 Section 4 of THE GREAT STONE FACE AND OTHER TAILS OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS by Nathanael Hawthorne Section 4 THE GREAT CARBUNCLE, A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up in prose. Sullivan, in his history of Maine, written since the Revolution, remarks that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely discredited. At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that had drifted down the headlong current of the Omanusuck, on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees, and either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Omanusuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the mountain stream talked with the wind. The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast, at the close of which a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the great carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one young woman they warmed themselves together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wig-wam. As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the conclusion that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness on mountain or plain. The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the bear had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early youth, the great carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as the seeker, and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a valley of the saco that for his inordinate lust after the great carbuncle he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this miserable seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a doctor cacapital, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually stooping over charcoal furnaces, and inhaling unwholesome fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him, whether truly or not, that at the commencement of his studies he had drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment, and had never been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master Bod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selector Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time every morning and evening in wallowing naked among an immense quantity of pine tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The fourth, whom we shall notice, had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more than natural, if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist, and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is that the poetry which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of the party was a young man of haughty mean, and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress, and gleamed intensely on the dualed pommel of his sword. This was the Lord Devere, who, when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of his dead progenitors, rummaging their moldy coffins in search of all the earthly pride and vain glory that was hidden among bones and dust, so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his whole line of ancestry. Lastly there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young wife's affection. Her name was Hannah and her husband's Matthew. Two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the great car-bunkle. Beneath a shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire, sat this varied group of adventurers, also intent upon a single object, that of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words were sure to be illuminated with the great car-bunkle. Several related the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a traveler's tale of this marvelous stone in his own distant country, and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as could only be quenched in its intensest luster. Another, so long ago as when the famous Captain visited these coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up the search. A third, being camped on a hunting expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at midnight and beheld the great car-bunkle gleaming like a meteor, so that the shadows of the mountains fell backward from it. They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun. It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to allay their two sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who saw it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity, or perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the intricacies of forest, valley, and mountain. In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance. So, fellow pilgrims, said he, here we are, seven wise men, and one fair damsel, who, doubtless, is as wise as any gray beard of the company. Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Me thinks now it were not a mist that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the great carbuncle, provided he have the good hat to clutch it. What says our friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which you have been seeking? The Lord knows how long among the crystal hills. How enjoy it? exclaimed the aged seeker bitterly. I hope for no enjoyment from it. That folly has passed long ago. I keep up the search for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has become a fate upon me in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength, the energy of my soul, the warmth of my blood, and the pith and marrow of my bones. Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall down dead on the hither side of the notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the great carbuncle. Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern that I want of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever. O wretch, regardless of the interests of science, cried Dr. Cacapital with philosophic indignation, though art not worthy to behold, even from afar off, the luster of this most precious gem that ever was concocted in the laboratory of nature. Mine is the sole purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the great carbuncle. Immediately on obtaining it, for I have a pre-sendiment, good people, that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation, I shall return to Europe and employ my remaining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable powder, other parts shall be dissolved in acid, or whatever solvents will act upon so admirable a composition, and the remainder I designed to melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blowpipe. By these various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the result of my labors upon the world in your folio volume. Excellent, quoth the man with the spectacles, nor need you hesitate, learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem, since the perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son of us to concoct a great carbuncle of his own. But verily, said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, for my known part I object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of death, or captivity, by the accursed heathen savages, and all this without daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the great carbuncle is deemed a little better than a traffic with the evil one. Now, think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, body, reputation, and estate without a reasonable chance of profit? Not I, pious Master Pigsnort, said the man with the spectacles. I never laid such a great folly to thy charge. Truly, I hope not, said the merchant. Now, as touching this great carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it. But be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely outvalue the great mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the great carbuncle on shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into Heathendom, if providence should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expound it. That have I, thou sordid man, exclaimed the poet. Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal luster into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hide me back to my attic chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance. It shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of poise that I indict. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the great carbuncle will blaze around my name. Well said, master poet, cried he of the spectacles, hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee look like a jack-o'-lantern. To think, ejaculated the Lord Devere, rather to himself than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse, to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the great carbuncle to a garret and Grubb Street. Have not I resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armour, the banners and discussions that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain, but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the white mountains, did the great carbuncle hold a place half so honoured, as is reserved for it in the hall of the Devere's. It is a noble thought, said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer. Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall. Nay, forsooth, observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand and hand with his bride. The gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like purpose. How, fellow! exclaimed his lordship in surprise. What castle hall has thou to hang it in? No castle, replied Matthew, but as neat a cottage as any within sight of the crystal hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the great carbuncle, because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings. And it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they visit us. It will shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any corner, and will set all the windows aglowing, as if there were a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the night, to be able to see one another's faces! There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of the young couple's project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he himself meant to do with the great carbuncle. The great carbuncle, answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn, why, you blockhead, there is no such thing in Rerum Natura. I have come three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these mountains, and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one wit lessen as than myself that the great carbuncle is all a humbug. Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the adventurers to the crystal hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious, too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to the darkness instead of heavenward. And who could they but distinguish the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight gloom their chiefest glory? As the cynic spoke, several of the party were startled by a gleam of red splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the rockbed of the turbulent river with an illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars, those dial-points of heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the great carbuncle. The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest corner of the wigwam and were separated from the rest of the party by a curtain of curiously woven twigs such as might have hung in deep festoons around the bridle-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy smile beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the interstices of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted. "'Up, dear Matthew!' cried she, in haste. "'The strange folk are all gone. "'Up, this very minute, or we shall lose the great carbuncle!' In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty prize which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night until the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine. While the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness or dreamed of climbing precipices and set off to realize their dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm rest, were as light as two young deer and merely stopped to say their prayers and washed themselves in a cold pool of the Amanusuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their faces to the mountainside. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection as they toiled up the difficult ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid which they afforded. After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bowl, they reached the upper verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind and cloud and to naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had traversed and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude. Shall we go on, said Matthew, throwing his arm around Hannah's waist, both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it. But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the world in spite of the perils with which it must be won. Let us climb a little higher, whispered she, yet tremulously as she turned her face upward to the lonely sky. Come then, said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her along with him, for she became timid again the moment bold. And upward accordingly went the pilgrims of the great car-bunkle, now treading upon the tops and thickly interwoven branches of dwarf pines, which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments of naked rock, heaped unusably together, like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant cheat. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew. There was no life but what was concentrated in their two hearts. They had climbed so high that nature herself seemed no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape and sailing heavily to one center, as if the loftiest mountain peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally the vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again more intensely alas than beneath a clouded sky they had ever desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt at a relief to their desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region of visible space. But they drew closely together with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other's sight. Still perhaps they would have been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and heaven as they could find foothold, if Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against his side and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the eclivity. We are lost, dear Matthew, said she mournfully. We shall never find our way to the earth again. And oh, how happy we might have been in our cottage! Dear Hart, we will yet be happy there," answered Matthew. Look, in this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid I can direct our course to the passage of the notch. Let us go back, love, and dream no more of the great car-bunkle. The sun cannot be yonder, said Hannah, with despondence. By this time it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come from above our heads. But look, repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone, it is brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be? Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now also the cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the effect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of the old chaos had completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very border of a mountain lake. Deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked wence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own success. For as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate and the consciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood upward, they had seen it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its intense luster on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its power. But with their next glance they beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. At the base of the cliff directly beneath the Great Carbuncle appeared the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of climbing, and his face turned upward as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if changed to marble. It is the seeker, whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her husband's arm. Matthew, he is dead! The joy of success has killed him, replied Matthew, trembling violently. Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was death. The Great Carbuncle cried a peevish voice behind them. The great humbug! If you have found it, prithee, point it out to me. They turned their heads and there was the cynic, with his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced that there was the least glimmer there. Where is your great humbug? he repeated. I challenge you to make me see it. There, said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning the cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. Take off those abominable spectacles and you cannot help seeing it. Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic's sight, in at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze at an eclipse. With resolute privato, however, he snatched them from his nose, and fixed a bold stare full upon the blaze of the Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep shuttering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in every truth, no light of the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven itself for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon striking upon his naked vision had blinded him forever. Matthew, said Hannah, clinging to him, let us go hence. Matthew saw that she was faint and kneeling down supported her in his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her but could not renovate her courage. Yes, dearest, cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his breast, we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The blessed sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our home. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and be happy in its light, but never again will we desire more light than all the world may share with us. No, said his bride, for how could we live by day or sleep by night in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle? The hollow of their hands they drank each a draft from the lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered not a word and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the shore, till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance towards the cliff, and beheld the vapours gathering in dense volumes through which the gem burned duskily. As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes on to tell that the worshipful master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to butake himself again to his warehouse, near the town dock in Boston. But as he passed through the notch of the mountains, a war-party of Indians captured our unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there holding him in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, he had woefully subtracted from his horde of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a six-pence worth of copper. Dr. Cacapital, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the blowpipe, and published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And for all these purposes, the gem itself could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice, which he found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in all points with his idea of the great car-bunkle. The critics say that if his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of the ice. The Lord Devere went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due course of time, another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the great car-bunkle to show the vanity of earthly pomp. The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world a miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light for the willful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars. He turned his face eastward at sunrise, as duly as was an idolator. He made a pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of St. Peter's Church, and finally perished in the great fire of London, into the midst of which he had thrust himself with a desperate idea of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and heaven. Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of telling the legend of the great car-bunkle. The tale, however, towards the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient luster of the gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when the two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims reached the cliff they found only an opaque stone with particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake and that at noon tide the seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam. Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old and say that they have caught its radiance like a flash of summer lightning far down the valley of the sacco. And be it owned that many a mile from the crystal hills I saw a wondrous light around their summit and was lured by the faith and poetry to be the latest pilgrim of the Great Carbuncle. End of Section 4 The Great Carbuncle of Mystery of the White Mountains Section 5 Of the Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains by Nathaniel Hawthorne Section 5 Sketches from Memory The Notch of the White Mountains It was now the middle of September We had come since sunrise from Bartlett passing up through the valley of the sacco which extends between mountainous walls sometimes with a steep ascent but often as level as a church isle. All that day in two preceding ones we had been loitering toward the heart of the White Mountains. Those old crystal hills whose mysterious brilliancy had gleamed upon our distant wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height after height had risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to hang below the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides those avalanches of earth, stones and trees which descend into the hollows, leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation of ages. We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side and a group of mightier ones ahead. Still our road went up along the sacco right towards the center of that group as if to climb above the clouds in its passage to the far of the region. In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through some defile known only to themselves. It is indeed a wondrous path. A demon it might be fancied, or one of the Titans was traveling up the valley, oboing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but rendering it asunder a thousand feet from peak to base discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountains in art, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This is the notch of the white hills. Shame on me that I have attempted to describe it by so mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception of omnipotence. We had now reached a narrow passage which showed almost the appearance of having been cut by human strength and artifice on the solid rock. There was a wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on our right, and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow there. This is the entrance, or in the direction we were going, the extremity of the romantic defile of the notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab great coat, touching the wheel-horses with the whip-stock and raining in the leaders. To my mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior to what would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war-party gliding forth from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a very 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 opera-glass 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 amphitheater surrounded by a great rampart of hills, which shed 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 more 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. The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand feet above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear November evening in the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a frost, if not a snowfall, on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over the standing water. I was glad to perceive a prospect of comfortable quarters in a house which we were approaching, and of pleasant company in the guests who were assembled at the door. Our evening party among the mountains. We stood in front of a good substantial farmhouse of old date in that wild country. A sign over the door denoted it to be the White Mountain Post Office, an establishment which distributes letters and newspapers to perhaps a scorer of thousands, comprising the population of two or three townships among the hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a deer, a stag of ten, were fastened at the corner of the house. A fox's bushy tail was nailed beneath them, and a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still bleeding the trophy of a bear-hunt. Among several persons collected about the doorsteps, the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer of six feet, two, and corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features such as might be molded on his own blacksmith's anvil, but yet indicative of mother-wit and rough humor. As we appeared he uplifted a tin trumpet four or five feet long, and blew a tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival or to awaken an echo from the opposite hill. 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 end of country travelers. 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 Coas, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen woodcutters 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 in 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 ladder, 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 referenced 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 Etiquette 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 mountaintop. 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 slaying time for the sake of studying the yeoman 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, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn with slobbers around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his great coat, 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 in 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 at Splendor were enthralled 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 me thinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral. The hearts of the pale faces would not thrill to these superstitions of the red men, though we spoke of them in the center 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 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 sacrum told 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 sacrum and knew nothing of these prodigious piles of wealth. By this time, as usual, with men in 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 brushed 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 car-bunkle. End of section 5 Recording by Roger Maline End of sketches from memory, The Notch of the White Mountains End of The Great Stone Face and Other Tales of the White Mountains by Nathaniel Hawthorne