hotels than any other village in New England. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it consisted of a few scattered log cabins, and the settlers' fields were full of dead girdled trees. It lies on a breezy upland slope with a vast panorama of mountain ranges rimming most of the horizon. The permanent inhabitants are only about one thousand, but the summer population is a multitude.

The railroads approach the mountains from different directions, and one passes right through the midst

of the group by way of a deep valley called the Crawford Notch. A strange catastrophe occurred in this notch in 1826. An occasional life has been lost in

winter storms, and there have been some serious accidents to travellers on the roads, but no other tragedy

has the interest of this one in the heart of the Crawford Notch. A rustic inn had been built there, and in it dwelt Mr. and Mrs. Willey, their five children, and two hired men. At dusk, one day toward the end of August, a storm burst on the mountains and raged with great fury through the night. Every tiny stream became a torrent, and the valleys were flooded, and the roads were impassable.

Two days later a traveller succeeded in getting to

the Willey House, which he found standing in woful desolation. An avalanche of earth, rocks, and trees had descended from the mountain and barely missed carrying the house away. When the traveller pushed open the door a dog disputed his entrance and howled mournfully. The lonely cabin had no other inmates. Beside the beds lay the clothing of the members of the household, indicating a hasty and frightened flight. Apparently they had become aware of the danger that threatened and run forth seeking safety only to be overwhelmed. If they had remained in the house, they would not have been harmed, for the avalanche divided a little back of the dwelling and rushed by on either side, leaving the frail structure standing, though some of the débris struck it with sufficient force to move it slightly from its foundations. A flock of sheep that was in the yard in front of the house suffered no harm, but the barn was crushed and two horses in it were killed.

The bodies of all the members of the household except those of three of the children were found later. For twenty-one miles down the valley the turnpike was demolished, and more than a score of bridges were swept away. Some of the meadows were buried several feet deep with earth and rocks, and there were great barricades of trees that had been torn up by the

roots.

Thousands of people visit the top of Mount Washington every year. This monarch of the New Eng

land mountains is over one mile high. As you go up it the trees steadily diminish in size, and at the height of three thousand feet they are not half as large as those in the valley. At four thousand feet they are mere shrubs, scraggly, stunted, and gray with age and shaggy

Mount Washington, the loftiest height in New England

moss. At last, even these pinched earth-hugging birches and spruces find the soil too thin and the warfare with the elements too strenuous, and there is nought but a drear waste of shattered, lichened rocks, with intervals of coarse grass, moss, diminutive blueberry bushes, and a few dainty blossoms. The rock fragments in this blighted upper region look as if they had lain there unchanged for ages.

There is a good road and a bridle-path to the summit, but the climb is long and hard, and most people prefer to ride up on a queer little railway. The railway is in part laid at the surface of the ground, and in part on trestle-work which often passes over deep hollows. There are cogwheels under the engine which fit a heavy cogged rail that is halfway between the other two. This enables the train to ascend and descend safely the steepest parts of the mountain. The machinery is so made that no matter what happens to it the train can be brought to a prompt stop, and not run away down the mountain. The railway is three miles long. When its inventor applied to the legislature for a charter, the scheme seemed so impossible that a member sarcastically moved to give the applicant leave to build a railway to the moon. It was completed in 1869.

A bridle-path was cut to the top in 1819, and the next year some gentlemen stayed on the summit overnight and named the different peaks of what has since been known as the Presidential Range. The names are those of the early presidents, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson.

More and more visitors came to the mountains, and in 1853 a house was erected on the summit of Mount Washington. All the buildings there have to be made secure by anchoring with numerous cables and rods. They could not otherwise withstand the fierce gales, for on this bleak height the wind has registered the