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.