Thus we ate our way luxuriously
through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern spur of the
White Mountains.
Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscriminating epithet. I use
it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,--a fine gorge
between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,--a pass
easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would
distract sentinels.
Now we came upon our proper field of action. We entered the State of
Maine at Township Letter B. A sharper harshness of articulation in
stray passengers told us that we were approaching the vocal influence
of the name Androscoggin. People talked as if, instead of ivory ring
or coral rattle to develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon
pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. An opera, with a
chorus drummed up in those regions, could dispense with violins.
Toward evening we struck the river, and found it rasping and crackling
over rocks as an Androscoggin should. We passed the last hamlet, then
the last house but one, and finally drew up at the last and
northernmost house, near the lumbermen's dam below Lake Umbagog. The
damster, a stalwart brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race, received
us with hearty hospitality.
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