Mt. Moosilauke (1880) - A Search for the Pleiades (Part 2)
". . . All the party had climbed Moosilauke before, and there had been a good deal of debate as to whether, for our present purpose, we should leave the mountain path far down, and strike through the forest for the base of the cascades, or whether we should ascend nearly to the summit, and search downward for the uppermost falls. . . .
The great danger was of going forward headlong, with a sudden insertion of one's feet in a sharp cleft of these beautiful, treacherous, moss-hidden rocks. It was a positive relief to tread occasionally upon some prostrate tree-trunk, green with ferns and half decayed, yet bristling with spiked branches, and giving a safe though difficult bridge, as it slanted down the hill-side.
Meanwhile, we could see nothing overhead or outward, so dense were the trunks and boughs; and we had only an occasional glimpse of the broad hat of our guide, still descending without remorse. Once, when we had halted, and some one had expressed fervent gratitude that we had not to reascend that formidable ravine, Merrill looked round with a chuckle, and said, "It would be easier to go up there again than to go back the way you expect to go. . . ."
From "In Search of the Pleiades" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pp. 93-113, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
