Passaconaway's Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington - Hardcover

Lawson, Russell M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1584651679 ISBN 13: 9781584651673

Publisher: Univ Pr of New England, 2002

Synopsis

Now that New Hampshire's dominant White Mountain peak can be climbed relatively easily in a long day, or more comfortably ascended by car or cog railway, it is easy to forget that it was once considered by Native Americans and most European settlers to be too sacred and formidable to attempt. In fact, mountain climbing was relatively rare until recent times, making the fifteen ascents of Mount Washington between 1632 and 1804 all the more remarkable. Passaconaway's Realm is a concise, historically and scientifically correct, and very dramatic story of Mount Washington's earliest climbs and the men who made them in pursuit of botanical specimens; meteorologic, geographic, and geological data; and personal adventure.

Incorporating sources that have never been utilized, Russell M. Lawson highlights the interaction of the wilderness landscape and the native peoples with such British-American newcomers and invaders as Walter Neale, Darby Field, John Josselyn, Captain Wells, Robert Rogers, Nicholas Austin, Governor John Wentworth, Jeremy Belknap, and Manasseh Cutler. He focuses on rustic frontiersman Captain John Evans, a founder of Fryeburg, Maine, an axe-man and hunter, but also the wilderness guide for the men of science during the 1784 Belknap-Cutler expedition. Lawson describes in close and intriguing detail the personal relations and aspirations, the logistics and difficulties, and the scientific aspirations and outcomes of this key early ascent.

About this title

From the Publisher:

6 x 9 trim. 8 illus. 2 maps

About the Author:

RUSSELL M. LAWSON, Associate Professor of History at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, is author of The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian's Dialogue with the Past (1998).

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ Pr of New England
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1584651679
• ISBN 13: 9781584651673
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144