'Minor Matterhorn' overlooking 'agricultural failure'

Mt. Chocorua.

"Written over the great New Hampshire region at least, and stamped, in particular, in the shadow of the admirable high-perched cone of Chocorua, which rears itself, all granite, over a huge interposing shoulder, quite with the allure of a minor Matterhorn -- everywhere legible was the hard little historic record of agricultural failure and defeat. It had to  pass for the historic background, that traceable truth that a stout human experiment had been tried, had broken down. One was in presence, everywhere, of the refusal to consent to history, and of the consciousness, on the part of every site, that this precious compound is in no small degree being insolently made, on the other side of the continent, at the expense of such sites. The touching appeal of nature, as I have called it therefore, the 'Do something kind for me,' is not so much a 'Live upon me and thrive by me' as a 'Live with me, somehow, and let us make out together what we may do for each other -- something that is not merely estimable in more or less greasy greenbacks.'''

-- Henry James from his book The AmerIcan Scene (1907)