COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY FRANK BOLLES
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS.

PAGE

A Thunderstorm in the Forest 1

The Heart of the Mountain 10

A Lonely Lake 27

Following a Lost Trail 43

A Night Alone on Chocorua 62

Bringing Home the Bear 82

The Dead Tree’s Day 96

Migration 118

Trapping Gnomes 132

Old Shag 146

My Heart’s in the Highlands 157

The Vintage of the Leaves 168

Chocorua in November 194

Among the Wind-Swept Lakes 211

’Lection Day, ’92 219

A Wintry Wilderness 230

Climbing Bear Mountain in the Snow 243

In the Paugus Woods 252

At the Foot of Passaconaway 264

Christmas at Sabba Day Falls 273

Down the Torrent’s Pathway 285

Index 295

Invitation

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Mount Chocorua in Winter Frontispiece

Water-Lilies in Chocorua Lake 16

Chocorua from Heron Pond 28

Canoe Birches of the Bearcamp Valley 40

The Peak of Chocorua from the Hammond Trail 64

“The Cow” 68

The Peak from the Southeast 72

The Peak from the North 76

View from “the Cow,” showing Moat Mountain and Mount Pequawket Beyond 80

The Dead Tree 98

Mount Chocorua and Chocorua Lake in Summer 118

Two Kinds of Gnomes—Hesperomys and Zapus 138

Paugus from Wonalancet Road 146

Chocorua seen from the Side of Paugus 150

Whiteface and Passaconaway from Paugus 154

Crowlands, formerly the Old Doe Farm 158

Twilight on the Lake 174

Chocorua and Dr. Chadwick’s Pines 184

The Peak of Chocorua from Bald Mountain 206

Mount Chocorua from Whitton Pond 216

“Moat, like a breaking wave” 232

Mount Chocorua and the Lake in Winter 250

Frost-covered Spruce near the Summit of Passaconaway 262

Moat Mountain and the Swift River 290

AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER.

A THUNDERSTORM IN THE FOREST.

During nearly the whole of the forenoon of July 3, 1892, a soft rain had been falling. It had begun in the night to the discomfiture of the whippoorwills, but not to the extinguishment of their voices. It continued until nearly noon, when the wind shifted from east to west, patches of blue sky appeared, and ever and anon gleams of sunlight fell upon the distant forest across the lake, or slid slowly over the tree-tops on the side of Chocorua. Bird voices grew stronger with the promise of fair weather. Hermit thrushes, veeries, red-eyed vireos, and Maryland yellow-throats sang four invitations from as many points of the compass, and I said Yes to the veeries and sought the swamp. A New Hampshire swamp is full of attractions at all seasons. In winter the great northern hares make innumerable paths across its soft snow, and tempt the gunner into the chilly gloom in search of a shot at their phantom forms. In spring a host of migrating warblers makes merry in its tree-tops, and the song of the winter wren is sent from heaven to give joy to its shadows. Summer brings to it many a shy orchid blooming among the ferns, and the fisherman finds the trout in its brook’s placid pools long after they have ceased to bite well in the upper reaches of the stream. There are no venomous serpents hanging from its moss-grown trees, no tigers concealed in its brakes, and no ague lingering in its stagnant pools. It is a safe swamp and kind, yet none the less a swamp.

When I reached its borders, after crossing the meadow, I found wild roses in bloom. It was of these, doubtless, that the veery was singing so bewitchingly. Certainly nothing less fair could have prompted such magic music. Moreover, the veery’s nest, framed in nodding osmundas, is near these beautiful blossoms, with many a pool and thicket between it and hard ground. Passing into the darkness of the swamp, I glanced back at the sky. The north and west were filled with black clouds which were stirred by passionate winds in their midst. A low growl of thunder came through the heavy air. I felt as though forbidden to enter the mysteries of the swamp, as though warned that danger lay within those aisles of twilight. The veery ceased its song. No bird voice broke the stillness of the gloom, and a hush of expectation held every leaf motionless. The branches closed behind me and I stole on between lofty trees with mossy trunks, over fallen logs, and through the dripping jungle of ferns. Upland woods are cleaner, stronger, more symmetrical than swamp growth, but they have not the effect of tropical luxuriance which the swamp forest possesses. The mosses, lichens, ferns of many species, climbing vines, and such large-leaved plants as the veratrum and skunk cabbage, give to the moist land an air of wealth of leaf-growth which is distinctive.

Two species of orchid were conspicuous, rising just above the ferns. They were the purple-fringed, just coming into bloom, and the white, which was abundant. Splashing back and forth through the shallow pools, gathering the spikes of the white orchis, I did not at first notice a distant sound which grew in volume until its sullen vibration could not be ignored. The tree-tops above me gave a sudden, vicious swish. Crows to the westward were cawing wildly. The roar of the storm became unmistakable; the swamp grew darker; a few big drops of rain fell, and then, as though a train were plunging down noisy rails upon the forest, the rain and wind leaped upon the trees, filling the air with deafening sounds, and twisting the branches until it seemed as though the whole structure of the woods was about to collapse in one vast ruin. Then through the tormented tree-tops the floods fell. They were white like snow, and seemed to be a fallen part of a white sky which showed now and then as the forest swayed back and forth in the wind’s arms. Wet as the swamp had been before, its colors became more vivid under this deluge. Every leaf grew greener, and each lichen gave out new tints as it drank in rain. The trunks of the trees assumed more distinctive shades; that of the ash became brown, of the yellow birch almost like saffron, and of the canoe birch glistening white. The rain pelting into my eyes bade me look less at the sky and more at the beauties at my feet. Beauties there surely were at my feet, both of color and form. There were no flowers, but the leaves were enough to satisfy both eye and mind,—large leaves and small, coarse and delicate, strong and feeble, stiff and drooping. Some were long and slender, others deeply cleft, some round, or smoothly oval, others shaped like arrow-heads. Some received the rain submissively and bowed more and more before it, others responded buoyantly as each drop struck them and was tossed off. In some the up-and-down motion communicated by the falling drop was by the formation of the leaf-stalk transformed at once into an odd vibration from side to side, which was like an indignant shaking of the head.

Looking at the marvelous variety in the outlines of these gleaming leaves, I suddenly found my memory tugging me back to the schoolroom where I was first taught botany. I recalled one melancholy morning when my teacher, who knew neither the derivation of botanical terms nor the true beauties of botanical science, ordered me to commit to memory the list of adjectives applied to the various shapes of leaves. The dose prejudiced me against botany for full ten years of my life, yet here in this glistening carpet of the swamp I saw “lanceolate,” “auriculate,” “cordate,” “pinnate,” written, not in letters of gold, but in something equally impressive to the memory, and much more easy for a dull teacher to obtain.

When one is in the deep woods and a flash of lightning comes, the eye seems to see a narrow horizontal belt of light play swiftly across the foliage immediately in the line of vision. If I looked at the ground I caught it there; if my eyes were fixed on the low branches at a distance, the flash was there. Each flash was promptly followed by the glorious mountain thunder which is so much more impressive than that in level regions. At first heaven was rent by the sound; then mountain after mountain seemed to fall in noisy ruin, the great ledges tumbling in upon each other with deafening shocks; then the sound rolled away through the sky, striking here and there upon some cloudy promontory and giving out a softened boom or waning rumble.

For full twenty minutes the trees writhed in the wind, the rain fell, the leaves nodded and shivered under the drops, and the rhythmic roar of the rain was broken irregularly by the thunder. As time passed, the shower slackened, the thunder followed the lightning at longer and longer intervals, the wind seemed to take deeper and less nervous breaths, and I listened to discover what creature of the swamp would first raise its voice above the subsiding storm. A mosquito hovered before me, dodging the drops in its vibratory flight. If it was buzzing I could not hear it. Suddenly a single call from a blue jay came, in a lull of the wind, from a thicket of spruces. “Yoly-’oly,” it said, and was silent again. I took a few steps forward, and the shrill alarm-note of a chipmunk sounded through the gloom. I strolled slowly through the drenched and dripping woods fragrant with the perfume of moss and mould. It was more like wading than walking, for every leaf had a drop of cold water ready to give away to whatever first touched it. A ray of sunlight dodged through the lifting clouds and fell into the swamp. The song of a parula warbler, distilled by it, floated back skyward. As the west grew golden and blue, bird-songs sounded from every quarter. The merry chickadees, conversational vireos, and querulous wood pewees vied with each other and the tree-toads in replacing the orchestral passion of the storm by the simple music of their solos.

Leaving the swamp, I climbed the terrace marking the ancient border of the lake, which once included the swamp in its area, and passed through a grove of slender birches and poplars. Their stems, streaming with rain, were as bright as polished marble, and their foliage, illuminated by the clear sunlight, was marvelously green against the deep blue of the sky. Presently a vista opened northward, and at its end rose the dark peak of Chocorua. After a rain this towering rock presents a noticeably different appearance from its normal coloring. Most of its surface is covered by lichens, one species of which, when dry, resembles burnt paper. When rain falls upon these lichens they alter their tints, and the burnt paper species in particular becomes so green that a wonderful change takes place in the whole coloring of the mountain. Looked upon through the birch vista, the air being clear and clean, and the colors of the mountain uncommonly bright, the peak seemed near at hand, and even grander than usual. There are few things in New England as truly picturesque as this horn of Chocorua. Three thousand feet above its lake and the level of the Saco, the great rock lifts itself with bold and naked outline into the midst of the sky. No foot seems able to creep up its precipitous slopes to its dizzy tip, and even the sturdy spruce can cling only to the deep clefts in its storm-swept ledges. There was a time when the forest reached to its crest, and when the cold rocks, now naked, were covered deep in soil and mosses. Passaconaway, close by, shows how this could have been, and how Chocorua must have looked draped in evergreens. Fire and hurricane destroyed the trees; the parched soil was washed away from the rocks; and now the only trace of the old forest growth is an occasional bleached stump or log hidden in a cleft in the ledges.

As I strolled homewards I passed a spot where the linnæa has covered several square yards of ground in a birch wood. The tiny bells had rung out their elfin music for the year. By dint of laborious search on hands and knees I found eight of the flowers, still wonderfully fragrant though somewhat faded. All the rest of the chime had fallen. Not far away a growth of dogbane fringed the path. I picked some of its blossoms and held the two sets of bells side by side in my hand. The comparison made me feel sorry for the dogbane.

THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN

Floating upon the clear waters of Chocorua Lake in the latter part of a warm July afternoon, and looking northward, I see the coolness of night beginning to grow in the heart of the mountain. At first there is but a slender dark line marking a deep ravine, through which a brook flows; then the shadow widens until a great hollow in the mountain’s side is filled with shade. As the sun sinks the shadow reaches higher and higher upon the wooded flanks of the two spurs which hold the hollow between them, until at last only the vast rock of the peak, resting upon its forest-clad shoulders, is left warm in the sun’s rays. The point where the shadow begins to form is more than a thousand feet above the level of the lake. From it, reaching upwards, two folds in the forest drapery extend towards the foot of the peak. One marks a brook coming from the upper part of the right-hand ridge, the other a brook which rises at the very head of the left-hand, or west ridge. The heart of the mountain is the wild ravine where these two streams mingle in perpetual coolness and shadow. No path leads to it and few are the feet which have found a way to its beauties. There is a peculiar charm in a spot unknown to the many. Its loneliness endears it to the mind, and gives its associations a rarer flavor. If besides being unfrequented it is singularly beautiful in itself, it becomes a shrine, a place sacred to one’s best thoughts. To me the heart of Chocorua is a shrine, all the more valued because of the weariness of flesh required to attain to it.

Early on the morning of July 10, I set out across the pastures for the foot of the mountain. The sun was hot, the air hazy, and not a breath of a breeze made the aspens quiver. In the shaded hollows something of the night’s chill still lingered, and from them floated the psalm of the hermit and the gypsy music of the veery. Now and then the clear, cool phœbe-note of the chickadee reached the ear, in contrast to the trill of the field sparrows which came from the warmest parts of the grass-land. On the hill to the westward young crows with high-pitched voices clamored for food, and quarreled with each other on their shady perch in the beeches.

The flowers which bloomed by the path were children of heat, types of midsummer. Buds were large on the goldenrod, the St. John’s-wort was in full bloom, and so, too, were the diurnal evening-primrose, the fleabane and dogbane, both worthy of sweeter names; the yarrow, as disagreeable among flowers as a cynic is among men; the tall potentilla, yellow clover, and, representing the purple flowers, the brunella. In many places thick beds of checkerberry, decked with brilliant berries, were made gayer by many heads of the brunella growing through them. The brunella is shaped somewhat like the conventional chess castle, but the castle is never quite complete while blossoming, owing to the lack of harmony among the many little flowers which unite to form its head. Low, running blackberry dotted the banks with uninteresting white blossoms, and the stiff spikes of the spiræa were abundant. The daisy, stigmatized as whiteweed by the indignant farmers, still displayed a few battered blossoms, which kept company with heads of red and of white clover. After passing these flowers of summer, it seemed strange, on descending into a deep cup-shaped basin where a small pond fed by springs is shaded by lofty oaks and birches, to find the houstonia still in full glory, and the dwarf cornel blooming in dark and mossy nooks. Animate nature takes solid comfort in a hot day. As I stole softly downward to the shore of the little pond, scores of tadpoles shot away from the edge of the water into its green depths. Painted tortoises, which had been baking on logs and stones in the full glare of the sun, dropped off unwillingly into the water. Countless dragonflies skimmed the surface of the pond, devouring smaller insects, and from a dead limb overlooking the shore, a crow, whose plumage gleamed with iridescent lights, flapped sluggishly out of sight among the trees. Snakes love to lie coiled in the hottest sunlight; squirrels stretch themselves contentedly on horizontal limbs and bask by the hour; the fox, woodchuck, and weasel, and even toads and newts, and those so-called birds of darkness the barred owls, seek the broadest glare of the midsummer sun and absorb comfort from its scorching rays.

Taking tribute from the pond-basin by a deep drink of ice-cold water at a spring in its bank, I crossed another strip of open pasture—where the tinkle-tankle of the cow-bells sounded with each bite the cows took of the grass—and gained the edge of the forest and the foot of the mountain. There was something akin to coolness in the shade of the birches, poplars, and beeches. New flowers bloomed here and new birds called. The dependent bells of the white pyrola, of the small green pyrola, and of the quaint pipsissewa were found beneath the brakes. Here, too, was the Indian pipe, looking as though formed from sheets of colorless wax, and its tawny sister the pine sap (Monotropa hypopitys). The wintergreens are strong, positive herbs with rich pungent flavor, but the pale parasitic plants are mere negations. They are the “poor relations” among flowers, content to draw their sustenance from others, while showing no color, giving out no perfume, attracting no butterflies, and not even daring to face the blue sky until they are dead.

The oven-bird stepped primly about upon her neat carpet of dry leaves, the red-eyed vireo preached his perpetual homily from the treetops, a young Cooper’s hawk screamed shrilly in the distance, and two inquisitive red-capped sapsuckers hitched up and down tree-trunks near me, while I hooted at them after the manner of my barred owls. A grouse had been wallowing among the leaves, and had left a round hollow in the dust with five discarded feathers and the prints of her feet to show that she had been there. Rana sylvatica, the wood-frog, betrayed himself by leaping over the dry beech leaves. I followed him quickly as he sought to elude me. Not only were his leaps long, but his skill in doubling was something marvelous. His second jump was generally at right angles with the first, and thrice he no sooner struck the ground than he turned and rebounded upon his tracks, so that he passed over or between my feet. When he was weary I caught him and, laying him on my knee, stroked the nape of his neck, his back and sides. He soon ceased to struggle and sat motionless. I laid him gently on his back and stroked him beneath. His throat throbbed and his eyes blinked, but he made no effort to escape. Then I restored him to his proper position, and extended one leg after another. He was as pliable and nerveless as a rubber frog. Finally I let him alone, wondering how soon he would hop away; but he showed a willingness to spend the day on my knee, and not until I placed him on the leaves did he seem to awaken to life and the advantages of freedom.

A few rods beyond, a toad hopped from me and I followed him to see what method of escape he would adopt. As soon as he saw that he was pursued he increased his speed and by a series of rapid hops reached a cavern under the arched root of a stump and plunged out of sight in its depths. Our toads, although of but a single species, vary in color from black to the paleness of a dry beech leaf. This one, living in the midst of pale browns and yellows, was nearly as light in tone as the light-footed Rana sylvatica.

The color of the dry beech leaves as they lie upon the ground is sometimes curiously bewitched by the spots of sunlight which dapple the woodland carpet. Walking with the sun behind me, the sunlight, especially where it fell in small round spots on the beech leaves before me, was of an unmistakably amethystine hue. Several years ago when I first noticed this, I supposed it to be due to temporary causes, but I am now convinced that the color will always be distinguishable when the conditions named are favorable.

The loveliest July flower in the woods fringing Chocorua is the mitchella, named by Linnæus for Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia. In their small round leaves of dark glossy green, their creeping stems, their modest, delicate-tinted and highly-perfumed blossoms, the flower of Linnæus and the flower of Mitchell are much alike. The partridge-berry, as the mitchella is commonly called, begins to bloom just as the linnæa bells cease to swing. It is an evergreen, and all through the winter its bright green leaves and red berries are one of the pledges of returning life after snow and ice have vanished. The flower is small and faces the sky. It is white with a delicate rosy blush tinging its corolla, chiefly on its outer side. The four pointed petals open wide and curve back, exposing the whole interior of the flower to view. Each petal is covered on its inner surface with a thick velvety nap which is the distinguishing characteristic of the blossom. The perfume of this flower is both powerful and pleasant. When freshly picked it suggests the scent of the water-lily, coupled with something as spicy and enduring as the heavier perfume of heliotrope.

Fifteen or twenty minutes’ walking over the beech leaves brought me within hearing of the torrent which flows from the heart of the mountain. Presently I came to the edge of its cutting and saw far below me, through the trees which filled the gorge, the flash of its waters and the vivid green of mosses. Walking upstream along the face of the bank, yet neither climbing nor descending, I struck the level of the water at a point not many rods distant. I had not gone down to the brook; it had come up to me. The whole ravine was filled with its music, and following down with its eager flow was a current of cold air. Above, in the woods, quiet and heat had prevailed. Here noise and coolness ruled with absolute sway. The sound came in waves as did the water and the breeze, but no human senses could measure the intervals between the beats. The sound seemed threefold,—a splash, a murmur, and a deeper roar. The roar reached me even if I pressed my hands tightly over my ears; while, if I made ear-trumpets of my hands, the splashing thus intensified drowned the heavier sounds. The rhythm of the water was most prettily shown on a boulder faced with thick moss. When the high water came it poured over the top of the rock, and the moss was filled with white shining drops coursing downward through it; but, on the reaction, it instantly became vivid green. The same pulsation showed in each cascade, which was greater then less, greater then less, in each second of time. As I bent over a pool, taking now and then a sip of the icy water, a small trout suddenly jumped near the foot of the fall below. He was intensely busy working about in the edge of the falling water, where rising bubbles and whirling foam half concealed him. In color he looked not unlike a beech leaf, and he moved so constantly that only an attentive eye could distinguish him from the waste of the stream whirled about in the eddies. I cast him some moss and mould, and he darted hither and thither in the water clouded by it, snapping up bits of food or specks which he mistook for food. His eagerness and restlessness seemed born of the restlessness of the stream and the keen temperature of the water in which he lived.

There was something of the impressiveness of the sea in this mountain brook. The sea rolls its waves upon the shore by night and by day all through the endless years, and this brook rolls down its tons upon tons of water by night and by day forever. It seems impossible that this and all the other streams which flow down rocky mountain-sides can be nourished simply by the softly falling rain and snow.

Much of the fascination of the sea is in its voice, so seldom hushed, so often roused to anger. The torrent by which I stood had something of the same weird power. For the moment, all outside those narrow wooded steeps, between which the splash, murmur, and roar of the stream pervaded everything and overwhelmed everything, all beyond that controlling sound was forgotten, barred out, lost. All within the power of the stream was under a spell, cooling, soothing, comforting.

To reach the heart of the mountain nearly a mile of brook bed had to be traveled, so I climbed upward rock by rock, past falls and pools, clusters of nodding ferns, bridges of ancient trees now hung with mosses, and sloping ledges faced with moss, down which the water rolled in glistening sheets. At one point the brook, years ago, had cut through a ledge which crossed its path diagonally. One great shoulder of rock remained, protruding from the western bank and hanging over the water, which poured into a black cavern beneath, making a whirlpool in the darkness. The temperature under this ledge was nearly forty degrees lower than on the top of the bank a few yards above. Standing by the ledge, I counted nine distinct cascades varying from three to six feet in height. One of them was an ideally symmetrical fall, for the whole body of water, gathered between two rocky faces, fell into a deep round pool just at its centre. Another fall showed clearly why the water under a cascade looks white. The water poured into a very broad, deep basin at its upper corner, leaving most of the surface undisturbed; and between the limpid falling water and the flat face of rock behind it air was caught and sucked downward by the flow. It was carried to the very bottom of the pool, where, breaking into small round bubbles, it struggled to the surface. Strings and masses of snow-white bubbles filled the area in front and at each side of the fall, while some were drawn some distance down-stream by the escaping water. These bubbles, when under water, produced the whiteness of the pool, and, on reaching the surface, burst and made a large part of its foam and spray. In this pool, as in many others, small trout hovered about the edge of the rising bubbles, seizing upon everything which looked like food. They rose with charming promptness to anything resembling a fly which I tossed upon the surface of the foam.

As I neared the heart of the mountain I saw, towering above twin cascades which fell into a single pool at its feet, the rough likeness of a sphinx. It was a huge boulder, dividing the torrent by its lichen-covered mass, and lifting its frost-hewn face towards the narrow strip of sky left between the trees overarching the ravine.

Close above the sphinx a spring in the eastern bank filled a hollow in the hill with cold, fern-decked mud. A flower I never should have sought in this lofty nook had taken possession of the spot and raised hundreds of its white spikes towards the sky. It was a white orchis, Habenaria dilatata. In a space six feet by ten, I counted seventy-five of its plants, each in full bloom. On the edges of this miniature swamp the leaves of the mayflower mingled with those of the linnæa. The blossoms of the mayflowers were dry and brown; those of the linnæa, with one fragrant exception, had fallen. Close by, the open-eyed flowers of the oxalis smiled from their beds of clover-shaped leaves.

A few rods farther up the stream, the land grew steeper and the walls of the ravine drew more closely together. Taller trees presided over the torrent, and the water struggled downward between larger boulders. A stream, tumbling down its narrow bed, came from the high eastern ledges and met that which poured from the heights on the west. Here, in the perpetual music of falling drops, where one or another of the great walls of the gorge always casts a deep shadow upon the ferns, is the heart of the mountain, the birthplace of the twilight.

Early in the afternoon I followed the western stream to its source, where, in a dark hollow at the head of the west ridge, hidden wholly from view by the forest, lies a small mountain lake. Perhaps it would be more truthful to call it a large pool, fed as it is mainly by melting snow or the streams of rain-water poured into it from the crags of Chocorua. Beneath its shallow water the maroon and dark green sphagnum formed a submerged carpet of intense colors. The growing tops of the moss, star-shaped and erect, glowed with the tint of life. The borders of the pool were fringed with dense growths of yellow-green Osmunda regalis which were swayed by a sweet wind. Through the soft foliage of the deciduous trees surrounding the pool, lance-shaped spruces and balsams pierced a way for themselves towards the sky. No fish were visible in the pool, and its only living tenants seemed to be some tadpoles about the size of squash-seeds. Now that the noises of the brook no longer overwhelmed every other sound, the songs of birds could be heard. Red-eyed and solitary vireos, oven-birds, a black-throated blue warbler, a hermit thrush, and another thrush which was neither hermit nor veery, were singing either in the woods close by or among the small spruces which crowned the adjoining ledges. I climbed to the top of the nearest ledge in search of the thrush, and gained not only the full benefit of his song, but a view of many a mile of the fair lake country, the Bearcamp valley, and the rugged peaks of the Sandwich range. The air was full of quivering heat and hazy midsummer softness. Over the shoulder of the Ossipees, south of Bearcamp Water, sparkled Squam Lake and Winnepesaukee. The hayfields of Sandwich were baking under the sun’s fierce heat. North of them began the mountains,—Black Mountain in the edge of Campton, Whiteface, Passaconaway, and, nearer at hand, Paugus, towards which all the western ridges of Chocorua were tending. The sun being over and beyond these wooded mountains, they were very dark, lacking in detail, but clearly outlined against one another. Northward and just above me the cliffs of the Chocorua horn hung in the sky. The lichens on the crag were dry and very black. Towering into the air, ledge upon ledge, and cliff over cliff, the peak was like a huge citadel defying attack. I had climbed upon the shoulders of the mountain, but its proud head, held high, was still out of reach.

The thrush was one which is common upon the upper slopes of the mountains, wholly replacing the veery there and probably outnumbering the hermit. Its song, while pleasing, is not as musically beautiful as that of the hermit, nor yet as unique as the veery’s. The hermit has three distinct phrases, the veery one, and Swainson’s several which are not distinct, but rather jumbling reproductions of the same notes. If this bird had learned his song for himself, I should surmise that he had listened closely to a veery and a thrasher, and then tried to model a combination of their notes upon the lines of the hermit’s exquisite song. Perhaps it was the heat and the glare of light on the ledges, or perhaps it was a certain dullness in the Swainson’s song, at all events I wearied of it and sought a higher ledge beyond the pool.

On this higher ledge, lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) was blooming in great abundance. It is a handsome flower, and it goes a little way to console us for not having mountain laurel. Between two great patches of lambkill and flowering diervilla was a level strip of gravel. It bore printed on its face an interesting history. Beginning near the edge of a thicket and extending to the edge of the cliff, where a view of miles of surrounding country could be obtained, was a line of sharp hoof-marks. A deer had walked slowly to the verge of the ledge, presumably to survey the landscape. The track had been made since the rain of the day before, and, for all that I could see, might have been made within an hour. While studying it I heard an unfamiliar bird-song reminding me slightly of the Maryland yellow-throat’s. The bird was in the thicket. I crept towards him, but he retreated, singing at intervals. After following for some time, I tried working on his sympathies, and “squeaked” like a bird in distress. Instantly a flash of vivid yellow came through the trees and a magnificent male magnolia or black and yellow warbler appeared in search of the supposed sufferer. His mate soon joined him, as did a junco and two white-throated sparrows. The coloring of the magnolias is certainly gay. It includes blue-gray on the head, black on the back, canary-yellow beneath and on the rump, with white and dark bars, stripes, and spots enough on various parts of his body to make him as variegated as a harlequin.

While the magnolia warblers are members of the Canadian fauna, and seldom seen in the breeding season south of the White Mountains, the bird which I next heard singing was even more interesting. It was a male blackpoll warbler, perched upon the highest plume of a spruce and pouring out his unmusical ze-ze-ze-ze-ze with all a lover’s earnestness. He clearly considered two thousand feet rise on Chocorua equivalent to several hundred miles’ flight towards Labrador. In this the flowers sustained him, for growing near by was the charming Arenaria grœnlandica, with its cluster of delicate white flowers springing from the sand, and the Potentilla tridentata blooming freely. Apparently dissenting from this boreal majority was a bunch of goldenrod in full bloom. It was a mountain species which comes into flower a fortnight or more earlier than its lowland relatives.

My homeward path followed the crest of the great eastern ridge of Chocorua as it descends towards the basin of Chocorua ponds. The ridge is narrow and mainly open, save for a few stunted spruces. In every direction far-reaching and beautiful views charmed me and tempted me to linger. From the last of the open ledges, the top of what is called Bald Mountain, I saw the sun set just behind the peak. Then with quickened pace I entered the forest and ran through the gathering gloom down the rough path to the pastures a mile below.

A LONELY LAKE.

Six witheringly hot days had been followed by one so cool and clear, so full of rushing Arctic air, that all nature sparkled as on an autumn morning. About sunset on the evening of this cool day,—July 17,—the pale blue sky in the north was suddenly barred by ascending rays of quivering white light. Chocorua, lying dark and still against the cold sky, seemed to be the centre of the aurora. As it grew dark I watched to see the heavens glow with the electric flame, but hour after hour passed with only an occasional gleam of light. Shortly before sunrise, however, the promised illumination came. I awoke to find my chamber as bright as though day had come, for from the southeast moonlight streamed across the floor, while from the north the glow of the aurora flooded the room. An immense arch of throbbing white light crowned the northern sky, and within it a smaller coronet rested above the inky blackness of Chocorua. Between the two hung the Great Dipper, and from one to the other occasional pulsating rays passed. The eastern end of the upper and larger belt of light made a sharp bend inward a few degrees above the horizon, and to a less defined extent the smaller arch was similarly shaped. The effect of this curve at the base of the two bows was very remarkable, for it destroyed the image of an arch and created the impression that one was looking into the inner curve of a ring which surrounded the earth, just as the rings of Saturn encircle that planet. Gradually the lower ring faded, the upper one settled down closer and closer to Chocorua; masses of electric energy seemed to dart across the eastern sky, where Sirius and the fair Pleiades gleamed, to the moon and Mars sailing serenely on their westward way. Behind Pequawket the lowest line of sky grew white. The dawn was coming, and, as though to avoid it, the hurrying beams and flashing waves of aurora moved faster and faster until in their dimness they could scarce be seen. Snowy mists raised their phantom forms from the lake and floated eastward to meet the sun. A whippoorwill sang his last song to the night, and as the glow of day grew more real a hermit thrush told in its heartfelt music the joy of life at the birth of a new period of labor.

A scrap of mist which trailed over the forest just at the foot of one of the ridges of Chocorua was the spirit of a lonely lake rising to do homage to the day-star. This lake is a rendezvous for all that is wildest and freest in the animal life of the region. It is sufficient unto itself, and yields no tribute save to its lord the sun. Around it, high glacial walls stand, crowned with ancient oaks and graceful birches. No stream flows from it, or into it, unless threads of ice-cold water coming from springs in its banks are called streams. Its waters are deep, the fisherman, so they say, finding places in its centre where long lines reach no bottom. Seen from the peak of Chocorua, this lake, even in November, is as green as an emerald, and when one floats upon its surface and gazes far down into its depths, rich green water-weeds are seen stretching their tremulous fingers towards him, and crowding each other for standing-room on its muddy floor.

Many are the days I have spent at this lonely lake learning the secrets of its tenants, and this morning, soon after the auroral beauties had faded from the sky, I came to it while the dew sparkled on the ferns. Drifting with the wind on the water, or stretched on the soft mosses which flourish under the birches, I stayed by the lake until evening. If an observer keeps still, it matters little whether he sits hidden under the spreading branches of a great oak on the shore, or lies upon a raft anchored in the lake, he is sure to see something interesting in either case. One morning, as I leaned against the oak’s wide trunk, watching a bittern on the opposite shore, I noticed that the bird showed signs of uneasiness, paying more heed to the bushes than to its fishing. Suddenly the cause of its unrest became apparent. The bushes just behind it were slowly poked apart and the head of a fox appeared. With a guttural note of alarm the bittern rose and flew across the lake, above the trees on the opposite bank, and out of sight. Reynard, graceful and alert, stood upon the mossy shore for a moment, looking after his lost opportunity; then turned abruptly and vanished in the underbrush. Another morning, while I was under the same tree, a big blue heron came softly stepping along the beach towards me. He was a comical figure, with his attenuated legs, wasted to the semblance of rushes; his extensible neck, expressive of centuries of hungry reaching after the partly attainable; and his long beak as cruel as a pair of shears. His dull eyes told of terror when he saw me. For a moment I felt their worried glare, and then the quaint machinery of the bird was put in motion and he flapped off out of sight.

One still, cloudy afternoon in August, I lay upon a raft of weather-beaten logs and mossy boards, watching the fitful sky and listening to an occasional bird-note, when suddenly my eyes were drawn to the north shore of the lake by seeing a branch of green leaves swimming, apparently unaided, along the surface of the water. After progressing for forty or fifty feet it disappeared under the ripples. A mystery, truly. A few moments later a muskrat’s head rose above the water, and the creature swam back to the point from which the leaves had started. Leaving the lake cautiously, the rat crawled clumsily up the bank into the bushes. After a minute or two it came waddling out bearing a second branch of ash, and this, too, floated along the placid surface of the lake until abruptly drawn down into the rat’s burrow in the submerged bank. Later in the afternoon I noticed a V-shaped ripple plowing across the lake from the southern shore. On it came, a small, dark object being at its point, parting the water steadily. As it drew near the raft I saw that the dark spot was the head of another muskrat, whose course was shaped straight for the hole into which his mate had been carrying ash branches. He passed quite close to me without alarm, and a minute or two later the ripple ceased as the rat sank below the water a few yards from the mouth of the hole.

The same still, cloudy day, a brownish black creature appeared on the southern shore of the lake and ambled along the edge of the water. At first glance it looked like a black kitten, but a plainer view showed it to be twice the length of a kitten, although no larger round than a man’s wrist. Its progress at times was almost snake-like, so undulatory was it. Its head and fore-quarters would be gliding down one side of a log before its black tail and hind feet had quite reached the log on the other side. The edge of the pond was lined with tadpoles clinging to logs and stones, with their heads towards the shore. The black creature seemed to be attempting to catch these fish-like batrachians, for every few yards he pounced at something, and, if successful, cantered out of sight, into the weeds and bushes, where he remained until, so I surmised, he had eaten his adolescent frog. Although the raft was only about a hundred feet from the western shore of the pond, the mink kept his course past me, apparently without a thought of anything beyond the wary polywogs. He went as far as the mouth of the muskrat hole and then turned and retraced his cantering until I lost sight of him on the farther southern shore. Several times, in his eagerness to catch a tadpole, he plunged wholly beneath the water and pursued his prey as though he had been a pickerel.