Mt. Moosilauke (1880) - A Search for the Pleiades (Part 1)
". . . The newspapers describe a throng of tourists as passing through the White Mountains all summer long; but we forget that, when tried by the standard of Swiss or Scotch hill-country, ours is still unexplored and unopened. Even the laborious Appalachian Club has as yet barely called attention to a few of the wilder recesses. Half a mile to the right or left of many a much-traveled pathway lies the untamed and shaggy wilderness. . . .
At the last field meeting of the Appalachian Club, however, an interesting report had been presented by Rev. G.H. Scott, of Plymouth, N.H., who, with Rev. I.O. Ladd, of Hopkinton, had once spent the night on top of Moosilauke, and had descended into Jobildunk Ravine next day for fishing purposes, and had come upon these falls; after which they had followed Gorge Brook, as it is called, through the forest to Baker's River, and so on to the village of Warren.
The two clerical explorers, it appeared, were so delighted with the beauty of the cascades as to feel moved to do all that could be done for them in recognition; so in due form, by what may be called a self-acting baptismal process, - since the brook itself furnished the font, - they christened the sisterhood "the Pleiades." Such was the region we wished to visit. . . ."
From "In Search of the Pleiades" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pp. 93-113, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
