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 sleighing time, for the sake of studying the yeomen 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, barroom, and kitchen are strewn with slumberers around the fire.  Then let him rise before daylight, button his greatcoat, 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 on 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 its splendor were inthralled 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 methinks I could frame a tale with a deep moral.

The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of the red men, though we spoke of them in the centre 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 to 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.