By three o’clock we found ourselves at the Mountain House, twelve hundred feet below the summit of Mount Cardigan.  This house is nothing more or less than a barn, in one end of which an attempt has been made to make a comfortable shelter for the human family.  Here the real work of the day began, although we had already come one hundred and four miles by train and six by teams.  No enterprising railroad man has set his seal upon this region and we were forced to pursue the journey by means of the conveyances which nature long ago—­(how long, thank fortune, we are not obliged to tell)—­at our disposal.  But faint heart ne’er climbed a high mountain and with the aid of stout walking-sticks we easily climbed the path which led up under sighing spruces and stunted birch, filled with a fine exhilaration.

On each side and under foot was a profusion of wild flowers.  Not June flowers, but those found with us in May, so backward was the season at that altitude.  The red and white trillium, the sarsaparilla, Solomon’s seal, “moose-missy” and black-berry bushes, and, farther up, the blue-berry bushes, all hung full of blossoms, a small Alpine flower of seven white petals excited much curious comment, for in spite of its resemblance to the wind-flower, no one seemed able to classify it.

Suddenly some six hundred feet below the summit of Cardigan we came out from the stunted under-growth and found ourselves traversing the smooth granite mass which constitutes the entire mountain top.  The rock is full of minute particles of mica, which glitter and flash in the sun like “gems of purest ray serene.”  A brisk wind was blowing and the rarefied air infused us with new strength to make the remaining ascent.

Some distance from each other, half way up the rounded cone, lie several huge boulders poised in the bed of what was once a glacial drift.  They are of entirely different character from the rock on Cardigan and without doubt came from much farther north.  Whence, and when?  The course of the drift is also very plainly marked from northeast to southwest.  From the character of the rock there is reason to believe that when God said, “Let the dry land appear,” Mount Cardigan was the first to show his head and came from the very bowels of the earth.  Hitchcock’s “Geology of New Hampshire” states that these White Mountains appeared above the face of the waters as islands at a very early period of the world’s history.  “It would not be surprising,” he says, “if this archipelago covered as much area as New Hampshire and Vermont combined.”  If these hoary old mountains could tell us their history since creation, how short-lived and insignificant our own little lives would appear!

Professor Hitchcock has also traced the course of glacial drift among the mountains in a most interesting manner.  Glacial action, and marks of scarification are numerous on the north and west sides of them while they are entirely wanting on the southeastern slopes.  In some instances the general course of the drift from the northwest was changed by the position of the mountains.  For instance, Ragged Mountain and Kearsarge, South, rise abruptly from comparatively level regions and from their proximity to each other gave rise to a different motion of the ice, the marks of which still show its course.