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traditions along the whole winding wall of its wilderness; and legends that had been enshrined in song and ballad would be as plentiful as the streams that leap singing towards the Saco, down their rocky stairs. But no hill, no sheer battlement, no torrent that ploughs and drains the barriers of this narrow and tortuous glen, suggests any Indian legend. One cascade, however, about half a mile from the former residence of old Abel Crawford, is more honored by the sad story associated with it, than by the picturesqueness of the crags through which it hurries for the last mile or two of its descending course. It is called "Nancy's Brook;" and the stage-drivers show to the passengers the stone which is the particular monument of the tragedy, bearing the name "Nancy's Rock."

Here, late in the autumn of the year 1778, a poor girl, who lived with a family in Jefferson, was found frozen to death. She was engaged to be married to a man who was employed in the same family where she served. She had intrusted to him all her earnings, and the understanding was, that in a few days they should leave for Portsmouth, to be married there. But during her temporary absence in Lancaster, nine miles from Jefferson, the man started with his employer for Portsmouth, without leaving any explanation or message for her. She learned the fact of her desertion on the same day that her lover departed. At once she walked back to Jefferson, tied up a small bundle of clothing, and in spite of all warnings and entreaties, set out on foot to overtake the faithless fugitive. Snow had already fallen; it was nearly night; the distance to the first settlement near the Notch was thirty miles; and there was no road through the wilderness but a hunter's path marked by spotted trees. She pressed on through the night, as the story runs, against a snow-storm and a northwest wind, in the hope of overtaking her lover at the camp in the Notch, before the party should start in the morning. She reached it soon after they had left, and found the ashes of the campfire warm.

It was plain to those, who, alarmed for her safety, had followed on from Jefferson to overtake her, that she had tried in vain to rekindle

the fire in the lonely camp. But the fire in her heart did not falter, and she still moved on, wet, cold, and hungry, with resolution unconquered by the thirty miles' tramp through the wilderness, on the bitter autumn night. She climbed the wild pass of the Notch which only one woman had scaled before—for it was then a matter of great difficulty to clamber over the steep, rough rocks-and followed the track of the Saco towards Conway. Several miles of the roughest part of the way she travelled thus, often fording the river. But her strength was spent by two or three hours of such toil; and she was found by the party in pursuit of her, chilled and stiff in the snow, with her head resting upon her staff, at the foot of an aged tree near "Nancy's Bridge," not many hours after she had ceased to breathe. When the lover of the unhappy girl heard the story of her faithfulness, her suffering, and her dreadful death, he became insane; and, after a few weeks, as one account informs us, after a few years, as another states it, died, a raving madman. And there are those who believe that often in still nights the valley walls near Mount Crawford echo the shrieks and groans of the restless ghost of Nancy's lover.

THE NOTCH.

Beware the pine-tree's withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!

The leaves are falling, falling,

Solemnly and slow;

Caw! caw! the rooks are calling,

It is a sound of woe,

A sound of woe!

Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;

They are chanting solemn masses,
Singing: "Pray for this poor soul,
Pray,―pray!"

And the hooded clouds, like friars,
Tell their beads in drops of rain,
And patter their doleful prayers;—
But their prayers are all in vain,
All in vain!

In North Conway we were surrounded by mountain splendor, cheer, and peace; the gradually darkening pass through Bartlett, and the pathos of the story murmured by Nancy's Brook, prepare us for the impression of mountain wrath and ravage when we reach those awful mountain walls whose jaws, as we enter them, seem ready to close together upon the little Willey House, the monument of the great disaster of the White Hills.

There is no Indian tradition connected with the Notch. We have no record that any Indians ever saw it. It was discovered in 1772 by a hunter named Nash, who had climbed a tree on Cherry Mountain. The farmers of Jefferson and Bethlehem were very glad to learn that there was a prospect of a more direct and speedy communication with the towns below, and with Portsmouth, than by winding around the easterly base of the great range. But the early experiments of passing through the Notch to reach the lowlands seemed to cost in toil and peril more than an equivalent for the gain in time.

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Horses were pulled up the narrowest and most jagged portion of the Notch between Mount Webster and Mount Willard, and let down again by ropes. And the primitive method of transporting any

commodities was to cut two poles some fifteen feet in length, nail a couple of bars across the middle, on which a bag or barrel could be fastened, then harness the horse into the smaller ends which served as thills, and let the larger ends, which had no wheels under them, drag on the ground. The first article of commerce that was carried in this way from the sea-shore, through the solemn walls and over the splintered outlet of the Notch, was a barrel of rum. It was taxed heavily, in its own substance, however, to ensure its passage, and reached the Amonoosuc meadows in a very reduced condition. The account between highlands and lowlands on the large ledger of traffic was balanced, soon after, by a barrel of tobacco, raised on the meadows of Lancaster, which, by horse-power and ropes, was let down the pass under Mount Willard, and, after crossing the Saco thirty-two times before reaching Bartlett, was sent on its smoother way to Portsmouth.

The Willey House, Mr. Spaulding tells us, was built as early as 1793. In 1803 a road was laid out through the Notch to Bartlett, at a cost of forty thousand dollars; and so many teams passed through with produce that it was quite necessary and not unprofitable to keep a house and stable in the Notch for their accommodation. In the autumn of 1825, Mr. Samuel Willey, Jr., with his family, moved into this little tenement, which has derived such tragic interest from his name. During the following winter, we are told that his hospitable kindness and shelter were greeted with as much gratitude by travellers who were obliged to contend with the biting frost, the furious storms, and the drifted snows of the Notch, as the monks of St. Bernard receive from the chilled wanderers of the Alps. The teamsters used to say, that when a furious northwester blew through the Notch in winter, it took two men to hold one man's hair on.

In the spring of 1826, Mr. Willey began to enlarge the conveniences of the little inn for entertaining guests. And in the early summer the spot looked very attractive. There was a beautiful meadow in front, stretching to the foot of the frowning wall of Mount Webster, and gemmed with tall rock-maples. To be sure, Mount

Willey rose at a rather threatening angle, some two thousand feet behind the house; but it was not so savage in appearance as Mount Webster opposite, and pretty much the whole of its broad, steep wall was draped in green. In a bright June morning the little meadow farm, flecked with the nibbling sheep, and cooled by the patches of shadow flung far out over the grass from the thick maple foliage, must have seemed to a traveller pausing there, and hearing the pleasant murmur of the Saco and the shrill sweetness of the Canada Whistler, as romantic a spot as one could fly to, to escape the fever and the perils of the world.

Late in June, Mr. Willey and his wife, looking from the back windows of their house in the afternoon of a misty day, saw a large mass of the mountain above them sliding through the fog towards their meadows, and almost in a line of the house itself. Rocks and earth came plunging down, sweeping whole trees before them, that would stand erect in the swift slide for rods before they fell. The slide moved under their eye to the very foot of the mountain, and hurled its frightful burden across the road. At first they were greatly terrified, and resolved to remove from the Notch. But Mr. Willey, on reflection, felt confident that such an event was not likely to occur again; and was satisfied with building a strong hut or cave a little below the house in the Notch, which would certainly be secure, and to which the family might fly for shelter, if they should see or hear another avalanche that seemed to threaten their home.

Later in the summer there was a long hot drought. By the middle of August, the earth, to a great depth in the mountain region, was dried to powder. Then came several days of south wind betokening copious rain. On Sunday the 27th of August, the rain began to fall. On Monday the 28th, the storm was very severe, and the rain was a deluge. Towards evening, the clouds around the White Mountain range and over the Notch, to those who saw them from a distance, were very heavy, black, and awful. It was plain that they were to be busy in their office as a

Factory of river and of rain.

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