In the lulls between the wind’s gusts I could hear the tinkling of a brook at the bottom of the glen. Peering into the gloom below, where hemlock bushes overshadowed the stream’s bed, I sought for a gleam of water. Not a drop was to be seen. I descended, following the sound of the falling drops, and came to a perpendicular ledge at the upper end of the ravine. There was no mistaking the direction of the music; it came from the face of the rocks and the pile of débris at its bottom. Still not a drop of water could be seen. The falling beech leaves had completely covered brook and fall, pool and rock, but behind their veil the water went on with its singing. It will do the same, brave little rill! when snow covers the leaves and ice forms above and below the snow. The sweet jingling notes will be muffled, but they will be sung all the same.
Of course I drank from the brook, sweeping away the encumbering leaves from the top of the fall to get the water just where it rushed most swiftly. Not to drink from a New Hampshire brook is almost as much of a slight as not to bow to a friend, or not to kiss a little child when she lifts her face for the good-night caress which she thinks all the world is ready and worthy to give to little children. Refreshed, I clambered up the other side of the glen and regained the open moorland, and the glorious, rushing wind. Across the valley the old river terraces stood out as sharply as steps cut in the face of the hill. To have cut those fair outlines there must have been more water flowing out of Chocorua lakes in the olden time than flows from them now. Perhaps in those days Ossipee Lake washed these very terraces.
Coming to another deep cleft in the side of the moor, I hesitated whether to run down one grassy slope, a hundred feet and more, and then up the other slope, or to go round. Precedent decided me to go round. About six feet below the edge of the bank a narrow well-trodden path skirted the ravine, going to its head, crossing at the same level and following along just below the edge of the opposite bank. Sometimes a well-turfed bank in a pasture where food is not abundant will be scored by many paths of this kind, one below another. They are made by the cattle, for a cow never will go down a steep incline if, without too great exertion, she can keep her four feet approximately on a level.
When I gained the southern end of the moor-like ridge, two villages lay before me, one on the left, the other on the right. One was the home of the dead, the other the toiling-ground of the living. They can see each other, and year by year the village on the hill grows larger, and that in the valley grows smaller. When the venerable village postmaster was suddenly turned out of office a few years ago against the public wishes, but in obedience to the infamous “spoils” policy, he was commiserated with for his hard fortune. “Yes,” he said, “it is hard, but I knew it was coming, and bless your soul, the time is near when I shall be turned out of this house too, and told to let some other fellow rotate in and get warm. But, my friend, there is a house of mine up yonder on the hill where politics and money don’t count, and when this world seems unkind I look up there and say to myself, ‘Pretty soon, pretty soon.’”
While waiting for the mail wagon to come down the Ossipee road, over the red bridge and up the hill to the store, I plucked individual leaves from trees and bushes, and marveled over their many ways of changing from pliant green to crackling brown. One of the most brilliant shrubs near the road was a blueberry. Its leaves were crimson, tending towards scarlet, and their surface was as brilliant as satin. The blackberry, which in some lights seemed as bright as the blueberry, was more of a wine color, and it had a duller surface. Some of the viburnum leaves were rich red on their upper faces, but pale below, their mid-vein being pink, and a greenish tone pervading their under surface. Others, shaped like maple leaves, were of a singular color,—a kind of pinkish purple. An oak leaf, plucked from a young bush not many years out of the acorn, was the color of newly-shed blood in its centre, but many small detached areas upon it remained green. From a sucker shoot of a poplar I gathered several strangely effective leaves. One was of sulphur yellow coarsely spotted with black dots; another was blackish brown with crimson veinings above, and clear yellowish white veinings below,—a most unique combination. From an adjoining poplar I picked one uniformly black over three quarters of its area, but blotched with vivid green near its apex. Its veins were yellowish white both above and below. The clusters of lambkill leaves were very pretty. While the upper surfaces of the leaves were faded vermilion or pinkish salmon color, the under sides were buff, or very pale sage green. The willow leaves were queer, damaged looking things, a good deal nibbled by insects and much splashed with dark brown upon a yellowish olive groundwork. A bunch of violet leaves were clear golden yellow, while some of the more delicate ferns were nearly white. Truly the botanists have many pleasant problems before them if they are ever to ascertain why some green leaves turn black, and others brown, orange, yellow, red, purple, or white.
An inspection of the mail led me to walk rapidly back to the Chocorua House and pack my bag for a return journey to the city. As I drove southward the mountains, seen across the pine barrens, were veiled in haze. The wind seemed chiding me for going away so abruptly from this paradise of color. Again and again I looked back at my favorite peaks and forests, printing more and more deeply in my mind the recollection of their noble outlines and remarkable coloring. Finally from the platform of the rear car I saw them over the Bearcamp meadows, and above and beyond them, with its cloud-cap just drifting away to the eastward, Mount Washington, benignantly presiding over the northern sky. Then the train rumbled across the Bearcamp trestle and the shadow of the Ossipee hills fell upon us and deepened into night.
CHOCORUA IN NOVEMBER.
In Cambridge, Saturday, the 5th of November, began its daylight in a driving snowstorm. The long, dry, sunny month of October was, as the farmers had prophesied, to be followed by a real old-fashioned, early and hard New England winter. By ten o’clock the warm sun and brisk northwest wind had dissipated the snow, and bad-weather prophets were silent. Not for long, however, for at noon the ground was again white, and as I crossed West Boston Bridge on my way to the train, the Back Bay was swept by a fierce wind which carried the spray from its gray-green waves half over the bridge piers, and into the level gravel walks on Charlesbank. My friends looked at me pityingly when I said that I was bound for the White Mountains, and asked whether I was not going to take my snowshoes.
Oddly enough, on reaching Portsmouth, having traveled to that point through dizzy myriads of flakes of the stickiest kind of snow, I found the sun brightly shining, and no snow visible on the Kittery pastures. Not until we were within sight of the hills which bound the Bearcamp valley on the south did snow again greet my eyes, and then it was confined to the highlands.
My last trip had been such a revel in color that I found myself noticing tints more than other beauties in the ever-varying landscape through which the train flew shuttle-wise. A great change had come over the face of nature in the fortnight which had fled since my last visit. November was written in subdued tones where October had burned before. The birch groves were no longer filled with pale lambent flames. Their yellow leaves had all fallen, and their massed twigs needed the full power of the sun to show that behind their dull gray shading lurked the subdued color of the plum. Even darker, and without warm undertones, were the alder thickets, more black than gray. The larches were still pure gold, wonderful in their happy contrast to the pines and spruces. The apple-trees retained their full suit of leaves, sometimes touched with a golden light, often perfectly green. Under them the grass was generally as verdant as in spring. Barberries hung in dense masses in their bushes; the American holly berries blazed with scarlet, and here and there in the dull forest a gleam of crimson told of a blueberry or amelanchier bush. As the train whirled across wood-paths, they showed as yellowish stripes in the forest. The drifted beech leaves gave them tone. In the gloom of the matted alders, fuzzy balls of soiled wool seemed to have lodged. They were the flowers of the white clematis, gone to seed. Somewhat similar but thinner masses clung to the stalks of the fireweed.