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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.1 A MYSTEEY OP THK WHITE MOUNTAINS. At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a toilsom... More

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.1 A MYSTEEY OP THK WHITE MOUNTAINS. At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves, after a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of humpn faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while icant a mile above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and either robe themselves in clouds 1 The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale ia founded, is both too wild nnd too beautiful to be adequately wrought op in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the Rev- olntion, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not entirely discredited. or tower naked into the sky. The roar of the A mo- aoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the wind. The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed one another...

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