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At the Interface
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith
Advisory Board
James Arvanitakis Simon Bacon
Katarzyna Bronk Stephen Morris
Jo Chipperfield John Parry
Ann-Marie Cook Karl Spracklen
Peter Mario Kreuter Peter Twohig
S Ram Vemuri Kenneth Wilson
An At the Interface research and publications project.
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/
The Evil Hub
‘Monstrous Geographies’
2013

Monstrous Spaces:
The Other Frontier
Edited by
Niculae Liviu Gheran and Ken Monteith
Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/
The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network
for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and
encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and
which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,
Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom.
+44 (0)1993 882087
ISBN: 978-1-84888-176-1
First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Monstrous Space: The Other Frontier vii
Part 1 Monstrous Fictional Spaces
From Haven to Hell: How the Earth Went Bad in Recent
Adaptations of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) 3
Simon Bacon
Decriminalising the Lawless Moor 11
Zea Miller
Fracturing the Monstrous Geography of George Orwell’s
1984 and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We: Sexuality, Dissidence
and Individualism 21
Niculae Liviu Gheran
Monstrous Breeding Grounds: Creation, Isolation and
Suffering at Noble’s Island, Hailsham and Rankstadt 31
Evelyn Tsitas
The Text, the Void and the Vortex: Turbulent Topologies
in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves 41
Moritz Ingwersen
Zombies in the Colonies: Imperialism and Contestation
of Ethno-Political Space in Max Brooks’ The Zombie
Survival Guide 51
Robert A. Saunders
Part 2 ‘Monstered’ Geographical Locations
Specter of Surveillance: The Monstrous Border between
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas 67
Ken Monteith
Morgues, Museums and the Ghost of Errol Flynn 75
Erin Ashenhurst

Soulless Cities: The Postmodern Metropolis and the
Horror of Absence 85
Oliver Golembowski
Rethinking Brutalist Buildings: Their Soul is in Their
Making 93
Olivia Muñoz-Rojas, Christine Wall and Linda Clarke
‘To Uncreation Sunk’: Monstered Spaces in the Works of
the War Poets 105
Sarah Montin
‘Pictures in a Rebus’: Puzzling out W. G. Sebald’s
Monstrous Geographies 115
Anna MacDonald
Imagining the Yellow Peril: A Topography of Racial Evil
in London’s Limehouse 127
Viv Chadder
Images of Post-Quake Japan or How to Stop Bara-Bara 137
Yutaka Sho
Terror Nullius: A Possessed Landscape 151
Thea Costantino
Crooked Stilts and Blood-Soaked Bluestones: Unearthing
Australia’s Troubled Settlement 163
Samuel Finegan
Enchanted Microcosm or Apocalyptic Warzone? Human
Projections into Bug World 173
Petra Rehling

Introduction
Monstrous Space: The Other Frontier
The chapters in this volume are a result of research presented during the 1st
Global Conference on Monstrous Geography which took place at Harris
Manchester College, Oxford, UK, from the 18th
to the 20th
of July 2012. They are
meant to offer an overall image of the conference proceedings, the topics debated,
as well as an introduction the issue of Monstrous Geography.
The last two decades has seen a transformation in how we locate ourselves in
society, how we locate ourselves in the spaces we inhabit, and how those spaces in
turn are constructed. Discussions of space have transformed the social sciences,
showing that concepts of space and location are socially constructed ideologies and
themselves are essential components of cultural production. As Barney Warf and
Santa Arias suggest in their introduction to their anthology, The Spatial Turn:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives, space and geography matter, ‘not for the simplistic
and overly used reason that everything happens in space, but because where things
happen is critical to knowing how and why they happen.’1
In other words, space
itself has cause and consequence. This spatial shift or spatial turn as described by
Warf and Arias develops from ideas introduced by Michel Foucault (among others)
in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. These discussions shift critical attention away
from time as a driving force of culture - the idea that culture develops along
historic or evolutionary lines - and instead illustrate how location plays an integral
role in social construction. In constructing a space to inhabit, a social group creates
a secure foundation upon which a culture can then begin to define itself.
While analysis of such social geography includes the idea that space itself is
plastic and capable of change and interpretation, the so-called spatial shift
highlights the role of space as a producer of social order. In many ways, the
concept of the monstrous helps solidify ideas of social order: the monstrous often
represents the Other, the figure standing outside social acceptability. Through a
monstrous Other, a social group can further solidify its own definition of self. Yet
when taken together, when examining monstrous geographies, we encounter an
Other frontier, a space that runs counter to the socially constructed space of culture
that at the same time includes, overlaps, and co-occupies the cultural landscape.
The monstrous invokes horror and fear since it represents a threat outside the space
of the everyday: as a result of this conference, we would argue that monstrous
geographies provide a landscape, and a space for discussion, that continually
challenges (and continually threatens) established ideas of culture and societal
development.
Since space is a universal concept, no one social science can lay exclusive
claim to its study. Functioning as something like a universal solvent for academic
discussion, the concept of space and spatiality proves to be by its very nature

Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
viii
multidisciplinary in scope. The study of monstrous geography is important because
it can encompass, as chair and organiser Jessica Rapson and Simon Bacon argue in
the original call for papers,
the factual and the fictional, the literal and the literary, the very
particular relationships and interactions between humanity and
place, the natural and the unnatural, the familiar and the
unfamiliar, and sees a multitude of configurations of human
monstrosity and evil projected, inflicted, or immanent to place.
Such monstrous geographies can be seen to emerge
from the disparity between past and present, memory and
modernity, urban and rural and can be expressed through
categories of class, gender and racial difference as well as
generational, political and religious tensions. […] Geographical
locations may act as the repository or emanation of human evil,
made monstrous by the rituals and behaviours enacted within
them, or by their peculiarities of atmosphere or configuration.
Whether actual or imagined, these places of wonder, fear and
horror speak of the symbiotic relation between humanity and
location that sees morality, ideology and emotions given
physical form in the house, the forest, the island, the nation and
even far away worlds in both space and time. They may engage
notions of self and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, normal
and aberrant, defence and contagion; may act as magnets for
destructive and evil forces.2
The call for papers produced a valuable range of material charting the
usefulness and importance of locating the monstrous in any number of academic
fields. The result was a rolling discussion where idea built upon idea throughout
the course of the fully packed three days allotted to the conference. Due to the
extremely varied and original choice of subjects, this e-book has been classified
into two parts, according to the analysed spaces’ relation to reality. That is to say,
the first part, entitled ‘Monstrous Fictional Spaces’ deals primarily with monstrous
environments originating from literary fictional universes; while the second,
entitled ‘Monstered Geographical Locations’ deals with real topologies that have
been, either by means of artistic craft or historical events that take/took place
within their borders, associated with the monstrous.
1. Monstrous Fictional Spaces
The topics debated in the first part of the e-book cover a ranging landscape
from discussions on recurring literary tropes related to the problematic of space, to

__________________________________________________________________
ix
monstrous breeding grounds, dystopian geographies, dark irrational environments,
turbulent topologies and geopolitical spaces.
In this respect the first part opens with Simon Bacon’s discussion of space in
films enacting one of the central themes of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.
Bacon’s reading of the Wells text argues that planet Earth is an entity defending
itself against outside invaders. While noting that originally the Earth as a character
acts as protector of humanity due to the symbiotic relationship between humans
and planet disturbed by an alien invasion, Bacon illustrates that works starting with
Richard Matheson’s I am Legend deconstruct this symbiotic relationship between
humans and their planet. In the process, human agency becomes the threat that the
planet defends itself against, with humans occupying the symbolic role of
destructive invaders previously assigned to the aliens. In the process of defending
itself, Earth becomes a deadly monstrous geographical space for humans. Bacon
offers several reasons for this mutation in the trope’s construction, linking this
construction to post-war technological progress giving man the capability to
destroy his habitat, removing human kind from his natural relationship with the
planet.
In the following chapter, Zea Miller examines the symbolic geography of the
moor in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Miller explores the
opposition between the monstrous, irrational, almost supernatural depiction of the
moor in Doyle’s novel and the super-rationalist approach used by the character
Sherlock Holmes to solving mysteries. After highlighting the reasons behind this
opposition, as well as illustrating the ways in which nature is constructed as a form
of monstrous geography, Miller argues for what she calls the decriminalisation of
the moor, the move beyond the taxonomic ascription of Otherness to forms of
nature. The resulting decriminalisation, she argues, will disarm the notion of
natural evil and thereby undermine the construction of natural monstrosity.
Following Miller’s deconstruction, and subsequent reconstruction, of social
spatial taxonomies, Niculae Liviu Gheran explores the instability of monstrous
geography in the case of George Orwell’s 1984 and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.
Gheran takes into account fictional characters and elements that seem to disturb
and undermine the influence of monstrous topology. Discussing the relation
between memory and alternative spaces throughout the novels as having the
capability of breaking through an almost palimpsest-like memory, Gheran
discovers a memory encouraged by and originating from the dystopian city. By
making use of Freudian psychoanalytical theory, the chapter illustrates the
relationship between eroticism and space in the novels as trespassing mass-
imposed sexual norms of the fictional topos, and, discusses individualism as
undermining the strict geometricity of the dystopian structure.
Picking up on the theme of dystopian spaces, Evelyn Tsitas’ shifts our focus
through an analysis of monstrous breeding grounds. Tsitas analyses H. G. Wells’
The Island of Doctor Moreau, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and Kirsten

Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
x
Bakis’ Lives of the Monster Dogs. For Tsitas, monstrous spaces are in this case
topographically isolated from access outside of society. In exploring the reason for
this isolation, as well as making connections with the role monsters play in our
society, Tsitas takes on what probably is the most famous monstrous breeding
ground of them all: the laboratory of Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein. Tsitas
demonstrates and critiques the instability of the monstrous geographical topos,
arguing that the creatures from such topoi naturally retaliate against their native
monstrous environment, thus disturbing the structure of space.
Moving from a discussion of how space creates monsters, the following chapter
examines how space itself inhabits and breeds fear, or is itself monstrous. In his
discussion of turbulent topologies in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves,
Moritz Ingwersen illustrates that the human fear of spaces oscillates between two
main poles: claustrophobia and agoraphobia, the fear of enclosed spaces and the
fear of being left unprotected out in the wide open. With this in mind, the essay
uncovers what appears to be the katabatic centre of Danielewsi’s House of Leaves,
a spiral staircase that seems to oscillate between the two poles of human terror in
regard to space. By drawing an analogy between E. A. Poe’s work, the use of the
vortex in film and literature, as well as the work of Michael Serres, Ingwersen
positions the spiral as a breakdown of laminar order, thus creating a peculiar form
of turbulent monstrous geography.
The last chapter in this first part of the book rounds out our discussion of
fictional spaces of monstrosity through apocalyptic revisioning. In his work,
Robert A. Saunders investigates the relationship between the monstrous geography
of zombie narratives and the monstrous geography of colonialism. Taking Max
Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide as his main text, Saunders suggests that in Brooks’
narrative every instance of zombiism involves a space that is ethnically or
politically contested. Saunders demonstrates that Brooks re-writes actual historical
narratives by constructing zombies as defenders of the land against colonial
avarice.
2. ‘Monstered’ Geographical Locations
Building off of our discussion of fictional spaces as monstrous spaces, the
collection now moves into the frontier of ‘real’ monstrous space. Shifting the focus
to monstrous architecture in the postmodern metropolis, battlefields, historical sites
of ruin, geographical catastrophes, spaces that were constructed as topologies of
racial evil to monstrous borders, continents and even the world of insects, this
second part of the e-book maps real existing topologies invested with various types
of monstrous imagery, either by artistic craft or by the nature of the events that
took/take place within their borders.
The first chapter in this section brings us to a monstrous frontier: the border
between The United States and Mexico. In this chapter, Ken Monteith suggests that
the shared border between the sister cities of Ciudad Juarez (in Mexico) and El

__________________________________________________________________
xi
Paso (in The United States) functions as a monstrous space. In addition to
considering borders as spaces that both divide and overlap, Monteith draws
attention to the way in which security and surveillance deploy to keep the border
distinct, redirecting social power so that it becomes a monstrous space. The author
bases his research on personal experience: living close to the border and by
necessity becoming a border crosser, Monteith examines how symbolic discussions
of the monstrous become concrete and alive.
In her contribution to the collection, Erin Ashenhurst examines how history is
made to come to life in a concrete manner through the monstrous space of tourism
and museums. Ashenhurst relates her experience as a participant in The Errol
Flynn Walking and Drinking Tour, a tour that takes its guests through the streets of
Vancouver, stopping at sites the Hollywood legend visited on the night of his
death. While Ashenhurst provides a narrative of the evening as tourist, the essay
problematises the role of voyeur and detective, examining how the everyday space
of a city can become a monstrous space through sensation and macabre nostalgia.
The following two chapters continue this discussion by examining the concrete
life of monstrous architecture. In his work, Oliver Golembowski investigates
soulless cities, the postmodern metropolis, and the horror of absence. In shaping
his argument on the soulless nature of the postmodern city, Golembowski
challenges the image and role of the detective, whose traditional primary function
is to search, rationalise and find a hidden meaning within the structure of the city.
However, anti-detective novels like Paul Auster’s The City of Glass confront the
main protagonist with a different type of city, one that simply holds no meaning to
be uncovered. The detective fails thus in his task because of the meaningless of his
monstrous environment. Golembowski draws a parallel between this type of city
and the monstrous quality of the actual postmodern metropolis.
As a kind of counter-point to Golembowski’s discussion of monstrous
architecture, the next contribution is a collaborative effort by Olivia Muñoz-Rojas,
Christine Wall, and Linda Clarke, who focus on brutalist architecture in the 1960’s.
Unlike many critiques of brutalism, this chapter does not state that brutalist
architecture would and should be considered monstrous; on the contrary, the
chapter deconstructs the belief that brutalism is a form of soulless, monstrous
architecture. Using recorded testimonials and interviews with builders of the South
Bank Arts Centre in London, the authors claim that the soul of brutalist
architecture is in the building process itself.
Building off of this discussion of brutalist archetechture, we turn to explore the
brutal frontier of the battlefield as it appears in works by poets writing during the
First World War. In her work, Sarah Montin investigates the way in which the
underlying landscape itself becomes monstered due to the events that happen
above it. As Montin notes, this monstering happens because the war poets shape
the landscape into a symbol of man’s monstrosity while simultaneously trying to
distance themselves from it. The author calls upon her own research relating to

Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
xii
Northrop Frye’s theory of the demonic space, defined as ‘the world of nightmare
and the scapegoat, of bondage, pain and confusion.’3
While Montin unearths the demonic spaces of the battlefield, Anna MacDonald
provides an overview of demonic spaces constructed within culture. MacDonald’s
analysis concerns W. G. Sebald’s monstrous geographies as reflected in the
author’s four prose works: Vertigo, The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn and
Austerlitz. MacDonald illustrates that in all the above cases, humanity’s historical
progress is depicted as moving from one disaster to the next; these disasters are
always linked by Sebald to topologies of ruin. As MacDonald argues, whether we
mean Jerusalem, the Congo, the 50,000 Waterloo dead, the mountains of rubble
that defined post-war Europe and Britain, Manchester’s slaughterhouses, as well as
any number of bonemills and towering chimneys, these sites are all linked to
monstrous geographic locations in Sebald’s novels. Sebald’s characters return to
them, bound by flesh or by memory and imagination.
The theme of memory and imagination continues in Viv Chadder’s discussion
of the imagery associated with the East London district of Limehouse. In her
chapter, Chadder notes the process by which Limehouse is constructed as a
topography of racial evil by novelists such as Sax Romer, who depicts the district
as home for dangerous fictional characters like Dr. Fu Manchu or the vampire
Eurasian woman, a home for the so called ‘yellow peril.’ From the perspective of
cultural criticism, Chadder examins the way in which Limehouse enters cultural
memory and imagination by how it is ‘monstered’ by associating space to race. As
a cultural phenomena, Limehouse’s otherness exercises both repulsion and
fascination to the western mind interested in the orient.
Moving from Western conceptions of the orient, to the actual landscape of
Japan, the following chapter maps the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake
and the resulting Fukushima Nuclear power plant disaster. Yutaka Sho illustrates
the issues Japan now faces as post-disaster geographic site, and examines how
Japanese society became bara-bara (broken apart) due to the never-before seen
regional and class discrepancies now observable at the level of day to day space
and day to day living. Sho explores the role of architecture in building lasting
equality and solidarity. In addition to suggesting that solidarity can lead to
sustainability, the chapter also poses the question of whether architecture can
bypass future geographical disasters.
The following two chapters investigate the social architecture of historic
imagination as seen in the real landscape of Australia. Firstly, Thea Costantino
discusses the continent in relation to Freud’s theory of the uncanny. In this respect,
she examines the colonial imagination that has constructed Australia’s territory as
‘terra nullius’ - land belonging to no one - but also as a dark site haunted by an
unseen force that threatens to consume the outsider. For Costantino, this
construction of Australian landscape as a hostile environment points towards
questions of belonging and legitimacy. She also notes, by presenting examples

__________________________________________________________________
xiii
from contemporary Australian artists such as Jonathan Jones, how artists continue
to explore this theme in new ways. This chapter pairs with Samuel Finegan’s
analysis of Australian Gothic aesthetic. Finegan explores the particularities and
meaning of Australian Gothic fiction by referencing authors as varied as Barbara
Baynton, Tim Winton, Sam Watson, Christos Tsiolkas, Sonya Hartnett and
Christina Stead. For Finegan, as well as Costantino, the link between geography
and monstrosity in Australia points to an unsettling colonial past still central to the
construction of Australian identity and belonging.
In the final contribution to the book, Petra Rehling invites us to explore a much
different monstrous universe, the habitat of insects. Rehling suggests that there are
two major ways in which human imagination constructs the world of insects and
the space they inhabit. Humanity either vilifies ‘bug world,’ configuring the space
they inhabit as a micro-monstrous type of geography, or, humanity Disney-fies the
microcosm into cartoon or cute acceptability. The author points to this paradoxical
construction of space by referring to two pseudo-documentaries The Hellstrom
Chronicle (1971) and Microcosmos: Le Peuple de L’herbe (1996). Throughout the
chapter Rehling discusses how humans portrayed the habitats, the bodies of insects
and other arthropods in fantasy, science fiction, children’s stories and daily life.
As we have seen, the chapters of this volume offer unique and compelling
perspectives regarding this new frontier of the monstrous space. The Other frontier
is a continually new and renewed landscape, always being constructed outside an
established social space; yet at the same time, it is intimately linked and anchored
in that social space. Undoubtedly, due to its nature as a universal solvent in
academic discourse, there are many more potential subjects to be analysed, places
to be mapped, and frontiers to be investigated by future crews of monstrous
geographers. The 1st
Global Conference on Monstrous Geography proved an
interesting and rewarding experience, one that will surely repeat in the future.
Notes
1
Barney Warf and Santa Arias, ‘Introduction: The Reinsertion of Space in the
Humanities and Social Sciences’, in The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives, eds. Barney Warf and Santa Arias (London: Routledge, 2009), 1.
2
Simon Bacon and Jessica Rapson, ‘Call for Papers’, Monstrous Geographies:
Places and Spaces of Monstrosity, Inter-Disciplinary.net, http://www.inter-
disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/evil/monstrous-geographies/call-for-papers/.
3
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (London: Penguin, 1990), 147.

Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
xiv
Bibliography
Warf, Barney, and Santa Arias. The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
London: Routledge, 2009.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin, 1990.
Inter-Disciplinary.net. ‘Call for Papers’. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-
interface/evil/monstrous-geographies/call-for-papers/.

Part 1
Monstrous Fictional Spaces

From Haven to Hell: How the Earth Went Bad in Recent
Adaptations of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898)
Simon Bacon
Abstract
Since its publication in 1898 H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds has had
many literary and cinematic adaptations, some following the original narrative and
its intentions more closely than others. Yet always at the heart of these works is the
idea of the Earth as being an almost living being that has a special relationship with
its inhabitants. This symbiosis works for their joint survival but ultimately it can be
seen as the planet defending itself. However, this chapter aims to show that in
recent cinematic versions this is no longer the case. If one extends this trope from
the novel - of the Earth defending itself from outside invasion by the use of
invisible microbes - it is possible to see that The War of the Worlds speaks not just
of the Earth defending itself against aliens but from any species that threatens its
existence. If the vision of humanity as a destructive, all consuming alien race is
added to this then what were seen as previously unrelated films can be viewed in a
very different light. Films such as I am Legend (2007) by Francis Lawrence and
Stakeland (2011) by Jim Mickle, though regarded as zombie apocalypse movies
can then be seen to re-enact the exact same trope as The War of the Worlds, but
now the infection spread by invisible microbes is no longer directed at the
Martians, but at humans. As such, the unknown virus that causes mankind to
consume itself can be seen as the product of a planetary auto-immune system
created to protect the world against an alien parasite that would otherwise destroy
it. What was once home to mankind has now become, literally, a hell on Earth.
Key Words: Ecology, Gaia, alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, vampire,
monstrosity, geography, immune system.
*****
1. This Earthly Haven
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells was written in 1898 and forms part of a
larger body of works - Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) being one - that reveals a
certain anxiety at the end of the 19th
century over humankind’s place in the world.
Humankind here, of course, being typically male and typically British. The
Empire, that had previously been seen to flourish through continual expansion,
seemed on the verge of dissipation and dissolution. A sense of decadence and
complacency, which was seen to foretell the collapse of all great empires, had
infected society making it ripe to be conquered itself. Stoker, in Dracula, saw it as
the result of a reverse colonisation, which saw those that has once themselves been
conquered rising up against their oppressors. Wells’ vision was somewhat further

From Haven to Hell
__________________________________________________________________
4
reaching than that. He saw this reverse colonisation as coming from beyond planet
Earth. And as the British Empire had once greedily eyed the natural resources of
other nations and took them for their own, so now the Martians viewed Earth.
Strangely enough, the technology that saved Victorian England from the
clutches of the vampire in Dracula is here used by the Martians to takeover the
Earth. Their futuristic space craft and weaponry making the earthlings look as out
of touch with the present as Dracula was against the telegraph and stenograph in
Stoker’s novel. This comparison with Stoker’s work is a useful one for these
beings from the future (as in Wells’ construction they can be seen to be the
evolutionary future of humanity), just like the vampire, they want to plunder the
nations most precious resource, and that is blood. If Dracula is the past of humanity
of which the present needs saving from then the Martians are its future. Unlike Van
Helsing and the crew of light in Stoker’s book, humanity in War of the Worlds
cannot save itself through its own efforts. The Martians technology far outweighs
anything that the humans of the present can produce and would seem to be heading
for inevitable defeat, until the Earth itself steps in to give a hand. The blood that
feeds the Martians also carries infections that it has no defense against. So in an
odd reversal of human colonisation, where common diseases are taken to foreign
lands and decimate the native population, here the Martians are struck down by
influenza, showing that their dependence on technology actually makes them
weaker, and more biologically vulnerable, but also reveals a certain relationship
between the Earth and its inhabitants. As Wells himself says in the novel ‘By the
toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his
against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as
they are.’1
Although there are some inherent and somewhat spurious linkages
between the natural place of the Empire here, it nevertheless sees the virus that
kills the Martians as, on some level, being produced by the Earth itself. As such, at
least in its relationship to the Earths inhabitants, the virus that kills the invaders
from space becomes almost a moderating device to judge those who would want to
inhabit the Earth; if you can’t survive a common cold, you have no right to be here.
Subsequently, even if Empires fall, the Earth belongs to the humans and the
humans belong to the Earth. The Earth is an Eden to humans, but a hell to
outsiders. This theme has remained very much part of many adaptations of Wells’
work. The 1953 version by Byron Haskin again sees humanity’s super powers and
super-weapons as ineffectual against the Martian invaders and again it is the earth
that comes to our rescue. Interestingly, this only happens after we see the Martians
destroy a church, making the spiritual link between the earth and its inhabitants
even stronger - its not just evolutionary but a God given right that Eden remains
ours.
However, more recent films begin to shift this relationship, not so much in the
Earth’s ability to save us, but in our ability to save ourselves. Independence Day
(1996) by Roland Emmerich shows humans creating the virus that destroys the

Simon Bacon
__________________________________________________________________
5
alien invaders, showing that our technology is better than the aliens’ from the
future. And even Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005) with Tom Cruise, shows
humans managing to destroy an Alien. (Interestingly here their invasion begins
with a church being destroyed). These examples of humans’ ‘doing it for
themselves,’ are nothing compared to those in Starship Troopers, by Paul
Verhoeven that actively pursue the aliens out into space; thus mirroring the earlier
story by Garrett P. Serviss, Edison’s Conquest of Mars from 1898. Here the
technology of humans is better than that possessed by the Martians, and the
humans, specifically Americans, travel to Mars to conquer the planet for
themselves. Similarly in Starship Troopers (based on a book by Robert Heinlien
from 1959) it is the humans that master mechanical technology whilst the ‘bugs’ or
aliens control a biological mastery. The aliens here never actually land on Earth but
it is the humans that invade planets upon which the ‘bugs’ live. A similar theme,
where it is the inhabitants of the Earth that are the aggressors is seen in District 9
by Niell Blomkamp (2009) and Super 8 by J. J. Abrams from 2011. In both these
films it is not so much the Earth that repeals the aliens but the humans. More
dangerous than any virus the humans make their home world as unwelcoming as
possible to any ‘unwanted’ guests.
This process sees its apotheosis in James Cameron’s Avatar from 2009. Here
the humans are the invaders of the peaceful planet of Pandora, harvesting its
natural resources with technology that far surpasses anything the native population,
the Navi, possess. This mining of the planet’s life blood causes the planet itself to
rise against the invaders, infecting all its inhabitants with a singularity of spirit that
causes them to rise and take back their planet. Fortunately for the humans, they are
not killed but expelled. Pandora is a true Eden for the Navi, and Cameron very
much constructs it as such, it becomes a hell for the invading humans. It is largely
because they do not have the same symbiotic relationship to the planet as the Navi
do. Consequently, Cameron’s film very much ties into the same kind of tropes that
Wells’ novel originally did. It is the symbiosis between the planet and its
inhabitants that ensures the survival of both. When the planet is going to be
exploited, it will rise up and protect itself. Interestingly, a very similar thing is seen
in the recent Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) by Rupert Sanders (and
similarly seen in Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien). Constructed as a fairytale
or fantasy film rather than a space adventure as most adaptations of The War of the
Worlds are, it shows that the evil queen is the invader, and it is the symbiotic
relationship between the kingdom and Snow White that eventually defeats the
queen. Echoing the theme of the linkage between a king or ruler and their
kingdom, if one is sick, so is the other.
What we begin to see through all of these examples is how technology removes
humans from their connection to their home world. The Martians, as
technologically evolved but biologically devolved humans sees them further
removed from the earth than its native inhabitants. As such, the greater biological

From Haven to Hell
__________________________________________________________________
6
connection to the planet acts as a protection against its natural defenses or immune
system. A similar thing happens on Pandora in Avatar, and this sees a shift in how
we can read the main trope of the War of the Worlds - it is still about the Earth
defending itself but it is directed at those who are no longer biologically linked to
it.2
In this way we can read a different genre of films enacting the same trope - that
of the vampire/zombie apocalypse.
2. Hell on Earth
Beginning with Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend, from 1957, both these
themes appear where the link between humans and their home world has
deteriorated and the Earth’s immune system has taken effect. In the then-new
Nuclear Age after World War II the technology that was seen to have won the
conflict is something that has a destructive power beyond human control. The
mutational effects of radiation and the capability of being able to destroy the Earth
itself, with these super-weapons, removes humankind from its natural relationship
with the planet. Suddenly, we become the thing that can cause the death of the
world. Following the earlier idea from War of the Worlds, the Earth would then be
compelled to try and save itself, which it does through the mysterious disease that
appears and begins to spread uncontrollably through humanity. I am Legend never
makes it specific where the disease originated from or what caused it (though it
hints at radiation of some kind) but it turns everybody into flesh-eating monsters.
This virus then not only attacks humans but also causes them to attack each other,
quickly destroying the infrastructure that allowed for the creation of the super
technologies in the first place. Not unlike Wells’ work, the evolution of humanity
through technology inevitably brings about its own devolution, making the
population into mindless zombies. Interestingly, the novel’s main protagonist,
Robert Neville, is immune to the disease because he had been previously bitten by
a vampire bat, suggestive both of the ‘earned’ birthright from Wells’ The War of
the Worlds, and also a closer connection to nature and the Earth itself than his
fellow humans. The end of the novel sees a ‘new’ species taking control of the
planet-humans that have managed to control the effects of the disease and who are
attempting to reconstruct life on Earth. This new life is one that is predicated upon
survival rather than technological expansion, and so inevitably links them back to a
dependence upon the Earth and its resources.
This notion informs George Romero’s zombie films that began in 1968 with
Night of the Living Dead. This began a series of films which show humanity
turning on itself, again from a mysterious disease, possibly caused by a passing
comet? Once again the human society based on technology increasingly breaks
down, and, interestingly, it is often humanity’s attempts to return to its ‘old ways’
by re-inhabiting shopping malls etc., that cause its downfall.3
More recent zombie
films and novels continue these ideas. The disease has come from nowhere, and in
books like World War Z by Max Brookes from 2006 and Warm Bodies by Isaac

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where the splendid natural forest, literally hewed and hacked in pieces,
exposes rudely all the deformities of the mountains. But this lost hamlet is
the first in which a genuine emotion of any kind awaits the traveller. Ten to
one it is like nothing he ever dreamed of; his surprise is, therefore, extreme.
The men were rough, hardy-looking fellows; the women appeared
contented, but as if hard work had destroyed their good looks prematurely.
Both announced, by their looks and their manner, that the life they led was
no child’s play; the men spoke only when addressed; the women stole
furtive glances at us; the half-dressed children stopped their play to stare at
the strangers. Here was neither spire nor bell. One cow furnished all the
milk for the commonalty. The mills being shut, there was no sound except
the river plashing over the rocks far down in the gorge below; and had I
encountered such a place on the sea-coast or the frontier, I should at once
have said I had stumbled upon the secret hold of outlaws and smugglers,
into which signs, grips, and passwords were necessary to procure
admission. To me, therefore, the hamlet of Livermore was a wholly new
experience.
From this hamlet to the foot of the mountain is a long and uninteresting
tramp of five miles through the woods. We found the walking good, and
strode rapidly on, coming first to a wood-cutter’s camp pitched on the
banks of Carrigain Brook, and next to the clearing they had made at the
mountain’s foot. Here the actual work of the ascent began in earnest.
Carrigain is solid, compact, massive. It is covered from head to foot with
forest. No incident of the way diverts the attention for a single moment
from the severe exertion required to overcome its steeply inclined side; no
breathing levels, no restful outlooks, no gorges, no precipices, no cascades
break the monotony of the escalade. We conquer, as Napoleon’s grenadiers
did, by our legs. It is the most inexorable of mountains, and the most
exasperating. From base to summit you cannot obtain a cup of water to
slake your thirst.
Two hours of this brought us out upon the bare summit of the great
northern spur, beyond which the true peak rose a few hundred feet higher.
Carrigain, at once the desire and the bugbear of climbers, was beneath our
feet.
We have already examined, from the rocks of Chocorua, the situation of
this peak. We then entitled it the Hub of the White Mountains. It reveals all

the magnitude, unfolds the topography of the woody wilderness stretching
between the Saco and the Pemigewasset valleys. As nearly as possible, it
exhibits the same amazing profusion of unbroken forest, here and there
darkly streaked by hidden watercourses, as when the daring foot of the first
climber pressed the unviolated crest of the august peak of Washington. In
all its length and breadth there is not one object that suggests, even
remotely, the presence of man. We saw not even the smoke of a hunter’s
camp. All was just as created; an absolute, savage, unkempt wilderness.
Heavens, what a bristling array of dark and shaggy mountains! Now and
then, where water gleamed out of their hideous depths, a great brilliant eye
seemed watching us from afar. We knew that we had only to look up to see
a dazzling circlet of lofty peaks drawn around the horizon, chains set with
glittering stones, clusters sparkling with antique crests; still we could not
withdraw our eyes from the profound abysses sunk deep in the bowels of
the land, typical of the uncovered bed of the primeval ocean, sad and
terrible, from which that ocean seemed only to have just receded.
But who shall describe all this solitary, this oppressive grandeur? and
what language portray the awfulness of these untrodden mountains? Now
and then, high up their bleak summits, a patch of forest had been plucked
up by the roots, or shaken from its hold in the throes of the mountain, laid
bare a long and glittering scar, red as a half-closed wound. Such is the
appearance of Mount Lowell, on the other side of the gap dividing
Carrigain from the Notch mountains. We saw where the dark slope of
Mount Willey gives birth to the infant Merrimack. We saw the confluent
waters of this stream, so light of foot, speeding through the gloomy defiles,
as if fear had given them wings. We saw the huge mass of Mount Hancock
force itself slowly upward out of the press. Unutterable lawlessness
stamped the whole region as its own.
That I have thus dwelt upon its most extraordinary feature, instead of
examining the landscape in detail, must suffice for the intelligent reader. I
have not the temerity to coolly put the dissecting-knife into its heart. To
science the things which belong to science. Besides, to the man of feeling
all this is but secondary. We are not here to make a chart.
After a visit to the high summit, where some work was done in the
interest of future climbers, we set out at four in the afternoon, on our return
down the mountain. A second time we halted on the spur to glance upward

A
at the heap of summits over which Mount Washington lifts a regular dome.
The long line of peaks, ascending from Crawford’s, seems approaching it
by a succession of huge steps. It was after dark when we saw the lights of
the village before us, and were again warmly welcomed by the rousing fire
and smoking viands of mine host.
VII.
VALLEY OF THE SACO.
With our faint heart the mountain strives;
Its arms outstretched, the Druid wood
Waits with its benedicte. Sir Launfal.
T eight o’clock in the morning we resumed our march, with the
intention of reaching Crawford’s the same evening. The day was cold,
raw, and windy, so we walked briskly—sharp air and cutting wind
acting like whip and spur.
I retain a vivid recollection of this morning. Autumn had passed her cool
hand over the fevered earth. Soft as three-piled velvet, the green turf left no
trace of our tread. The sky was of a dazzling blue, and frescoed with light
clouds, transparent as gauze, pure as the snow glistening on the high
summits. On both sides of us audacious mountains braced their feet in the
valley; while others mounted over their brawny shoulders, as if to scale the
heavens.
But what shall I say of the grand harlequinade of nature which the valley
presented to our view? I cannot employ Victor Hugo’s odd simile of a
peacock’s tail; that is more of a witticism than a description. The death of
the year seemed to prefigure the glorious and surprising changes of color in
a dying dolphin—putting on unparalleled beauty at the moment of
dissolution, and so going out in a blaze of glory.
From the meagre summits enfiladed by the north wind, and where a
solitary pine or cedar intensified the desolation, to the upper forests, the
mountains bristled with a scanty growth of dead or dying trees. Those
scattered birches, high up the mountain side, looked like quills on a

porcupine’s back; that group, glistening in the morning sun, like the pipes
of an immense organ. From this line of death, which vegetation crossed at
its peril, the eye dropped down over a limitless forest of dark evergreen
spotted with bright yellow. The effect of the sunlight on this foliage was
magical. Myriad flambeaux illuminated the deep gloom, doubling the
intensity of the sun, emitting rays, glowing, resplendent. This splendid light,
which the heavy masses of orange seemed to absorb, gave a velvety
softness to the lower ridges and spurs, covering their hard, angular lines
with a magnificent drapery. The lower forests, the valley, were one vast sea
of color. Here the bewildering melange of green and gold, orange and
crimson, purple and russet, produced the effect of an immense Turkish rug
—the colors being soft and rich, rather than vivid or brilliant. This quality,
the blending of a thousand tints, the dreamy grace, the sumptuous
profusion, the inexpressible tenderness, intoxicated the senses. Earth
seemed no longer earth. We had entered a garden of the gods.
From time to time a scarlet maple flamed up in the midst of the forest,
and its red foliage, scattered at our feet by the wind, glowed like flakes of
fire beaten from an anvil. A tangled maze of color changed the road into an
avenue bordered with rare and variegated plants. Autumn’s bright sceptre,
the golden-rod, pointed the way. Blue and white daisies strewed the
greensward.
After passing Sawyer’s River, the road turned abruptly to the north,
skirting the base of the Nancy range. We were at the door of the second
chamber in this remarkable gallery of nature.
Before crossing the threshold it is expedient to allude to the incident
which has given a name not only to the mountain, but to the torrent we see
tearing its impetuous way down from the upper forests. The story of
Nancy’s Brook is as follows:
In the latter part of the last century, a maiden, whose Christian name of
Nancy is all that comes down to us, was living in the little hamlet of
Jefferson. She loved, and was betrothed to a young man of the farm. The
wedding-day was fixed, and the young couple were on the eve of setting out
for Portsmouth, where their happiness was to be consummated at the altar.
In the trustfulness of love, the young girl confided the small sum which
constituted all her marriage-portion to her lover. This man repaid her simple
faith with the basest treachery. Seizing his opportunity, he left the hamlet

without a word of explanation or of adieu. The deserted maiden was one of
those natures which cannot quietly sit down under calamity. Urged on by
the intensity of her feelings, she resolved to pursue her recreant lover. He
could not resist her prayers, her entreaties, her tears! She was young,
vigorous, intrepid. With her to decide and to act were the same thing. In
vain the family attempted to dissuade her from her purpose. At nightfall she
set out.
A hundred years ago the route taken by this brave girl was not, as to-day,
a thoroughfare which one may follow with his eyes shut. It was only an
obscure path, little travelled by day, deserted by night. For thirty miles,
from Colonel Whipple’s, in Jefferson, to Bartlett, there was not a human
habitation. The forests were filled with wild beasts. The rigor of the season
—it was December—added its own perils. But nothing could daunt the
heroic spirit of Nancy; she had found man more cruel than all besides.
NANCY IN THE SNOW.
The girl’s hope was to overtake her lover before dawn at the place where
she expected he would have camped for the night. She found the camp
deserted, and the embers extinguished. Spurred on by hope or despair, she
pushed on down the tremendous defile of the Notch, fording the turbulent
and frozen Saco, and toiling through deep snows and over rocks and fallen
trees, until, feeling her strength fail, she sunk exhausted on the margin of
the brook which seems perpetually bemoaning her sad fate. Here, cold and
rigid as marble, under a canopy of evergreen which the snow tenderly
drooped above, they found her. She was wrapped in her cloak, and in the

same attitude of repose as when she fell asleep on her nuptial couch of
snow-crusted moss.
The story goes that the faithless lover became a hopeless maniac on
learning the fate of his victim, dying in horrible paroxysms not long after.
Tradition adds that for many years, on every anniversary of her death, the
mountains resounded with ravings, shrieks, and agonized cries, which the
superstitious attributed to the unhappy ghost of the maniac lover.[6]
It was not quite noon when we entered the beautiful and romantic glen
under the shadow of Mount Crawford. Upon our left, a little in advance, a
solidly-built English country-house, with gables, stood on a terrace well
above the valley. At our right, and below, was the old Mount Crawford
tavern, one of the most ancient of mountain hostelries. Upon the opposite
side of the vale rose the enormous mass of Mount Crawford; and near
where we stood, a humble mound, overgrown with bushes, enclosed the
mortal remains of the hardy pioneer whose monument is the mountain.
We had an excusable curiosity to see a man who, in the prime of life, had
forsaken the city, its pleasures, its opportunities, and had come to pass the
rest of his life among these mountains; one, too, whose enormous
possessions procured for him the title of Lord of the Valley. We heard with
astonishment that our day’s journey, of which we had completed the half
only, was wholly over his tract—I ought to say his dominions—that is, over
thirteen miles of field, forest, and mountain. This being equal to a small
principality, it seemed quite natural and proper to approach the proprietor
with some degree of ceremony.
A servant took our cards at the door, and returned with an invitation to
enter. The apartment into which we were conducted was the most singular I
have ever seen; certainly it has no counterpart in this world, unless the
famous hut of Robinson Crusoe has escaped the ravages of time. It was
literally crammed with antique furniture, among which was a high-backed
chair used in dentistry; squat little bottles, containing chemicals; and a
bench, on which was a spirit-lamp; a turning-lathe, a small portable furnace,
and a variety of instruments or tools of which we did not know the use. A
few prints and oil-paintings adorned the walls. A cheerful fire burnt on the
hearth.
“Were we in the sixteenth century,” said George, “I should say this was
the laboratory of some famous alchemist.”

ABEL CRAWFORD.
Further investigation was cut short by the entrance of our host, who was
a venerable-looking man, turned of eighty, with a silver beard falling upon
his breast, and a general expression of benignity. He stooped a little, but
seemed hale and hearty, notwithstanding the weight of his fourscore years.
Doctor Bemis received us graciously. For an hour he entertained us with
the story of his life among the mountains, “to which,” said he, “I credit the
last forty-five years—for I at first came here in pursuit of health.” After he
had satisfied our curiosity concerning himself, which he did with perfect
bonhomie, I asked him to describe Abel Crawford, the veteran guide of the
White Hills.
“Abel,” said the doctor, “was six feet four; Erastus, the eldest son, was
six feet six, or taller than Washington; and Ethan was still taller, being
nearly seven feet. In fact, not one of the sons was less than six feet; so you
may imagine what sort of family group it was when ‘his boys,’ as Abel
loved to call them, were all at home. Ah, well!” continued the doctor, with a
sigh, “that kind of timber does not flourish in the mountains now. Why, the
very sight of one of those giants inspired the timid with confidence. Ethan,
called in his day the Giant of the Hills, was a man of iron frame and will.
Fear and he were strangers. He would take up an exhausted traveller in his
sinewy arms and carry him as you would a baby, until his strength or
courage returned. The first bridle-path up the mountain was opened by him
in—let me see—ah! I have it, it was in 1821. Ethan, with the help of his
father, also built the Notch House above.[7]

“Abel was long-armed, lean, and sinewy. Doctor Dwight, whose ‘Travels
in New England’ you have doubtless read, stopped with Crawford, on his
way down the Notch, in 1797. His nearest neighbor then, on the north, was
Captain Rosebrook, who lived on or near the site of the present Fabyan
House. Crawford’s life of hardship had made little impression on a
constitution of iron. At seventy-five he rode the first horse that reached the
summit of Mount Washington. At eighty he often walked to his son’s
(Thomas J. Crawford), at the entrance of the Notch, before breakfast. I
recollect him perfectly at this time, and his appearance was peculiarly
impressive. He was erect and vigorous as one of those pines on yonder
mountain. His long white hair fell down upon his shoulders, and his fresh,
ruddy face was always expressive of good-humor.
“The destructive freshet of 1826,” continued the doctor, “swept
everything before it, flooding the intervale, and threatening the old house
down there with instant demolition. During that terrible night, when the
Willey family perished, Mrs. Crawford was alone with her young children
in the house. The water rose with such rapidity that she was driven to the
upper story for safety. While here, the thud of floating trees, driven by the
current against the house, awakened new terrors. At every concussion the
house trembled. Wooden walls could not long stand that terrible pounding.
The heroic woman, alive to the danger, seized a stout pole, and, going to the
nearest window, kept the side of the house exposed to the flood free from
the mass of wreck-stuff collected against it. She held her post thus
throughout the night, until the danger had passed. When the flood subsided,
Crawford found several fine trout alive in his cellar.”
“When do the great freshets usually occur?” I asked.
“In the autumn,” replied our host. “It is not the melting snows, but the
sudden rainfalls that we fear.”
“Yes,” resumed he, reflectively, “the Crawfords were a family of
athletes. With them the race of guides became extinct. Soon after settling
here, Abel went with his wife to Bartlett on some occasion, leaving their
two boys in the care of a hired man. When they had gone, this man took
what he could find of value and decamped. When Abel returned, which he
did on the following day, he immediately set out in pursuit of the thief,
overtook him thirty miles from here, in the Franconia forests, flogged him
within an inch of his life, and let him go.”

“Sixty miles on foot, and alone, to recover a few stolen goods, and
punish a thief!” cried the astonished colonel; “that beats Daniel Boone.”
“Yes; and what is more, the boys were brought up to face hunger, cold,
fatigue, with Indian stoicism, and even to encounter bears, lynxes, and
wolves with no other weapons than those provided by nature. There, now,
was Ethan, for example,” said the doctor, smiling at the recollection. “One
day he took it into his head to have a tame bear for the diversion of his
guests. Well, he caught a young one, half grown, and remarkably vicious, in
a trap. But how to get him home! At length Ethan tied his fore and hind
paws together so he couldn’t scratch, and put a muzzle of withes over his
nose so he couldn’t bite. Then, shouldering his prize as he would a bag of
meal, the guide started for home, in great glee at the success of his clever
expedient. He had not gone far, however, before Bruin managed to get one
paw wholly and his muzzle partly free, and began to scratch and struggle
and snap at his captor savagely. Ethan wanted to get the bear home terribly;
but, after having his clothing nearly torn off his back, he grew angry, and
threw the beast upon the ground with such force as to kill him instantly.”
“Report,” said I, “credits you with naming most of the mountains which
overlook the intervale.”
“Yes,” replied the doctor, “Resolution, over there”—indicating the
mountain allied to Crawford, and to the ridge which forms one of the
buttresses of Mount Washington—“I named in recognition of the
perseverance of Mr. Davis, who became discouraged while making a path
to Mount Washington in 1845.”
“Is the route practicable?” I asked.
“Practicable, yes; but nearly obliterated, and seldom ascended. Have you
seen Frankenstein?” demanded the doctor, in his turn.
We replied in the negative.
“It will repay a visit. I named it for a young German artist who passed
some time with me, and who was fascinated by its rugged picturesqueness.
Here is some of his work,” pointing to the paintings which, apparently,
formed the foundation of the collection on the walls.
Our host accompanied us to the door with a second injunction not to
forget Frankenstein.
“You have something there good for the eyes,” I observed, indicating the
green carpet of the vale beneath us.

“True; but you should have seen it when the deer boldly came down the
mountain and browsed quietly among the cattle. That was a pretty sight, and
one of frequent occurrence when I first knew the place. At that time,” he
continued, “the stage passed up every other day. Sometimes there were one
or two, but seldom three passengers.”
Proceeding on our way, we now had a fine view of the Giant’s Stairs,
which we had already seen from Mount Carrigain, but less boldly outlined
than they appear from the valley, where they really look like two enormous
steps cut on the very summit of the opposite ridge. No name could be more
appropriate, though each of the degrees of this colossal staircase demands a
giant not of our days; for they are respectively three hundred and fifty, and
four hundred and fifty feet in height. It was over those steps that the Davis
path ascended.
A mile or a mile and a half above the Crawford Glen, we emerged from
behind a projecting spur of the mountain which hid the upper valley, when,
by a common impulse, we stopped, fairly stupefied with admiration and
surprise.
Thrust out before us, athwart the pass, a black and castellated pile of
precipices shot upward to a dizzy height, and broke off abruptly against the
sky. Its bulging sides and regular outlines resembled the clustered towers
and frowning battlements of some antique fortress built to command the
pass. Gashed, splintered, defaced, it seemed to have withstood for ages the
artillery of heaven and the assaults of time. With what solitary grandeur it
lifted its mailed front above the forest, and seemed even to regard the
mountains with disdain! Silent, gloomy, impregnable, it wanted nothing to
recall those dark abodes of the Thousand and One Nights, in which
malignant genii are imprisoned for thousands of years.
This was Frankenstein. We at once accord it a place as the most
suggestive of cliffs. From the other side of the valley the resemblance to a
mediæval castle is still more striking. It has a black gorge for a moat, so
deep that the head swims when crossing it; and to-day, as we crept over the
cat’s-cradle of a bridge thrown across for the passage of the railway, and
listened to the growling of the torrent far down beneath, the whole frail
structure seemed trembling under us.
But what a contrast! what a singular freak of nature! At the foot of this
grisly precipice, clothing it with almost superhuman beauty, was a

plantation of maples and birches, all resplendent in crimson and gold. Never
have I seen such masses of color laid on such a background. Below all was
light and splendor; above, all darkness and gloom. Here the eye fairly
revelled in beauty, there it recoiled in terror. The cliff was like a naked and
swarthy Ethiopian up to his knees in roses.
We walked slowly, with our eyes fixed on these cliffs, until another turn
of the road—we were now on the railway embankment—opened a vista
deserving to be remembered as one of the marvels of this glorious picture-
gallery.
The perfection and magnificence of this truly regal picture, the gigantic
scale on which it is presented, without the least blemish to mar its harmony
or disturb the impression of one grand, unique whole, is a revelation to the
least susceptible nature in the world.
Frankenstein was now a little withdrawn, on our left. Upon the right,
fluttering its golden foliage as if to attract our attention, a plantation of tall,
satin-stemmed birches stretched for some distance along the railway.
Between the long buttress of the cliff and this forest lay open the valley of
Mount Washington River, which is driven deep into the heart of the great
range. There, through this valley, cutting the sapphire sky with their silver
silhouette, were the giant mountains, surmounted by the splendid dome of
Washington himself.

STORM ON MOUNT WILLEY.
Passing beyond, we had a fine retrospect of Crawford, with his curved
horn; and upon the dizzy iron bridge thrown across the gorge beneath
Frankenstein, striking views are obtained of the mountains below. They
seemed loftier and grander, and more imposing than ever.
Turning our faces toward the north, we now beheld the immense bulk
and superb crest of Willey. On the other side of the valley was the long
battlement of Mount Webster. We were at the entrance of the great Notch.
VIII.
THROUGH THE NOTCH.

T
Around his waist are forests braced,
The avalanche in his hand.—Byron.
HE valley, which had continually contracted since leaving Bartlett, now
appeared fast shut between these two mountains; but on turning the
tremendous support which Mount Willey flings down, we were in
presence of the amazing defile cloven through the midst, and giving
entrance to the heart of the White Hills.
These gigantic mountains divided to the right and left, like the Red Sea
before the Israelites. Through the immense trough, over which their crests
hung suspended in mid-air, the highway creeps and the river steals away.
The road is only seen at intervals through the forest; a low murmur, like the
hum of bees, announces the river.
I have no conception of the man who can approach this stupendous
chasm without a sensation of fear. The idea of imminent annihilation is
everywhere overwhelming. The mind refuses to reason, or rather to fix
itself, except on a single point. What if the same power that commanded
these awful mountains to remove should hurl them back to ever-during
fixedness? Should, do I say? The gulf seemed contracting under our very
eyes—the great mountains toppling to their fall. With an eagerness excited
by high expectation, we had pressed forward; but now we hesitated.
This emotion, which many of my readers have doubtless partaken, was
our tribute to the dumb but eloquent expression of power too vast for our
feeble intellects to measure. It was the triumph of matter over mind; of the
finite over the infinite.
Below, it was all admiration and surprise; here, all amazement and fear.
The more the mountains exalted themselves, the more we were abased.
Trusting, nevertheless, in our insignificance, we moved on, looking with all
our eyes, absorbed, silent, and almost worshipping.
The wide split of the Notch, which we had now entered, had on one side
Mount Willey, drawn up to his full height; and on the other Mount Webster,
striped with dull red on clingy yellow, like an old tiger’s skin. Willey is the
highest; Webster the most remarkable. Willey has a conical spire; Webster a
long, irregular battlement. Willey is a mountain; Webster a huge block of
granite.

For two miles the gorge winds between these mountains to where it is
apparently sealed up by a sheer mass of purple precipices lodged full in its
throat. This is Mount Willard. The vast chasm glowed with the gorgeous
colors of the foliage, even when a passing cloud obscured the sun. These
general observations made, we cast our eyes down into the vale reposing at
our feet. We had chosen for our point of view that to which Abel Crawford
conducted Sir Charles Lyell in 1845. The scientist has made the avalanche
bear witness to the glacier, precisely as one criminal is made to convict
another under our laws.
Five hundred feet below us was a little clearing, containing a hamlet of
two or three houses. From this hamlet to the storm-crushed crags glistening
on the summit of Mount Willey the track of an old avalanche was still
distinguishable, though the birches and alders rooted among the débris
threatened to obliterate it at no distant day.
We descended by this still plain path to the houses at the foot of the
mountain. One and the other are associated with the most tragic event
connected with the history of the great Notch.
We found two houses, a larger and smaller, fronting the road, neither of
which merits a description; although evidence that it was visited by
multitudes of curious pilgrims abounded on the walls of the unoccupied
building.
Since quite early in the century, this house was kept as an inn; and for a
long time it was the only stopping-place between Abel Crawford’s below
and Captain Rosebrook’s above—a distance of thirteen miles. Its situation,
at the entrance of the great Notch, was advantageous to the public and to the
landlord, but attended with a danger which seems not to have been
sufficiently regarded, if indeed it caused successive inmates particular
concern. This fatal security had a lamentable sequel.

MOUNT WILLARD FROM WILLEY
BROOK.
In 1826 this house was occupied by Samuel Willey, his wife, five
children, and two hired men. During the summer a drought of unusual
severity dried the streams, and parched the thin soil of the neighboring
mountains. On the evening of the 26th of June, the family heard a heavy,
rumbling noise, apparently proceeding from the mountain behind them. In
terror and amazement they ran out of the house. They saw the mountain in
motion. They saw an immense mass of earth and rock detach itself and
move toward the valley, at first slowly, then with gathered and irresistible
momentum. Rocks, trees, earth, were swooping down upon them from the
heights in three destroying streams. The spectators stood rooted to the spot.
Before they could recover their presence of mind the avalanche was upon
them. One torrent crossed the road only ten rods from the house; another a

little distance beyond; while the third and largest portion took a different
direction. With great labor a way was made over the mass of rubbish for the
road. The avalanche had shivered the largest trees, and borne rocks
weighing many tons almost to the door of the lonely habitation.
This awful warning passed unheeded. On the 28th of August, at dusk, a
storm burst upon the mountains, and raged with indescribable fury
throughout the night. The rain fell in sheets. Innumerable torrents suddenly
broke forth on all sides, deluging the narrow valley, and bearing with them
forests that had covered the mountains for ages. The swollen and turbid
Saco rose over its banks, flooding the Intervales, and spreading destruction
in its course.
Two days afterward a traveller succeeded in forcing his way through the
Notch. He found the Willey House standing uninjured in the midst of woful
desolation. A second avalanche, descended from Mount Willey during the
storm, had buried the little vale beneath its ruins. The traveller, affrighted
by the scene around him, pushed open the door. As he did so, a half-
famished dog, sole inmate of the house, disputed his entrance with a
mournful howl. He entered. The interior was silent and deserted. A candle
burnt to the socket, the clothing of the inmates lying by their bedsides,
testified to the haste with which this devoted family had fled. The death-like
hush pervading the lonely cabin—these evidences of the horrible and
untimely fate of the family—the appalling scene of wreck all around, froze
the solitary intruder’s blood. In terror he, too, fled from the doomed
dwelling.
On arriving at Bartlett, the traveller reported what he had seen.
Assistance was despatched to the scene of disaster. The rescuers came too
late to render aid to the living, but they found, and buried on the spot, the
bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey, and the two hired men. The remaining
children were never found.
It was easily conjectured that the terrified family, alive at last to the
appalling danger that menaced them, and feeling the solid earth tremble in
the throes of the mountain, sought safety in flight. They only rushed to their
doom. The discovery of the bodies showed but too plainly the manner of
their death. They had been instantly swallowed up by the avalanche, which,
in the inexplicable order of things visible in great calamities, divided behind

the house, leaving the frail structure unharmed, while its inmates were
hurried into eternity.[8]
For some time after the disaster a curse seemed to rest upon the old
Notch House. No one would occupy it. Travellers shunned it. It remained
untenanted, though open to all who might be driven to seek its inhospitable
shelter, until the deep impression of horror which the fate of the Willey
family inspired had, in a measure, effaced itself.
The effects of the cataclysm were everywhere. For twenty-one miles,
almost its entire length, the turnpike was demolished. Twenty-one of the
twenty-three bridges were swept away. In some places the meadows were
buried to the depth of several feet beneath sand, earth, and rocks; in others,
heaps of great trees, which the torrent had torn up by the roots, barricaded
the route. The mountains presented a ghastly spectacle. One single night
sufficed to obliterate the work of centuries, to strip their summits bare of
verdure, and to leave them with shreds of forest and patches of shrubbery
hanging to their stark and naked sides. Thus their whole aspect was altered
to an extent hardly to be realized to-day, though remarked with mingled
wonder and dread long after the period of the convulsion.
From the house our eyes naturally wandered to the mountain, where
quarrymen were pecking at its side like yellow-hammers at a dead
sycamore. All at once a tremendous explosion was heard, and a stream of
loosened earth and bowlders came rattling down the mountain. So
unexpected was the sound, so startling its multiplied echo, it seemed as if
the mountain had uttered a roar of rage and pain, which was taken up and
repeated by the other mountains until the uproar became deafening. When
the reverberation died away in the distance, we again heard the metallic
click of the miners’ hammers chipping away at the gaunt ribs of Mount
Willey.
How does it happen that this catastrophe is still able to awaken the
liveliest interest for the fate of the Willey family? Why is it that the oft-
repeated tale seems ever new in the ears of sympathetic listeners? Our age
is crowded with horrors, to which this seems trifling indeed. May we not
attribute it to the influence which the actual scene exerts on the
imagination? One must stand on the spot to comprehend; must feel the
mysterious terror to which all who come within the influence of the gorge
submit. Here the annihilation of a family is but the legitimate expression of

that feeling. It seems altogether natural to the place. The ravine might well
be the sepulchre of a million human beings, instead of the grave of a single
obscure family.
We reached the public-house, at the side of the Willey house, with
appetites whetted by our long walk. The mercury had only risen to thirty-
eight degrees by the thermometer nailed to the door-post. We went in.
In general, the mountain publicans are not only very obliging, but equal
to even the most unexpected demands. The colonel, who never brags, had
boasted for the last half-hour what he was going to do at this repast. In point
of fact, we were famishing.
A man was standing with his back to the fire, his hands thrust underneath
his coat-tails, and a pipe in his mouth. Either the pipe illuminated his nose,
or his nose the pipe. He also had a nervous contraction of the muscles of his
face, causing an involuntary twitching of the eyebrows, and at the same
time of his ears, up and down. This habit, taken in connection with the
perfect immobility of the figure, made on us the impression of a statue
winking. We therefore hesitated to address it—I mean him—until a
moment’s puzzled scrutiny satisfied us that it—I mean the strange object—
was alive. He merely turned his head when we entered the room, wagged
his ears playfully, winked furiously, and then resumed his first attitude. In
all probability he was some stranger like ourselves.
I accosted him. “Sir,” said I, “can you tell us if it is possible to procure a
dinner here?”
The man took the pipe from his mouth, shook out the ashes very
deliberately, and, without looking at me, tranquilly observed,
“You would like dinner, then?”
“Would we like dinner? We breakfasted at Bartlett, and have passed six
hours fasting.”
“And eleven miles. You see, a long way between meals,” interjected
George, with decision.
“It’s after the regular dinner,” drawled the apathetic smoker, using his
thumb for a stopper, and stooping for a brand with which to relight his pipe.
“In that case we are willing to pay for any additional trouble,” I hastened
to say.

The man seemed reflecting. We were hungry; that was incontestable; but
we were also shivering, and he maintained his position astride the hearth-
stone, like the fabled Colossus of old.
“A cold day,” said the colonel, threshing himself.
“I did not notice it,” returned the stranger, indifferently.
“Only thirty-eight at the door,” said George, stamping his feet with
unnecessary vehemence.
“Indeed!” observed our man, with more interest.
“Yes,” George asserted; “and if the fireplace were only larger, or the
screen smaller.”
The man hastily stepped aside, knocking over, as he did so, a blazing
brand, which he kicked viciously back into the fire.
Having carried the outworks, we approached the citadel. “Perhaps, sir,” I
ventured, “you can inform us where the landlord may be found?”
“You wanted dinner, I believe?” The tone in which this question was put
gave me goose-flesh. I could not speak, George dropped into a chair. The
colonel propped himself against the chimney-piece. I shrugged my
shoulders, and nodded expressively to my companions, who returned two
glances of eloquent dismay. Evidently nothing was to be got out of this
fellow.
“Dinner for one?” continued the eternal smoker.
“For three!” I exclaimed, out of all patience.
“For four; I shall eat double,” added the colonel.
“Six!” shouted George, seizing the dinner-bell on the mantel-piece.
“Stop,” said the man, betraying a little excitement; “don’t ring that bell.”
“Why not?” demanded George; “we want to see the landlord; and, by
Jove,” brandishing the bell aloft, “see him we will!”
“He stands before you, gentlemen; and if you will have a little patience I
will see what can be done.” So saying, he put his pipe on the chimney-
piece, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and went out, muttering,
as he did so. “The world was not made in a day.”
In three-quarters of an hour we sat down to a funereal repast, the bare
recollection of which makes me ill, but which was enlivened by the
following conversation:

“How many inhabitants are in your tract?” I asked of the man who
waited on us.
“Do you mean inhabitants?”
“Certainly, I mean inhabitants.”
“Well, that’s not an easy one.”
“How so?”
“Because the same question not only puzzled the State Legislature, but
made the attorney-general sick.”
We became attentive.
“Explain that, if you please,” said I.
“Why, just look at it: with only eight legal voters in the tract” (he called
it track), “we cast five hundred ballots at the State election.”
“Five hundred ballots! then your voters must have sprung from the
ground or from the rocks.”
“Pretty nearly so.”
“Actual men?”
“Actual men.”
“You are jesting.”
My man looked at me as if I had offered him an affront. The supposition
was plainly inadmissible. He was completely innocent of the charge.
“You hear those men pounding away up the hill?” he demanded, jerking
his thumb in the direction indicated.
“Yes.”
“Well, those are the five hundred voters. On election morning they came
to the polling-place with a ballot in one hand, and a pick, a sledge, or a drill
in the other. Our supervisor is a very honest, blunt sort of man: he refused
their ballots on the spot.”
“Well?”
“Well, one of them had a can of nitro-glycerine and a coil of wire. He
deposited his can in a corner, hitched on the wire, and was going out with
his comrades, when the supervisor, feeling nervous, said,
“‘The polls are open, gentlemen.’”
“Ingenious,” remarked George.

The man looked astounded.
“He means dangerous,” said I; “but go on.”
“I will. When the votes were counted, at sundown, it was found that our
precinct had elected two representatives to the General Court. But when the
successful candidates presented their certificates at Concord, some
meddlesome city fellow questioned the validity of the election. The upshot
of it was that the two nitro-glycerites came back with a flea in each ear.”
“And the five hundred were disfranchised,” said George.
“Why, as to that, half were French Canadians, half Irish, and the devil
knows what the rest were; I don’t.”
“Never mind the rest. You see,” said George, rising, “how, with the
railway, the blessings of civilization penetrate into the dark corners of the
earth.”
The colonel began his sacramental, “That beats—” when he was
interrupted by a second explosion, which shook the building. We paid our
reckoning, George saying, as he threw his money on the table, “A heavy
charge.”
“No more than the regular price,” said the landlord, stiffly.
“I referred, my dear sir, to the explosion,” replied George, with the
sardonic grin habitual to him on certain occasions.
“Oh!” said the host, resuming his pipe and his fireplace.
We spent the remaining hours of this memorable afternoon sauntering
through the Notch, which is dripping with cascades, and noisy with
mountain torrents. The Saco, here nothing but a brook, crawls languidly
along its bed of broken rock. From dizzy summit to where they meet the
river, the old wasted mountains sit warming their scarred sides in the sun.
Looking up at the passage of the railway around Mount Willey, it impressed
us as a single fractured stone might have done on the Great Pyramid, or a
pin’s scratch on the face of a giant. The locomotive, which groped its way
along its broken shell, stopped, and stealthily moving again, seemed a
mouse that the laboring mountain had brought forth. But when its infernal
clamor broke the silence, what demoniacal yells shook the forests! Farewell
to our dream of inviolable nature. The demon of progress had forced his
way into the very sanctuary. There were no longer any White Mountains.

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