ellent cuisine, cool,
airy chambers, where one is made to feel at home by the urbane landlord,
Mr. R.D. Rounsend, and we turned from this section.

[Illustration: LEDGES ON MOUNT HAYES, IN GORHAM.]

The Crawford House, four miles below Fabyan's, is one of the finest in
its plans of the mountain houses, its wide piazzas extending the entire
length of the buildings. It is magnificently situated upon a little
plateau, just north of the gate of the White Mountain, or Crawford
Notch. The Saco River has its source not far from the house, its
birthplace being a picturesque little lake. At the right hand Mount
Willard rears its shapely mass, from whose summit a glorious view can be
obtained. The ascent is easily accomplished by carriage, and the
prospect, though not so grand and wild as that from Mount Washington,
exceeds it in picturesque beauty. The whole valley of the Saco, river of
the oak and elm, lies spread before the vision. The grand outlines of
the gorge, the winding road through the whole extent, the leaping
cascades flashing in the sunshine, all appear before the eye as in a
picture. One feels like exclaiming with Cowper:

"Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around,
Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,
And glittering towers and gilded streams,
The stretching landscape into smoke till all decays."

[Illustration: GIANT'S GRAVE, NEAR CRAWFORD HOUSE.]

One of the beauties of the Notch is the Flume, a brook that goes leaping
through its curious zigzag channel of rock on the side of Mount Webster,
hastening on its way to join the deeper current of the Saco. Then here
is "Silver Cascade," which is above the Flume, a series of leaping,
dashing, turning waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened
foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a
swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause
by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from the scene.

The White Mountain Notch, after Mount Washington, is the great natural
feature of the range. For three miles the road follows the bottom of a
chasm between overhanging cliffs, in some places two thousand feet in
height, and at others not more than twenty-five feet apart. This is the
great thoroughfare of travel, from the northern towns on the Connecticut
to Conway and the Saco valley, and _vice versa_; and through it
pass the headwaters of the Saco, which afterwards broadens out into