The central, like the southern portion of the Atlantic mountains, is forest-clothed. All but a few of the highest summits in the Adirondack and White Mountains are concealed beneath a dense and varied growth of trees and shrubs. The summits, which are nearly bare of vegetation, like the upper 800 or 1,000 feet of Mount Washington, owe this condition to lack of soil rather than to elevation. Nowhere in the Atlantic mountains to the south of the but little known peaks near Hudson Strait, is the elevation sufficient to reach above what would be the timber-line under favourable soil conditions. The trees of the White and neighbouring mountains are principally various species of conifers, such as the pine, spruce, hemlock, larch, etc., which grow thickly on all but the most precipitous slopes. Before man disfigured the beauties of the land the lower hills, the river-valleys, and the borders of the numerous lakes and tarns were clothed with a more varied flora than the uplands. In these valley forests the dark foliage of evergreens is in summer mingled with the lighter green of maples, beeches, birches, oaks, locusts, and other broad-leaf trees. The forests are thus highly diversified and partake of the characteristics of both the northern and southern floras. It is in these northern woods that the glorious autumnal colouring for which North America is justly famous is to be seen in its greatest splendour. October is here truly the golden month of the year. At that season the bold hills, with their sombre robes of coniferous trees, rise like dark rugged islands above an undulating sea from which the most gorgeous sunset colours seem to be reflected. The brilliant colouring of the ripe foliage beautifies the land as with a cloth of gold. It is at this season also, during the tranquil days of what is known as Indian Summer, that a purple haze is thrown like a veil over the harlequin landscape, as if to subdue its glories and bring them within the range of man's appreciation.
Only a few of the higher summits in the New England region approach the scenic conditions usually associated with truly lofty mountains. In fact, the general lack of rugged escarpments as well as of great elevation leads the geographer to rank even the highest of these rounded summits as hills of large size rather than attempt to burden them with the dignity that the term mountain carries with it. They are beautiful hills, separated one from another by lovely valleys, which draw the beholder to them and fill his memory with tender longings and vague dreamy fancies such as the sterner grandeurs of great mountains fail to awaken.