I myself will take sixty thousand men, new recruits and the fragments of regiments which remain, and with them I will march to encounter an equally powerful enemy on a more difficult field of warfare."

Marshal Melas had spread his vast host of one hundred and forty thousand Austrians through all the strongholds of Italy, and was pressing, with tremendous energy and self-confidence upon the frontiers of France. Napoleon, instead of marching with his inexperienced troops, two-thirds of whom had never seen a shot fired in earnest, to meet the heads of the triumphant columns of Melas, resolved to climb the rugged and apparently inaccessible fastnesses of the Alps, and, descending from the clouds over pathless precipices, to fall with the sweep of the avalanche, upon their rear. It was necessary to assemble this army at some favorable point; – to gather in vast magazines its munitions of war. It was necessary that this should be done in secret, lest the Austrians, climbing to the summits of the Alps, and defending the gorges through which the troops of Napoleon would be compelled to wind their difficult and tortuous way, might render the passage utterly impossible. English and Austrian spies were prompt to communicate to the hostile powers every movement of the First Consul. Napoleon fixed upon Dijon and its vicinity as the rendezvous of his troops. He, however, adroitly and completely deceived his foes by ostentatiously announcing the very plan he intended to carry into operation. Of course, the allies thought that this was a foolish attempt to draw their attention from the real point of attack. The more they ridiculed the imaginary army at Dijon, the more loudly did Napoleon reiterate his commands for battalions and magazines to be collected there. The spies who visited Dijon, reported that but a few regiments were assembled in that place, and that the announcement was clearly a very weak pretense to deceive. The print shops of London and Vienna were filled with caricatures of the army of the First Consul of Dijon. The English especially made themselves very merry with Napoleon's grand army to scale the Alps. It was believed that the energies of the Republic were utterly exhausted in raising the force which was given to Moreau. One of the caricatures represented the army as consisting of a boy, dressed in his father's clothes, shouldering a musket, which he could with difficulty lift, and eating a piece of gingerbread, and an old man with one arm and a wooden leg. The artillery consisted of a rusty blunderbuss. This derision was just what Napoleon desired. Though dwelling in the shadow of that mysterious melancholy, which ever enveloped his spirit, he must have enjoyed in the deep recesses of his soul, the majestic movements of his plans.

On the eastern frontiers of France there surge up, from luxuriant meadows and vine-clad fields and hill sides, the majestic ranges of the Alps, piercing the clouds and soaring with glittering pinnacles, into the region of perpetual ice and snow. Vast spurs of the mountains extend on each side, opening gloomy gorges and frightful defiles, through which foaming torrents rush impetuously, walled in by almost precipitous cliffs, whose summits, crowned with melancholy firs, are inaccessible to the foot of man. The principal pass over this enormous ridge was that of the Great St. Bernard. The traveler, accompanied by a guide, and mounted on a mule, slowly and painfully ascended a steep and rugged path, now crossing a narrow bridge, spanning a fathomless abyss, again creeping along the edge of a precipice, where the eagle soared and screamed over the fir tops in the abyss below, and where a perpendicular wall rose to giddy heights in the clouds above. The path at times was so narrow, that it seemed that the mountain goat could with difficulty find a foothold for its slender hoof. A false step, or a slip upon the icy rocks would precipitate the traveler, a mangled corpse, a thousand feet upon the fragments of granite in the gulf beneath. As higher and higher he climbed these wild and rugged and cloud-enveloped paths, borne by the unerring instinct of the faithful mule, his steps were often arrested by the roar of the avalanche, and he gazed appalled upon its resistless rush, as rocks, and trees, and earth, and snow, and ice, swept by him with awful and resistless desolation, far down into the dimly discerned torrents which rushed beneath his feet. At God's bidding the avalanche fell. No precaution could save the traveler who was in its path. He was instantly borne to destruction, and buried where no voice but the archangel's trump could ever reach his ear. Terrific storms of wind and snow often swept through those bleak altitudes, blinding and smothering the traveler. Hundreds of bodies, like pillars of ice, embalmed in snow, are now sepulchred in those drifts, there to sleep till the fires of the last conflagration shall have consumed their winding sheet. Having toiled two days through such scenes of desolation and peril, the adventurous traveler stands upon the summit of the pass, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, two thousand feet higher than the crest of Mount Washington, our own mountain monarch. This summit, over which the path winds, consists of a small level plain, surrounded by mountains of snow of still higher elevation.

The scene here presented is inexpressibly gloomy and appalling. Nature in these wild regions assumes her most severe and sombre aspect. As one emerges from the precipitous and craggy ascent, upon this Valley of Desolation, as it is emphatically called, the Convent of St. Bernard presents itself to the view. This cheerless abode, the highest spot of inhabited ground in Europe, has been tenanted, for more than a thousand years, by a succession of joyless and self-denying monks, who, in that frigid retreat of granite and ice, endeavor to serve their Maker, by rescuing bewildered travelers from the destruction with which they are ever threatened to be overwhelmed by the storms, which battle against them. In the middle of this ice-bound valley, lies a lake, clear, dark, and cold, whose depths, even in midsummer, reflect the eternal glaciers which soar sublimely around. The descent to the plains of Italy is even more precipitous and dangerous than the ascent from the green pastures of France. No vegetation adorns these dismal and storm-swept cliffs of granite and of ice. Even the pinion of the eagle fails in its rarified air, and the chamois ventures not to climb its steep and slippery crags. No human beings are ever to be seen on these bleak summits, except the few shivering travelers, who tarry for an hour to receive the hospitality of the convent, and the hooded monks, wrapped in thick and coarse garments, with their staves and their dogs, groping through the storms of sleet and snow. Even the wood which burns with frugal faintness on their hearths, is borne, in painful burdens, up the mountain sides, upon the shoulders of the monks.

Such was the barrier which Napoleon intended to surmount, that he might fall upon the rear of the Austrians, who were battering down the walls of Genoa, where Massena was besieged, and who were thundering, flushed with victory, at the very gates of Nice. Over this wild mountain pass, where the mule could with difficulty tread, and where no wheel had ever rolled, or by any possibility could roll, Napoleon contemplated transporting an army of sixty thousand men, with ponderous artillery and tons of cannon balls, and baggage, and all the bulky munitions of war. England and Austria laughed the idea to scorn. The achievement of such an enterprise was apparently impossible. Napoleon, however, was as skillful in the arrangement of the minutest details, as in the conception of the grandest combinations. Though he resolved to take the mass of his army, forty thousand strong, across the pass of the Great St. Bernard, yet to distract the attention of the Austrians, he arranged also to send small divisions across the passes of Saint Gothard, Little St. Bernard, and Mount Cenis. He would thus accumulate suddenly, and to the utter amazement of the enemy, a body of sixty-five thousand men upon the plains of Italy. This force, descending, like an apparition from the clouds, in the rear of the Austrian army, headed by Napoleon, and cutting off all communication with Austria, might indeed strike a panic into the hearts of the assailants of France.

The troops were collected in various places in the vicinity of Dijon, ready at a moment's warning to assemble at the point of rendezvous, and with a rush to enter the defile. Immense magazines of wheat, biscuit, and oats had been noiselessly collected in different places. Large sums of specie had been forwarded, to hire the services of every peasant, with his mule, who inhabited the valleys among the mountains. Mechanic shops, as by magic, suddenly rose along the path, well supplied with skillful artisans, to repair all damages, to dismount the artillery, to divide the gun-carriages and the baggage-wagons into fragments, that they might be transported, on the backs of men and mules, over the steep and rugged way. For the ammunition a vast number of small boxes were prepared, which could easily be packed upon the mules. A second company of mechanics, with camp forges, had been provided to cross the mountain with the first division, and rear their shops upon the plain on the other side, to mend the broken harness, to reconstruct the carriages, and remount the pieces. On each side of the mountain a hospital was established and supplied with every comfort for the sick and the wounded. The foresight of Napoleon extended even to sending, at the very last moment, to the convent upon the summit, an immense quantity of bread, cheese, and wine. Each soldier, to his surprise, was to find, as he arrived at the summit, exhausted with Herculean toil, a generous slice of bread and cheese with a refreshing cup of wine, presented to him by the monks. All these minute details Napoleon arranged, while at the same time he was doing the work of a dozen energetic men, in re-organizing the whole structure of society in France. If toil pays for greatness, Napoleon purchased the renown which he attained. And yet his body and his mind were so constituted that this sleepless activity was to him a pleasure.