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In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle alley of the Salem meeting-house, having on their heads a paper bearing the name of their crime; and a woman in Agamenticus at about the same date was ordered "to stand in a white sheet publicly two several Sabbath-Days with the mark of her offence on her forehead."
For mine own part, I think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale: "A likerous thing is wine, and drunkenness Is full of striving and of wretchedness. O drunken man! disfigured is thy face, Sour is thy breath, foul art then to embrace; Thy tongue is lost, and all thine honest care, For drunkenness is very sepulture Of man's wit and his discretion." AGAMENTICUS, August 18.
Down in the lower part of the town on the edge of York, there is a long tract of woodland, covering what is called the Rocky Hills; rough, high land, that stretches along from beyond Agamenticus, near the sea, to the upper part of Eliot, near the Piscataqua River.
A thousand years hence, when New Hampshire shall have become as populous as Babylon, this sketch may become the foundation of some "Tale of Beowulf" or other. At any rate here it is ready. Of all the White Mountains, the one of which you hear least said is Agamenticus, and perhaps justly, for it is not one of the White Mountains, but an isolated peak by itself.
The only thing suggestive of life was this little corner lot occupied by death. I got out of bed and went to the other window. There I had an uninterrupted view of twelve miles of open landscape, with Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not a house or a spire in sight. "Well," I exclaimed, "Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely packed metropolis!"
The ascent to Agamenticus is sidling and uncertain so long as you hug your carriage; but, leaving that, and confiding yourself to Mother Earth, you gather both strength and equipoise from the touch, and, with a little boy to guide you through the woods and over the rocks, you will find the ascent quite pleasant and safe, if you are careful not to slip down, which you will be sure to do on your descent, whether you are careful or not.
I took leave of my good friends at Agamenticus, or York, as it is now called, on the morning after the last date in my journal, going in a boat with my uncle to Piscataqua and Strawberry Bank. It was a cloudy day, and I was chilled through before we got to the mouth of the river; but, as the high wind was much in our favor, we were enabled to make the voyage in a shorter time than is common.
Agamenticus is a huge rock rising abruptly from a level country along New Hampshire's half-yard of sea-shore. As it is the only large rock on the eastern coast of the United States, it is in invaluable beacon to mariners.
When we got upon the top, which is bare and rocky, we had a fair view of the coast, with its many windings and its islands, from the Cape Ann, near Boston, to the Cape Elizabeth, near Casco, the Piscataqua and Agamenticus rivers; and away in the northwest we could see the peaks of mountains looking like summer clouds or banks of gray fog.
Next morning, the fog breaking away early, we set sail for Agamenticus, running along the coast and off the mouth of the Piscataqua River, passing near where my lamented Uncle Edward dwelt, whose fame as a worthy gentleman and magistrate is still living. We had Mount Agamenticus before us all day, a fair stately hill, rising up as it were from the water.
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