IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) k{0 4^ ///// /y ' ^^"J^ ^- .,. ^o 1.0 i.l 1.25 " ■- Nil lit nil 2.5 12 2£ 1.8 i-4 IIIIII.6 >• m ^'%. ^^I^i< //^B Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WeST MAIN STREET WIB«TIR,NY. MSSO (716) •72-4: 3 ■ . According to Guyot, but some recent surveys make it a little higher. « jn ' ii*» lichens.* I was aided in this by the kindness of a gentleman of Boston, well acquainted with these hills, and passionately fond of their scenery. Our party, in addition to this gentleman and my- self, consisted of two ladies, two children, and two experienced guides, whose services were of the utmost importance, not only in indicating the path, but in removing windfalls and other obstruc- tions, and in assisting members of the party over difficult and dangerous places. "We followed the carriage road for two miles, and then struck off to the left by a bridle path that seemed not to to have been used for several years — the gentlemen and guides on foot, the ladies and children mounted on the sure-footed ponies used in these ascents. Our path wound around a spur of the mountain, over rocky and uneven ground, much of the rock being mica slate, with beautiful cruciform crystals of andalusite, which seemed larger and finer here than in any other part of the mountain which I visited. At first the vegetation was not materially different from that of the lower grounds, but as we gradually ascended we entered the *' evergreen zone," and passed through dense thickets of small spruces and firs, the ground beneath which was carpeted with moss, and studded with an immense profusion of the delicate little mountain wood-sorrel (^Oxalis acetosella), a characteristic plant of wooded hills on both sides of the Atlantic, and which I had not before seen in such profusion since I had roamed on the hills of Lochaber Lake in Nova Scotia. Other herbaceous plants were rare, except ferns and club-mosses ; but we picked up an aster (^A. acuminatus), a golden rod, (^Solidago thyrsoidea), and the very pretty tway blade {Listera cordata). In ascending the mountain directly, the spruces of this zone gradually degenerate, until they present the appearance of little gnarled bushes, flat on top and closely matted together, so that except where paths have been cut, it is almost impossible to pene- trate among them. Finally they lie flat on the ground, and be- come so small that, as Lyell remarks, the rein-deer moss may be seen to overtop the spruces. This dwarfing of the spruces and firs is the eff'ect of adverse circumstances, and of their struggle to extend their range toward the summit. Year by year they • Peck, Bigelow and Booth were the early botanical explorers of the White Mountains ; though Pursh was the first to determine some of the more interesting plants, and Oakes and Tuckerman deserve honourable mention, as the most thorough modern explorers. 6 stretch forth their roots and branches, bending themselves to th© ground, clinging to the bare rocks, and availing themselves of every chasm and fissure that may cover their advance : but the conditions of the case are against them. If their front advances in summer it is driven back in winter, and if in a succession of mild seasons they are able to gain a little gr>und, less favourable seasons recur, and wither or destroy the holders of their advanced positions. For thousands of years the spruces and firs have striven in this hopeless escalade, but about 4000 feet above the sea seems to be the limit of their advance^ and unless the climate shall change, or these trees acquire a new plasticity of constitution, the genus Abies can never displace the hardier alpine inhabitants above, and plant its standard on the summit of Mount Wash- ington. I was struck by the similarity of this dwarfing of the upper ec'ges of the spruce woods, to that which I have often observed on tho exposed northern coasts of Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, where the woods often gradually diminish in height to- ward the beach or the edge of a cliif, till the external row of plants clings closely to the soil, or rises above it only a few inches. The causes are the same, but the appearance is more marked on the mountain than on the coast. On the path which we followed, before we reached the upper limit of trees, we arrived at the base of a stupendous cliff, forming the termination of a promontory or spur of the mountain, sepa- rating Tuckerman's ravine from another deep depression known as the Great Gulf. From the top of this precipice poured a little cascade that lost itself in spray long before it touched the tops of the trees below. The view at this place was the most impressive that it was my fortune to see in these hills. Opposite the mouth of the Great Gulf, and I suppose at a height of about 3000 feet, is a little pond known as Hermit Lake. It is nearly circular, and appears to be retained by a ridge of stones and gravel, perhaps an old moraine or sea beach. On its margin piped a solitary sand-piper, a few dragon files flitted over its sur- face, and tadpoles in the bottom indicated tiiat son>e species of ffog dwells in its waters. High over head and skirting the edges of the precipices, soared an eagle, intent no doubt on the hares tiiat frequent the thickets of the ravines. Before we reached Hermit Lake we had been obliged to leave our horses, and now we turned aside to the left and ente-ed 4 f i Tuckennan*8 ravine, where there is no path, but merely the bed of a brook, whose cold clear water tumbles in a succession of cascades over huge polished masses of white gneiss, while on both sides of it the bottom of the ravine is occupied by dense and al- most impenetrable thickets of the mountain alder (^Alnus viridis.) Tuckerman's ravine has been formed originally either by a subsidence of a portion of the mountain side or by the action of the sea. It is, like most of the ravines and " gulfs " of these hills, a deep cut or depression bounded by precipitous sides, and terminating at the top in a similarly precipitous manner. It must at one period have been in part filled with boulder clay, steep banks of which still remain in places on its sides ; and ex- tensive landslips have occurred, by which portions of the limiting cliflfs have been thrown toward the centre of the valley, in large piles of angular blocks of gneiss and mica slate, in the spaces between which grow gnarled birches and spruces that must be used as ladders and bridges whereby to scramble from block to block, by every one who would cross or ascend one of these rivers of stones. At the head of the ravine we paused to rest, to admire the wild prospect presented by the ravine and its precipitous sides, and to collect the numerous plants that flower on the surrounding slopes and precipices. Here on the 19th of August were several large patches of snow, one of them about an hundred yards in length. From the precipice at the head of the ravine, poured hundreds of little rills, and several of them collecting into a brook, had excavated in the largest mass of snow a long tunnel or cavern with an arched and groiued roof. Under the front of this we took our mid-day meal, with the hot August sun pouring its rays in front of us, and icy water gurgling among the stones at our feet. Around the margin of the snow the vegetation pre- sented precisely the same appearances which are seen in the low country in March and April, when the snow banks have just disappeared — the old grass bleached and whitened, and many perennial plants sending up blanched shoots which had not yet experienced the influence of the sunlight. The vegetation at the head of this ravine and on the precipices that overhang it, presents a remarkable mixture of lowland and mountain species. The head of the ravine is not so high as the limit of trees already stated, but its steep sides rise abruptly to a plateau of 5000 feet in height intervening between Mount Wash- 8 ington and Mount Munro, and on which are the dark ponds or tarns known as the Lakes of the Clouds, forming the sources of the Amonoosook river, which flows in the opposite direction. From this plateau many alpine plants stretch downward into the ravine, while lowland plants availing themselves of the shelter and moisture of this cul-de-sac, climb boldly upward almost to the higher plateau. Other species again occur here which are found neither on the exposed alpine summits and ridges nor in the low country. Conspicuous among the hardy climbers are two coarse and poisonous weeds of the river valleys, that look like intruders into the company of the more dwarfish alpine plants ; — the cow-parsnip {Heracleum lanatum) and the white hellebore ( Veratrum viride). Both of these plants were seen struggling up through the ground at the margin of the snow, and climbing up moist hollows almost to the top of the preci- pices. Some specimens of the latter were crowded with the in- fant caterpilars of a mountain butterfly or moth. Less conspicuous, and better suited to the surrounding vegetation, were the bluets ( Oldenlandia ccerulea), now in blossom here as they had been months before in the low country, the cWarf cornel (Cornus Can- adensis), and the twin-flower (Linncea borealis), the latter reaching quite to the plateau of the Lake of the Clouds, and en- tering into undisputed companionship with the truly alpine plants, though it is also found at Gorham four thousand feet lower. Of the plants which seemed to be confined or nearly so to the upper part of the ravine, one of the most interesting was the northern painted cup, {Castelleia septentrionalis) a plant which abounds on the coast of Labrador and extends thence through all Arctic North America to the Rocky Mountains, and is perhaps identical with the C, Sibirica of Northern Asia and the C. pallida of Northern Europe. Large beds of it were covered with their pale yellow blossoms on the precipitous banks overhanging the head of the ravine. With the painted cup and here alone, was another beautiful species of a very different order, the northern green orchis, (Flatantliera hyperhorea) a plant which occurs, though rarely, in Canada, but is more abundant to the northward. Here also occurred Peck's geum, {G. radiatuniy var.), Arnica mollis^ and several other interesting plants. Of the Alpine plants which descend into the ravine, the most interesting was the Greenland sandwort, {Armaria (Alsine) Groenlandica) which was blooming abundantly, with its clusters 1 9 1 of delicate white flowers, on the very summit of the mountain, and could be found here and there by the side of the brook in the bottom of the ravine. Clambering by a steep and dangerous path up the right side of the ravine, we reach almost at once the limit beyond which the ordinary flora of New England can extend no longer, and are in the presence of a new group of plants comparable with those of Labrador and Greenland. Here, on the plateau of the Lake of the Clouds, the traveller who has ascended the giddy preci- pices overhanging Tuckerman's ravine, is glad to pause that he may contemplate the features of the new region which he has reached. We have left the snow behind us, except a small patch which lingers on the shady side of Mount Munro ; for it is only in the ravines into which it has drifted an hundred feet deep or more, that it can withstand the summer beat until August. We stand on a dreary waste of hard angular blocks of mica slate and gneiss, that lie in rude ridges as if they had Veen roughly rak-ed-up by Titans who might have been trying to pilo Monro upon Washington; but which seem to be merely the remains of the original outcropping edges of the rocks broken up by the frost, but not disturbed or rounded by water. Behind us is the deep trench-like ravine out of which we have climbed : on the left hand a long row of secondary summits stretching out from Mount Washington to the south-westward, and designated by the names of a series of American statesmen. In front this range descends abruptly in great wooded spurs or buttresses to the valley of the Amonoosook which shines in silvery spots through the trees far below. On our right hand towers the peak of Mount Washington, still more than a thousand feet above us, and covered with angular blocks, as if it were a pile of fragments rather than a solid rock. These stones all around and up to the summit of the mountain, are tinted pale green by the map lichen (Lecidea Geogra- pkica) which tinges in the same way the alpine summits of European mountains. Between the blocks an d on their sheltered sides nestle the alpine flowering plants, of which 20 species or more may be collected on this shoulder of the mountain, and some of which ex- tend themselves to the very summit, where Aisine Groenlandica and the little tufts of d«ep green leaves of Diapmsia Lapponica with a few Carices seem to luxuriate. Animal life accompanies these plants to the summit, near which I saw a family of the snow bird {Plectroplanes nivalis,) evidently summer residents 10 here, and a number of insects, conspicuous among which was a brown butterfly of the genus Hipparchia. Shortly beiore sun- down, when the thermometer at thj summit house was fast set- tling toward the freezing point, & number of swallows were hawk- ing for flies at a great height above the highest peak. To what species they belonged 1 could not ascertain. Possibly the cliflT swallows find breeding places in the sides of the ravines, and rise over the hill top to bask in the sunbeams, after the mountain has thrown its shadows over their homes. To return to the alpine flora which is peculiar to the peaks of these mountains — are the species comprising it autochthones originating on these hill tops and confined to them, or are they plants occurring elsewhere, and if so where ; and how and when did they migrate to their present abodes^ These are questions which must occur to every one interested in geology, botany, or physical geography. They have been answered in various ways; but without entering into controver';^, 1 shall merely state a few facts, bearing on and illustrating that view which 1 myself prefer. Not one of the alpine plants of Mount Washington is peculiar to the place. Nearly all of them are distinct from the plants of the neighboring lowlands, but they occur on other hills of New England and New York, and on the distant coasts of Labrador and Greenland, and some of them are distributed ovec the Arctic regions of Europe, Asia and America. In short they are strag- glers from that Arctic flora which encompasses the north pol?T region, and extends in promontories and islands, along the high cold mountain summits far to the southward. Some of the humble flowerless plants of these hills aie of nearly world wide distrilution. I have already noticed the pale green map lichen wh'ch tints ihe rocks of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Scottish Highlands ; and the curious ring lichon {Pannelia centrlfuga) paints its conpicuous rings and area of circles alike on Mount Washington and the Scottish hillb. A little club moss {Lycopodium selago) is not on'y widely distributed over the northern hemisphere, but Hooker has recognised it in the Antarctic regions. Not long ago we unrolled in Montreal an Egyptian mummy preserved in the oldest siyla of embalming, and found timt, to preserve the odour of the spices, quantitiv-'s of a lichen {Evernia, furfuracca) had been wrapi)cd around tho body and iiad no doubt been imported into Egypt tVom Lebanon or tho hills of Macedonia lor such uses, let tho specimens i u .. L from this old mummy were at once recognised by Professor Tuckerman as identical with this, species, as it occurs on the White Hills and on Katahdin in Maine. These facts are how- ever easily explicable in comparison with those that relate to the flowering plants. The spores of lichens and mosses float lighter than the lightest down in the air. and may be wafted over land and sea, and drop- ped everywhere to grow where conditions may be favourable. Had the Egyptian erabalmer used some of the ^rst created spe- cimens of jEverrJa furfuracea, it might easily within the three thousand years or so smce his work was done, have floated round the world and ebiablished itself on the White Hills. But, as we shall see, neither the time nor means would suffice for the flower- ing plants. The only available present agency for the trans- mission of these would be in the crops or plumage of the migratory birds ; and when we consider how few of these on their migra- tions from the nortli could ever alight on tliese hills, and the rarity of their carrying seeds in a state fit 1o vegetate, and further that fev/ of these plants produce fruits edible by birds, or seeds likely to attach themselves to their feathers, the chances become infinitely small of their transmission in this way. The most pro- fitable course of investigation in this and most other cases of ap- parently unaccountable geographical distribution, is to inquire as to the past geological conditions of the region, and how these may have affected the migrations of plants. The earlier geological history of these mountains far ante- dates our existing vegetation. It belongs in the first instance to the Lower Devonian period, in which the materials of these moun- tains were accumulating, as beds of clay and gravel, in the sea bottom. These were buried under great depths of newer de- posits, and were baked and metamorphosed into their present crystfilline condition. Again heaved above the sea level, they were hewn by the action of the waves to some degree into their present forms, and constituteil part of the nucleus of iho Ameri- can continent in the tertiary pcri