Sketches of Scenery and Manners in the United States (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE WHITE MOUNT4INS. The view from the little inn at Conway, embraces the first, and probably the last general display of all the vast features of the White Mountains, which will be presented to the traveller approaching them from the south. Here he seems to have reached the gates of a vast avenue, bounded on either hand by mountains of great elevation, and terminating in a region where the pale blue peaks penetrate the clouds, and sometimes bear them on their breasts, showing that nature has there concentrated all the magnificence and sublimity of this district. Sometimes those dis- tant and pre-eminent summits stand out clear of the mists and vapours; but as they are in a region rarely free from clouds, it is but seldom that they are distinctly visible. The seasons present different phenomena on their sides and pinnacles. The snows by which they are invested during eight or nine months of the year, assume various degrees of light and shadow, from the different directions in which they are struck by the beams of the sun; and the dazzling rays which they sometimes pour back in reflection, seem as if theyhad been rejected from a surface of polished steel.? To the eye of a novice, however, the most singular and unaccountable appearance is sometimes perceived, when the greater part of the mountains are divested of the snow, and only a mass or two remain to reflect the light of the sun. This dazzling glare is then rendered doubly striking by the contrast of the colour of the mountains; and the stranger often seeks in vain to account for so singular a phenomenon. No one, it may be boldly affirmed, unacquainted with similar scenes, would be prepared for so brillant a reflection from a body of snow at so great a distance; and when a light cloud intervenes, as is often the case, ...