through a rocky bed by far too large for
it, will by and by, when the rains come, rise and roar and rush with
such impetuosity that these great water-worn stones, now bleaching
quietly in the sun, shall be wrenched up from their resting-places, and
whirled down the river with such fury and uproar that the noise of
their crashing and rolling shall break in upon your dreams at night.
Wild River, a little farther down, you may ford almost dry-shod, and in
four hours it shall reach such heights and depths as might upbear our
mightiest man-of-war. Many and many a gully, half choked with stones
and briers, lurks under the base of an overtopping hill, and shows
where a forgotten Undine lived and loved. The hills still bear the
scars of their wounds. No soft-springing greenness veils the tortuous
processes. Uncompromising and terrible, the marks of their awful
rending, the agony of their fiery birth, shall remain. Time, the
destroyer of man's works, is the perfecter of God's. These ravages are
not Time's; they are the doings of an early force, beneficent, but
dreadful. It is Time's to soothe and adorn.

We connect the idea of fixity with the mountains, but they seem to me
to be continually pirouetting with each other,--exchanging or entirely
losing their identity. You are in the Alpine Valley. Around you stand
Mount Hayes, so named in honor of a worthy housekeeper; the Imp,
sobriquet of a winsome and roguish little girl, who once made the house
gay; the Pilot range,--because they pilot the Androscoggin down to the
sea, says one to whom I never appeal in vain for facts or reasons;
Mount Madison, lifting his shining head beyond an opening niched for
him in the woods of a high hill-top by Mr. Hamilton Willis of Boston,
whom let all men thank. I thanked him in my heart every morning, noon,
and night, looking up from my seat at table to that distant peak, where
otherwise I should have seen only a monotonous forest line. Over
against the sunset is Mount Moriah, and Carter, and Surprise. You know
them well. You can call them all by name. But you have no sooner
turned a corner than--where are they? Gone,--all changed. Every line
is altered, every contour new. Spurs have become knobs. Peaks are
ridges; summits, terraces. Madison probably has disappeared, and some
Adams or Jefferson rises before you in unabashed grandeur. Carter and
the Imp have hopped around to another point of the compass. All the
lesser landmarks, as the