Nothing but mountains
running in long parallels, or bending ridge behind ridge,
visible, here blazing in sunlight, there gloomy with shadow, and
all related to the towering mass of the imperial Washington.
"And Chocorua is the only mountain here whose summit is honored
with a legend. 'In the valley where the lovely forest-clad
mountains tower above the blue lakes dwelt Chocorua, the last
chief of his tribe. Here too lived a settler by the name of
Cornelius Campbell.
"Chocorua had a son, nine or ten years old, to whom Caroline
Campbell had occasionally made such gaudy present as were likely
to attract his savage fancy. This won the child's affections, so
that he became a familiar visitant, almost an inmate of their
dwelling, and, being unrestrained by the courtesies of civilized
life, he would inspect everything which came in his way. Some
poison, prepared for a mischievous fox which had long troubled
the little settlement, was discovered and drunk by the Indian
boy, and he went home to his father to sicken and die. When
Chocorua had buried his wife by the side of a brook, all that
was left to him was his little son. After the death of the boy,
jealousy and hatred took possession of Chocorua's soul. He never
told his suspicions, but he brooded over them in secret, to
nourish the deadly revenge he contemplated against Cornelius
Campbell.
"The story of Indian animosity is always the same. Campbell left
his but for the fields early one bright, balmy morning in June.
Still a lover, though ten years a husband, his last look was
towards his wife, answering her parting smile; his last action a
kiss for each of his children. When he returned to dinner, they
were dead - all dead - and their disfigured bodies too cruelly
showed that an Indian's hand had done the work.
"In such a mind, grief, like all other emotions, was
tempestuous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the
desert of life. In his wife and children he had centered all
affection, and now they were torn from him. The remembrance of
their love clung to him like the death grapple of a drowning
man, sinking him down into darkness and death. This was followed
by a calm a thousand times more terrible, the creeping agony of
despair, that brings with it no power of resistance.
"It was as if the dead could feel
The icy worm around him steal."
Such for many days was the state of Cornelius Campbell. Those
who knew and reverenced him feared that the spark of reason was
forever extinguished.
