New Hampshire is a land of mountains.  She is indeed throned among the hills, and well deserves the title of the “Switzerland of America.”  Her cloud-capped peaks, even in mid-summer, glisten with frosts and snows of winter, and they stand watchful sentinels over the liberties of her children.  Our Alps are the White Mountains, and they hold no mean place beside their rivals in the old world.  Their lofty elevation, their geological formation, the wild and romantic scenery in their vicinity, and their legends of white and red men, all concur to render them peculiarly interesting.

[Illustration:  Owl’s head and Moosilauke, Warren, N.H.]

The White Mountain range is located in Coos, Grafton, and Carroll Counties, covering an area of about two thousand square miles, or nearly a third of the northern section of the State.  Four of the largest rivers of New England receive tributaries from its streams, and one has its principal source in this region.  The peaks cluster in two groups, the eastern or White Mountain group proper, and the Franconia group, separated from each other by a tableland varying from ten to twenty miles in breadth.  These mountains differ from most others in being purely of a primitive origin.  They are probably the most ancient mountains in the world; not even the organic remains of the transition period have ever been discovered near them; and they are essentially of granitic formation.  Underneath these coherent and indurate ledges the most valuble ores exist, but coal and fossils are searched for in vain.  Many a change during the geological periods have these granite mountains looked upon.  They have seen fire and water successively sweep over the surface of our globe.  Devastating epochs passed, continents sunk and rose, and mountains were piled on mountains in the dread chaos, but these stood firm and undaunted, though scarred and seamed by glaciers, and washed by the billows of a primeval sea, presenting nearly the same contour that they do to-day.  They are the Methuselahs among mountains.

[Illustration:  “Old man of the mountains.”]

The Indians generally called these mountains Agiocochook, though one of the eastern tribes bestowed upon them the name of Waumbek Ketmetha, which signifies White Mountains.  A mythic obscurity shadows the whole historical life of this region till the advent of the white men.  The red man held the mountains in reverence and awe.  What Olympus and Ida were to the ancient Greeks, what Ararat and Sinai were to the Jews, what Popocatapetl and Orizaba were to the Aztecs, so were the summits of the White Mountains to the simple natives of this section.  An ancient tradition prevailed among them that a deluge once overspread the land and destroyed every human being but a single powwow and his wife, who fled for safety to these elevated regions, and thus preserved the race from extermination.  Their fancy peopled the mountains