VII
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks, stands Noon
Mark, a shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, which,
with the aid of the sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to
eat dinner. From its summit you look south into a vast wilderness
basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, and out of whose
bosom you can hear from the heights on a still day the loud murmur of
the Boquet. This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south and
southeast into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top,--the
latter a local name which neither the mountain nor the fastidious
tourist is able to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps
its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, it cannot get
on without this name.
These two mountains, which belong to the great system of which Marcy
is the giant centre, and are in the neighborhood of five thousand
feet high, on the southern outposts of the great mountains, form the
gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This opening between
them is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated and one of the
wildest of the mountain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred
feet high.
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