MIGRATION.

At eleven o’clock a flock of small birds moved rapidly across the meadow, and four of the number passed through my covert. They were a chickadee and three Wilson’s blackcaps. I wish the latter bird lived here in the breeding season, for it is a pretty, confiding, gentle little creature. The departure of these birds was hastened by the appearance on the lake shore of a young man, a boy, and a dog. The man carried a gun, and the dog rushed about in an excited way, doing his best in cur fashion to aid in the hunt. When the trio reached the brook at the point where it debouched upon the lake sand, the man cursed the stream for its width, and the boy, in a loud nasal voice, followed his example. They stood upon the farther side for several minutes pouring out blasphemy and filth until a sandpiper attracted their attention and their gun spoke sharply. The bird escaped, perhaps to die in the meadow grass, and again the two intelligent human beings invoked wrath upon the bird, the stream, the meadow, the dog, and the gun. Then they crossed the brook higher up, where it was narrower, and distance covered their conversation with a welcome veil. As long as the pleasant memories of that quiet day linger in my mind, so long will there be drawn through them a black line of disgust at the vileness of the two representatives of myown species who offered such a contrast to the purity of nature.

From eleven until one o’clock there was almost unbroken stillness near the great tree. Now and then some one of the regular residents of the meadow spoke, a dragonfly buzzed past, a small pickerel stirred in the brook, or a frog said “wurro, wurroùh,” and splashed in the still water among the reeds. The kingbirds broke the monotony by coming, three strong, with much noise and fluttering to take possession of the tree. One of them flew to the sand by the lake ripples and drank. Then all three came upon the lowest branches of the big tree and looked at the dark pool below. One flew obliquely against the water, striking it and dashing a thousand bright drops into the air. He rose chattering and returned to his perch, shaking himself. I thought he had aimed for a fly and struck the water unintentionally, but down he went again, making even more of a splash than before, and presently both the others followed his example at such frequent intervals that the pool had no time to smooth its ripples. This odd kind of bathing was continued for ten minutes, during which time a catbird sneaked down upon the sand and watched the process silently but with evident interest. Later he saw me sitting motionless under thebushes, and flew directly at me, turning sharply just before reaching my head, and making a loud noise both by striking his wings against branches and by his harsh voice. If his purpose was to startle me he certainly succeeded.

The afternoon was clear, still, and warm, and the birds were evidently drowsy. From two until after four nothing perched in the tree. A sandpiper amused me by his patient search for food, as he waded back and forth on the mud over which the brook spread as it entered the lake. For an hour he confined himself to a space less than six feet square and worked over almost every inch of it. Much of the time he merely prodded the mud gently with his long, quill-like bill, but occasionally he seemed to see something squirm, and then he pursued it quickly and stabbed more vigorously. Much of the time the water was above his knees, and sometimes he ran into deeper places, so that it lapped upon his breast. Twice he plunged his head and neck entirely under water, but his eyes seemed to need no wiping when they emerged as wide open as before. Sometimes he crossed his legs and stood like a camp-stool, with his thin props meeting their equally straw-like reflections in the brook. After a while a second sandpiper appeared, but his method was to travel rapidly along the water line, and he was soon out of sight.

It was not until nearly six o’clock that the tree became really populous again. Then the catbirds went upstairs on its branches, flickers and kingbirds occupied its top; a humming-bird buzzed in the face of a pewee who was perched fully thirty feet from the ground; a sapsucking woodpecker came and drummed for a moment, and finally a flock of cedar-birds rested in it for a while as they had in the morning. The sun set and night breathed upon the meadow. A single cedar-bird remained in the tip of the tree and drearily repeated his one dismal word. Below in the shadows the catbirds were restlessly mewing, and as it grew dark the lament of the hermits joined in the gloomy chorus. The sky was fair, and rosy lights flowed and ebbed in the clouds. The stars came, and in the distant pines a barred owl sounded his long trumpet note. A few minutes after seven, when catbirds and hermits were silent for the night, I heard a solitary sandpiper whistling at the mouth of the brook. My glass brought his tiny form to view, and as I watched him, a second tattler ran along the gleaming sand and the whistling ceased. Suddenly they flew together as though startled, and the next moment I saw what I had supposed to be a bunch of pickerel-weed growing in the shallows move slowly eastward. The object was several rods from theshore, and moving across the mouth of the brook. Now it glided a few inches, then it paused. Ten minutes passed before it progressed as many yards. It was the heron’s ghostly form. When he reached the eastern shore a light flashed across the lake and a voice sounded. He flew. I rose to go, but as I crept out upon the sand I turned to take a last look at the tree, and saw there the heron, standing on a high limb, black against the sky.

For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,

· · · · · · ·

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,And flowers put on a fairer hue,And everything was strange and new.

Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,

And flowers put on a fairer hue,

And everything was strange and new.

The quaint story of Noah’s gathering the animals into the ark is always linked in my mind with the Pied Piper, and with that strange turn in the tide of bird life which is called migration. The marvelous music which charmed the rats and children of Hamelin town must have been used by Noah to call his creatures into the ark of safety, and it is still to be heard in the winds of autumn sighing through the Chocorua forests and calling the birds away to other lands. One day all is calm and serene; the next, though the sky is just as blue and the sunlight just as warm, something of unrest is in the air, and the birds are telling each other the story of the great journey. Songs are forgotten or sung only to greet the dawn and bless the night; nestlings are trained to flight and led silent journeys through field, forest, or ether after food; new scenes are visited, and the weak separated from the strong and left to die. Then, sometimes by day, sometimes by night, the hosts meet, drawn together by a force as irresistible and mysterious as magnetism, and finally the story of the great journey is written in fact once more.

MOUNT CHOCORUA AND CHOCORUA LAKE IN SUMMER

In the August mornings I hear the Swainson’s thrush by the lake. He was not there a few days before, he was on the mountain-side. He is drifting southward, slowly at first, but feeling the thrill of the Pied Piper’s music in his wings. All through the summer I have listened in vain for the nasal “quank, quank, quank,” of the red nuthatch. Suddenly, in mid-August, I hear it on the mountain, and an hour or two later every flock of chickadees brings the northern migrant’s call along with the jolly chorus of “dee, dee, dee.” These chickadees, alert, courageous, tireless, and generous, are the convoys of the warbler fleets. For an hour the silence of the forest will be broken only by the tiresome platitudes of the red-eyed vireo, the dry staccato of the harvest-fly, and the occasional whistle of a hyla. Then, far away, will be heard the faint “dee-dee” of the titmouse. It comes nearer, and presently a dozen or twenty little birds are seen hovering, darting, flitting, but steadily advancing, tree by tree, through the woods. Perhaps not more than one in ten will be a chickadee, yet it is the chickadeewhich gives character and direction to the body. The guided flock of easy-going warblers and vireos, nuthatches and kinglets, drift on, feeding and frolicking, heedless of what it passes.

If the observer “squeaks,” or if an owl draws the attention of the passing birds, the chickadee comes to the front at once, with his sharp reproving iterations, and his beady eyes snapping indignantly. Along with him come red-eyed and solitary vireos, nuthatches, golden-crested kinglets, black-throated blue warblers, Wilson’s blackcaps, young chestnut-sided warblers, looking puzzlingly unlike their parents. Blackburnians, with throats aflame; black-throated greens, rich in spring tints of yellow and tender green; black and white creepers, the tidiest of birds; the gay magnolias, redstarts, Canadians, and sober myrtle warblers. Sometimes a single flock contains nearly all of these courtiers of the woods, while others are composed almost entirely of a single species, as, for example, the black-throated greens, or the magnolias.

In these same late August and early September days the cherry and berry eaters gather together and travel in flocks. Robins by scores, sometimes by hundreds, combine with the cedar-birds and flickers and range over the country insearch of food. The flickers feed much of the time upon the ground among the berry-bushes, casting aside woodpecker habits and seeming more like starlings. The robins are sometimes with them upon the ground, but oftener in the wild cherry-trees with the cedar-birds, stripping bough after bough of its dark fruit. When the flock moves, the cedar-birds mass themselves and fly for a while as though linked together. Then, without apparent cause, part or the whole turn about and fly first this way, then that, perhaps coming back, after a few minutes, to the point of departure. When a flock of red crossbills do this, they sprinkle the air and the earth with sweet notes; but the cedar-birds have no joy in their one chilly whistle, and there is more of aimless, witless indecision in their flights than there is of romping. Whenever I come near one of their flocks, I scan them carefully, hoping to detect the white wing-bars of a Bohemian waxwing among them, yet it is more than likely that I may watch a lifetime without having the fortune to see in the flesh one of those rare vagabonds of the north. The roving habits of these birds and of the crossbills contrast strangely with the simple steadfastness of the grouse, and the clock-like punctuality of many of the migrants. Something in that cold past with its glaciers and ice-crushed continentscould explain the present temperaments of the wandering birds, but we may never know what that something is. Whether we are to know it or not, it is natural to have a feeling akin to pity for birds so lacking in home life.

The winter wren is an amusing little migrant. He seems to have an underground railway of his own from the grim northern forest straight towards a milder clime. Like other underground ways, it has breathing holes, and out of these he occasionally pops his head and sputters at the observer. Sometimes he appears at an opening in a stone wall and scolds mankind for picking blackberries or plucking goldenrod; again he emerges from the darkness beneath a log in the swamp, and bustles about with the offensive energy of a special policeman. If he travels in company, the fact is not often made evident. He certainly seems too crusty for pleasant companionship on a long journey. One late September morning a winter wren flew into my hen-house and became my prisoner for a few hours. I placed him in a room and watched his efforts to escape. He flew with such speed that he made almost as much of a humming as a humming-bird. He clung to the woodwork, and hid in the curtains, but finally dropped to the floor and ran about like a mouse, hiding in corners or behind the legs of chairs.Once or twice I caught him and stroked his head and neck. He was quiet enough while I touched him, but the moment my fingers left him, he slipped away out of sight. When taken out of doors and set free, he darted into the nearest stone wall and was seen no more.

Birds of the upper air which feed on insects depart early. The eaves swallows and martins go while some mothers are still sitting on belated eggs. Bank swallows, barn swallows, night-hawks, and many of the tyrant flycatchers have vanished by the time the maples begin to flame upon the mountain-side. On the 3d of August, 1891, I saw about twenty martins in the dead tree. They were very noisy, and evidently excited. While watching them I saw in the zenith what looked like a cloud of insects. My glass showed it to be a large flock of birds, apparently swallows, moving in a great circle. After a time all but one of the martins in the tree flew away and were gone many minutes, the birds in the sky also disappearing. The martins returned, however, to the one which had not flown, and shortly after I again discovered the bird cluster in the sky. After fresh noise and flutterings of wings the martins finally flew, and no more were seen near the lake that season. Often in an August afternoon the lake will be apparently without birds, whenin a twinkling the air will be full of graceful forms, and a flock of white-breasted swallows, barn swallows, or night-hawks will sweep over the blue water, rise, vanish over the meadow, reappear, fly towards the peak, wheel, return, and then perhaps speed away, not to greet the fair lake again until ice and snow have come and gone, and the number of their own light forms has been sadly diminished in the south.

A field of buckwheat or other small grain is a magnet in the days when the birds are wandering. To it come the song sparrows, chipping sparrows, white-throats, juncos, purple finches, field sparrows, goldfinches, and bay-winged buntings. They love to linger many days in the stubble; and when bird music is rare, their occasional songs are precious to the ear. If the field is approached softly there seems to be no life hidden in its midst, but suddenly wings whirr noisily, and bird after bird flies up into the neighboring trees and bushes. Sparrows love fences, stone walls, and their accompanying growths of berry-bushes and small trees. The latter are our New England substitutes for the hedgerows of the Old World, and I believe the sparrow tribe takes as much comfort in wall and briers as in hedge and ditch. The ditch is more than replaced by countless brooks, always clear and pure, and the wallgives shade, shelter, food, and many a comfortable perch. While driving along the narrow roads, bordered by many a mile of rough stone wall, the rattle of my wagon wheels startles the sparrows and finches from their cover. The bay-wing runs along the rut in front of the horse; the goldfinch undulates over the field, turns, and ripples back; the song sparrow mounts a bush-top and scolds; the white-throat appears for a moment in a gap between the bushes and then goes on with his scratching in the leaves. So they go southward along the dusty roads, or the borders of dry field and dryer pasture. They are thousands strong, yet they look to be but a few each day, and the careless eye might think them always the same individuals from mid-August until Indian summer.

Sometimes alone, but often with the field sparrows and bay-wings, or later with the juncos, flocks of bluebirds travel the autumnal way. This year, on August 28, I saw a flock of twelve working slowly along a moor-like pasture ridge in company with double their number of sparrows. I have seen them by dozens in early October mingle with juncos and white-throats in gleaning over the stubble just left bare by the melting of a first snowfall. As they fly from spot to spot, they prefer to alighton the upper curve of a boulder, the tip of a cedar, or some equally favorable point for seeing and being seen. They are comparatively silent, but now and then their sweet “cheruit” comes as a promise that after the long winter spring shall return, and with it their loveliness and courage. Many of the birds go south cheerfully, or indifferently, but the bluebirds seem to linger sadly and lovingly, and to feel that the migration is an enforced exile from the home they love best.

The Chocorua country is not a good one for starlings and blackbirds; in fact, I have never seen but one bobolink nearer than Fryeburg intervales, twenty-five miles away; and with all my watching, no crow blackbird or meadow lark has ever caught my eye in this region. The old residents say that years ago, when flax was cultivated hereabouts and grain-fields were broader, these birds were present in large numbers. The first flock of rusty grackles which I have ever seen here appeared this year on a hilltop, about the middle of the afternoon of September 22. The birds were either very tame or very weary, for they remained in the tops of some locust-trees, while I not only stood beneath them, but shook their tree, called to them, and clapped my hands. They maintained a steady flow ofsotto vocemusic charming to the ear.

All migrants are not desirable visitors. An inroad of hawks is far from pleasant for the birds of a neighborhood, or for other migrants. All through the month of September hawks abound. They circle round the peak of Chocorua, seemingly for the pleasure of it. Often a dozen sharp-shinned and young Cooper’s hawks are in sight there at once. Sometimes great flocks of hawks pass across the sky, not circling, as the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks are so fond of doing, but sailing straight before the wind like a fleet of mackerelmen running down the coast wing and wing. I once saw three hundred and thirty migrating hawks in one forenoon, most of them a thousand feet or less above the earth, but some so high that a powerful glass only just brought them into view. The stately progress of these birds, moving many miles an hour without a wing-beat visible to the observer, is one of the wonders of nature. The Dead Tree is a resting-place for migrating hawks, eagles, and ospreys. I doubt not that by night it is used by owls, when they too move southward as their food grows scarce.

In several different years I have seen my big blue heron sail away southward. In each instance it has been about four o’clock in the afternoon. Rising with slow and dignified flight, he makes two or three immense circlesover the lakes, and then, as though partings were said, landmarks remembered, and bearings taken, he flies with strong and steady strokes towards the outlet of the Ossipee basin. This year, in August, ten night herons visited us at one time, remaining in the neighborhood two or three days. When disturbed by day, they rose, and, forming an orderly flock, flew away with military precision. The ducks and geese are, however, the best examples of well-drilled companies. Geese are not often seen here, although several were killed this spring in a small lake halfway between Chocorua and the Bearcamp. Wood duck and black duck begin to fly past us late in August, but their numbers are comparatively insignificant, a flock of ten being unusually large. In October and early November the wind-swept lakes are seldom without little companies of black ducks, sheldrakes, and their less common relatives.

One of the most interesting of migrants is the loon, or great northern diver. Loons are said to breed in this vicinity on Whitton Pond, and they are seen now and then during all the summer months. It is on the edge of a northeast storm in September, when mackerel clouds deck the sky and the hazy sunlight spreads gold upon the ripples, that the migrating loon comes with the force of a cannon-ball, and plungesinto the lake’s waters. His shrill laughter is taken up by all the mocking forests, and his deep and prolonged diving carries consternation to bass and pickerel. Restlessly he plows the ruffled water with his broad breast, and now and then he pounds the waves with his wings, raising his head high above them. When he flies, the water is churned into foam for many yards before his unwieldy body is finally raised into the air and placed under the full control of his powerful wings. Then he rises little by little, his wings moving faster and faster, until, after progressing half a mile, he has risen two or three hundred feet. Turning, he comes back, still rising, and passes in review the lake and forests which he is to leave. Again and again he tacks, on each new line rising farther from the earth, until at last, seen against the sky, he is but a pair of swiftly whirling wings set strangely far back on the long black line of his head, neck, and body. It is said that hunters have been killed by being struck by falling loons shot by them on the wing.

Occasionally a stray sea-bird comes to the mountain lakes. Herring gulls have been seen on Chocorua Pond, a Wilson’s tern was shot on August 30, 1890, on Ossipee Lake, and a year earlier, on September 30, a black tern remained half a day on my lonely lake.

Late in September and in October there are days when the rush of migrating birds is like the stampede of a defeated army. I recall one such day, the 25th of September, 1891, when a torrent of migrants swept past my red-roofed cottage in the hour following sunrise. Before breakfast, and without going out of sight of my door, I saw over two hundred birds go by, including sixty pigeon woodpeckers, several sapsuckers, nuthatches, chickadees, crows, blue jays, robins, catbirds, seven kinds of warblers, solitary and red-eyed vireos, four kinds of sparrows, a tanager, pewees, and a flock of cedar-birds. Most of these birds were on the trees, bushes, or ground, busily feeding, yet restlessly progressing southwestward, as though haunted by some irresistible impulse to keep in motion. The day was hot and still, and my notes mention the fact that we heard the splash of an osprey as he plunged into the lake, more than a quarter of a mile away. That evening the whippoorwills were singing their farewells in the soft moonlight.

As the early October days glide by, these waves of migration come faster and faster, their acceleration seeming, as one looks back upon it, like the ever quicker throbbing of the air under the wing-beats of the grouse. Even as the drumming suddenly ceases and the summer airseems still and heavy in the silence which follows, so the migration suddenly ends, and the woods and fields become very still in the late Indian summer. Now and then the scream of a blue jay falls upon the ear, or a faint note of a tree sparrow comes from the weeds by the roadside; but as a rule nature is dumb, and the leaves fall like tears. All the beauty of sky and autumn foliage cannot bring the birds back to the silent forest. Warm though the sun may be, and soft the haze on the cheek of Passaconaway, these charms cannot woo back the birds from their migration. The music of the Pied Piper has bewitched them, they are dreaming of gushing waters and flowers of fairest hue; and many a frosty, starlit night will pass before their wings beat once more in the clear Chocorua air.

When the harvest moon is large and the nights clear, I love to spend an evening hour or two under the great oak-trees on the shore of my lonely lake. The soft mists creep across the water, bats flit back and forth squeaking, the whippoorwills call to each other that the time for migration is near at hand, and sometimes the voices of the barred owls wake weird echoes in the lake’s curves. Sitting motionless in the black shadow, I am unseen and unsuspected by the night creatures round me. Many feet move upon the dry leaves, and the fluttering of wings disturbs the still air. Measuring the evening from sunset until ten o’clock, it seems a period of more activity than the day. Hours roll by in the September sunlight with scarce a sign of life near the lake, but the coming of twilight is a signal for awakening. High in the oaks the gray squirrels are busy with the acorns. In the stillness of the night an acorn falling against one and another bunch of stiff leaves, finally striking upon the ground, seems to make an unduly loud noise. The fine squeakof a bat might pass unnoticed in the daytime, but in the gloom it carries far and comes upon the ear sharply.

In these hours the ground gives up its cave-dwellers, and their soft feet rustle the leaves in all the forest and by every brookside. From the ledges of Chocorua, foxes by dozens descend upon the surrounding farms and search for mice and other prey. It is the light snowfall which betrays the great number of these wary marauders, and not the secretive leaves of autumn, upon whose dry surfaces the fox-tread makes no imprint. From his den under the screes the hedgehog wanders through the woods or seeks the orchard. The skunk, too, is abroad, poking his snout into ant-hills or among mouldering leaves where insects lie hidden. It is neither fox nor skunk which makes the soft pattering just behind the old oak against which I lean. A smaller wanderer than they comes there, and as surely as gnomes have settled in America this must be one of their haunts. I feel certain of it when a squeaky little whisper follows the pattering, or when occasionally a tiny form darts across a patch of moonlight near the edge of the water.

In these September hunting-days I have left the grouse to feed undisturbed among the blackberries, and the hare to dream away the sunlithours in his form among the swamp evergreens. Gnome-hunting has been my pastime, and so low is our human estimate of the character and usefulness of these tiny creatures that my conscience has not given the faintest bit of a twinge when I have brought home dead gnomes from field, meadow, mountain, and forest. Our gnomes are not all of one kind, and when I started with my game-bag in the September sunlight I did not feel sure what manner of elf I might bring home with me. Setting out early on the morning of the 12th, I dashed the dew from the brakes as I crossed an open pasture on the way to my lonely lake. The brakes were growing brown, yet we had had no frost, and the equinox was still ten days distant. The sumacs were gorgeous in green, scarlet, and orange, waiting for the first rain or wind to hurl to the ground half their gay leaves. As they hung motionless in the sunlight, they seemed brilliant enough for the tropics. Asters and goldenrod joined them in painting part of the picture with high colors, and so did the maples on the high ledges of the mountain where a bear-hunter’s fire raged last October. A bit of woodbine climbing up the maple trunk gleamed like flames, mountain-ash berries were full of the same fire, and the clustered fruit of the hobble-bush glowed in the midst of its maroon and crimson foliage.

What means this decking of the earth in autumn with scarlet and purple, crimson and gold, russet and orange? The flowers of the springtime are full of joyous color, in order that the wandering bee and butterfly may aid in their fertilization. The bird gleams with color as the glow-worm gleams with fire, that his mate may not forget him in the mazes of the life-dance. The autumn is the season of ripening, of the gathering of harvests, of the decay of the earthly, and the creation of that which shall endure. Are these colors only the emblems of death, the garlands upon the pall, or are they the signals which Nature hangs on high to call her forces into ranks for the battle against extinction and in favor of persistent life? Surely the berry which by its brilliancy of color calls the bird to it, in order that it may be eaten and its seeds carried afar, is as wise as the flower which by its tints and perfume attracts the bee and secures fertilization. Perhaps the tree which blazes with autumn color is avoided by insects whose instinct teaches them to shun colors in contrast to their own.

Just beyond the sumacs is the stump of a prehistoric pine. It has lasted generations since its towering pillar fell and sank year by year deeper into the soil. Its hard gray walls look as though they might endure half a centurymore of snow and sunshine. Gnomes live under that stump, and the first of my traps was set at their cave archway. Kneeling down behind the clustering blackberry briers, I could see the archway just at the head of the opening between two of the great buttress roots of the stump. Moss was growing at the threshold, ferns overhung the doorway, and a tiny path led through the grass from the arch into the dry pasture beyond the briers. Yes, the trap had been sprung, and crushed beneath its cruel springs was a gray gnome. His eyes were large and dark. His coat was of soft gray, and his waistcoat snowy. His hands and feet were very white and his elfin ears mischievously large and erect. The name of this gnome is quite musical,—Hesperomys, the evening gnome.

In a deep hollow between wooded banks runs the pasture brook. It comes from the forest-clad mountain-side, and flows to a dark swamp, beyond which is the lake. Gnomes live by the brook, both in the hollow and in the swamp. Nine traps were set in the hollow and eighteen in the swamp. These traps are, with true Yankee originality, named “cyclones,” and they are nearly perfect as engines of destruction. Upon a small square of tin are hinged two rectangles of stiff wire, so attached to strong springs that they naturally lie flat upon the square of tin.One rectangle is smaller than the other so that it just lies within it. The trap is set by raising the rectangles until they make a tent-like frame, and then securing them by a catch. The best lure for gnomes is whole corn, which is placed near the centre of the square of tin in a tiny cup suspended by a lever to the catch which holds the trap open. The gnome steps softly through the wire rectangles and tries to lift the grain from the cup. Woe to him if he presses ever so lightly upon the side of the cup, for if it is depressed, and the other end of the lever moved, the catch is cast free and the rectangles fall together with such force as to crush any small creature which stands below them.

The nine traps set by the brook were in groups of three. As I drew near the first group, I looked for broken twigs and a scrap of white cotton tied to a branch, my signals to show where the traps were placed. Bent twigs with their leaves slightly withered and drooping are readily seen at a long distance. The first three traps were set at a point where the banks of the brook were steep, and the level moss near the water only a narrow belt. At one place a mossy log crossed this level, a mouldering stump crowned with ferns flanked it, and a big boulder raised a wall of granite parallel with the stream. Just across the brook was another long log coveredwith moss, violet leaves, and rue. One trap was on this log, one by the boulder close to a little hole running under it, and the third near the mouldering stump. At first as I stood in the midst of the traps I could see none of them. The corn scattered near had been carried away or eaten, and the strings by which the traps were tied to stakes were not where I remembered to have left them. Suddenly I saw one trap. It was sprung and drawn away among the leaves. Something was in it, something I had never before seen, a creature more beautiful than any squirrel, as graceful as a swallow and as suggestive of speed and lightness. I knelt over this slender, brightly-clad gnome, and released his lifeless body from the trap. His cobweb-like whiskers were wonderfully long, his coat was of pale straw color and brown, his waistcoat of purest white. No monkey has a tail proportionally longer than the seemingly endless white-tipped appendage ofZapus insignis, this jumping gnome of the mountain streams. Exquisite creature, I thought, how can I have lived so long among woods and brooks without suspecting your presence? But for a “cyclone” I might never have known that such a being existed.

The other two traps were sprung, one containing a secondZapus, and the third a grayHesperomys. Similar fortune had attended the remaining traps by the brook, three containing specimens ofZapus, two ofHesperomys, and one a large mole with fur as fine as the softest silk velvet. I pushed on eagerly to the series of traps in the swamp.

TWO KINDS OF GNOMES

Hesperomys

Zapus

On the way I crossed a strip of level pasture over which a grove of gray birches is rapidly spreading year by year. Several of them are bent so that their upper branches sweep the ground. They are victims of the snow and ice storms of winter, and, unlike the Arlington cedars, they are not resilient enough to recover an erect position. In the heart of the grove, a family of sapsucking woodpeckers had been at work in one of their “orchards.” Eight trees bore marks of their mischievous tapping, and in the two principal trees many hundreds of holes had been made by them. Their thirst is as insatiable as Mulvaney’s, but I supposed that before this time they had wearied of their summer fountains. Not so; one of them was hitching around the drills, dipping as persistently as in early July, and bees buzzed near him, enjoying their share of the tree’s sweets. Restraining my impatience to see the swamp traps, I watched long for a humming-bird to visit the drills, but none came, thus confirming my impression that they not only arrive in New Englandlater than the sapsuckers, but that they migrate southward earlier.

While I waited under the birches, a gray squirrel came tripping over the grass and through the brakes. His great brush was not carried over his back, but in an arch behind him. His approach was so noisy that at first I thought a dog was coming towards me, but his voice betrayed him. “Cluck, cluck, cluck, cleck, cleck, cleck, cleck, clēēk.” If a “cyclone” had been choking him he could not have made sounds any more queer. When at last he discovered me, he lowered his tail and undulated very softly away.

The first of the second series of traps was set on the slope leading down towards the moist bed of the swamp. It contained one of the white-footed gray gnomes. The next three were empty. Number five was in the darkest part of the swamp on a huge upturned stump whose twisted roots, looking like the arms of a devil-fish, reached far into the air. The trap was sprung, and the gnome in it was as new to my eyes asZapushad been. Coarse, chestnut-brown hair, in parts almost as bright as red mahogany, small eyes, conspicuous ears, and a tail so short that it seemed only a stump of something more satisfactory, were the conspicuous points in this gnome. His name, as I laterlearned, wasEvotomys, the long-eared gnome. His rich coloring matched to perfection the decayed hemlock stump in which he lived, and harmonized with the brown bark of pines and the stained waters of the swamp brooks. In the sunlight, or upon the sand by the brookside, he would have been conspicuous. Where he lay he looked like a fragment of the reddish wood under him.

Five more of his tribe, and a tiny shrew, only three inches long, were found in the remaining swamp traps. One of the gnomes had been nearly devoured as he lay in the trap, the parts remaining being skin, feet, tail, and a small portion of the head. I suspected a big mole of being the ghoul. On my way home I looked in a trap set under a small foot-bridge which spanned a damp spot in a mowing-field. The victims here—for two had been caught at once—were of the familyArvicola, the sturdy gnomes of the fields. Their eyes were very small, their ears almost concealed by their coarse, dark-brown hair, and their bodies awkwardly but strongly built. They are the farming gnomes.

On September 17, I walked from Berry’s to the Swift River intervale, over the once “lost trail,” now nearly completed as a broad bridle-path and winter road. I took twenty-five“cyclones” with me and set them at the most favorable spots along the way. Brook crossings, big, moss-grown stumps or logs, boulders overhanging springs or rivulets, and old logging camps were among the places which seemed to me likely to be frequented by gnomes. As I was not to return until the next day, a night would intervene to give the little cave-dwellers time to smell the corn and to inspect and spring the traps.

The intervale was very beautiful as it lay tranquil in the autumn haze, but the memories of last Christmas-time had a charm about them which even the foretaste of Indian summer could not equal. Snow adds greatly to the dignity and grandeur of our New England mountains, making them more akin to the Alps, perpetual in their wintry covering. Chocorua, always a reminder of the Matterhorn, is much more like it when clad in ice, and rose-tinted by the morning sun. Even Swift River, framed in meadow brakes, waving osmundas, and gay scarlet maples, seemed less sparkling than when set in ice and overhanging banks of pure white snow.

As night came, coldness suggestive of winter crept over the great plain. The first light frost came caressingly in the still night hours and fell upon the pumpkin vines and the delicateferns by the roadside, so that morning saw them wither away and die in the early sunbeams. With the dawn came many bird-notes. Crows, jays, flickers, red nuthatches, chickadees, golden kinglets, robins, cedar-birds, and goldfinches all made their voices heard. In the bushes by the road, Maryland yellow-throats mingled with various migrating sparrows, and among the spruces dozens of warblers flitted joyously back and forth, saying little, perhaps because nuthatches and red-eyed vireos said too much. Swallows had gone, but grace of flight was shown by hawks of various kinds which circled, soared, or shot past on even wing. The fickle crossbills, present a year ago this week in large numbers, were nowhere to be seen.

Sabba Day Falls were even grander than I remembered them to be, and although nothing could surpass in loveliness the icicles, frozen spray, masses of snow, and other paraphernalia of winter which had surrounded them in December, their present dress of tender green and brown, relieved by autumnal colors and crowned by a cloudless sky of purest blue, was wonderfully fair to look upon, and to lay away in the mind for weary days when brick walls and English sparrows should replace the wilderness and its warblers.

It was high noon when I turned my back onCarrigain and Bear and climbed the ridge towards Paugus valley. Would the traps be sprung? The question gave speed to my footsteps, which might otherwise have lagged by spring or brookside, for the day was meltingly warm and no breeze came over the Paugus ramparts. The first trap was near the top of the ridge, under a huge boulder. It was two miles from the nearest house in the intervale, and more than double that distance from Berry’s or any other inhabited dwelling in Tamworth. Perhaps gnomes did not live in spots so remote from man and his grain-fields. The trap was sprung.Evotomyshad found it and perished. The next one was sprung, and a second long-eared victim lay in it. So with the third and fourth, set at intervals of many rods. The fifth was sprung, but empty; the sixth contained a grayHesperomys; the seventh anotherEvotomys. I was now in the deep, dark valley between the northern ridges of Paugus and Chocorua. Three miles and a half of the roughest mountain woodland lay between this spot and tilled land, yet animal life was so abundant that it seemed to make no difference where I set my traps and scattered my corn; gnomes were everywhere waiting.

Out of twenty-five traps, fifteen held victims and six others were sprung, but empty. Oneof the slain was a chipmunk, another a mole. Of the remainder, three were long-tailed grayHesperomys, and ten were red-backedEvotomys. The latter are clearly the most numerous inhabitants of the dark evergreen forests, but they are also to be found near secluded farm buildings in spots where the fulvousHesperomysis the prevailing sprite. Among these gnomes of the woods and fields, all true American species, a European intruder is found. In some thickly settled places he has done among gnomes what the European sparrow has done among birds, elbowed himself into exclusive possession. When found in a trap, or seen scampering along the pantry shelf, this gnome is called, in vulgar English,a mouse.

Old Shag, Toadback, or Paugus Mountain stands in the Sandwich range between Chocorua on the east and Passaconaway on the west. It is better armed against attack by mountain climbers than any of its neighbors, and this in spite of the fact that in elevation it is the lowest of the range. Its defenses consist of numerous radiating ridges covered with dense growths of spruce and crossed by belts of “harricane,” miles of cliffs so forbidding as to repel any but determined assault, and ravines choked by débris of rock and fallen forest. No path of any kind leads to its top, and when its summit is gained, none of the familiar marks indicating previous visits by egg-eating, initial-cutting tourists are discoverable.

Like most impregnable fortresses, Paugus has its weak spot. There is a way to reach its southern summit without touching a “harricane,” climbing a precipice, or struggling through more than a few rods of spruce jungle. Moreover, on this way the traveler is sung to by one of the most musical of streams, while his eyes are charmed by the ever-changing beauties of a series of as exquisite cascades as are to be found in the White Mountains. It is true that in midsummer the brook is so reduced in size that its chief charm is seriously lessened, but if the time chosen for ascent is in spring, autumn, or after a heavy summer rain, the falls will be found at their best.

PAUGUS FROM WONALANCET ROAD NEAR START OF LIBERTY TRAIL UP MOUNT CHOCORUA

On the morning of September 15, a party of four persons entered the “lost trail,” leading from Berry’s to the Swift River intervale. A heavy rain had fallen during the whole of the preceding day, and Paugus River, with all its sons and daughters, grandchildren brooks, and great-grandchildren rivulets, made the forest resound with the music of innumerable singing falls and rapids. Following the old trail for two miles, the party reached a spot where a good-sized stream appeared flowing eastward from the great hollow in the eastern flank of Paugus. Leaving the bridle-path at this point, and walking nearly due west, the explorers followed the branch towards its source. As the region was reported to be thickly set with bear-traps, the party walked in Indian file, while their leader sounded and punched every foot of moss and soft leaf mould with his stout staff. The traps used by the hunters on these mountains are murderous inventions, consisting oftwo huge steel jaws lined with sharp teeth. The trap, when set, is buried beneath a layer of moss. If a bear or man steps between the opened jaws, thereby pressing a pan which frees the two powerful springs below the jaws, the trap closes instantaneously, the teeth are locked in the flesh, cutting sinews and crushing bone. A man thus caught is maimed for life, if, indeed, he does not die from starvation and pain before he can be released from his horrible imprisonment. A bear usually drags the trap until its anchor catches in a tree, or his strength is exhausted. Sometimes he gnaws off his foot and crawls away bleeding and crippled. The trap weighs from twenty-five to forty pounds, and although usually marked in such a way that its owner can recognize it, no name betrays the identity of the trapper.

The places chosen by the bear hunter for setting his traps are those to which a bear is in the habit of going often. On damp and mossy spots the great footprints of the brute show plainly, and when the trapper is satisfied that Bruin walks that way habitually, he cuts out a square of moss upon which the footprint is plainly visible, places his open trap in the hole, restores the moss with great care, and goes away for a week, or even longer, visiting other traps, some of which may be many miles away.If signs of any proper kind were placed near the traps to warn the passer-by of his peril, there would be small reason to complain of bear-trapping, but unhappily no such signals are displayed, and man, if he wanders in wild places, is in as much danger as the bears. The brook bed which our party of four was ascending is one of the best grounds for bears in all the Sandwich range. No wonder, then, that we watched and sounded anxiously for hidden traps.

As we walked westward into the hollow in the side of Paugus, the ground rose rapidly and the level land on the edges of the stream soon gave way to steeply sloping banks. For beech, birch, and maple were substituted spruce, balsam fir, and hemlock; the rapids of the brook changed to falls; glimpses of sky were replaced by occasional peeps at spruce-capped gray cliffs hanging high above us, and we felt as though if we kept on we should soon enter the black interior of a vast cavern, unless some unseen avenue to light and air appeared. The barometer showed that we had climbed nearly a thousand feet, when suddenly there opened before us a view of a succession of high, steeply-sloping ledges, polished by rushing water and festooned with delicate mosses. A sheet of clear and sparkling water, stained a rich hemlock brownby the moss beds through which it had filtered, poured in quivering folds over the rock. Standing by the side of the pool at the foot of the lowest incline, we could see four of these smooth ledge faces rising one behind another above us. Climbing to their top, we saw as many more still higher, and beyond them all, twin cascades gleamed through the trees, as they fell from a ledge in the middle of which a mass of black spruces and huge gray rocks seemed to form an island poised in the air between the two halves of the torrent.

Nearly a thousand feet above this twin fall, yet so close beyond it that my companions almost despaired of further progress up the mountain, was a wall of gray rock suspended between the sky and the tree-tops. It was the last redoubt of the impregnable Paugus. Was there a rift in its apparently solid face? Yes, I knew that there must be, because years before I had come down this ravine from the summit and had found no obstacle to gradual and easy descent. While passing the falls, we used the barometer to ascertain their approximate height, and found a difference of two hundred and fifty feet between the level of the pool at their foot and that of the stream above the twin cascades. The several inclines down which the water shot in rippling sheets were each fifty or sixty feet long and about twenty-five feet in perpendicular rise. With a stream twice or three times the volume of this brook, Paugus Falls would take rank as among the most beautiful in New England. Even as they are, they deserve a place in song instead of obscurity in an almost unknown corner of a pathless mountain.

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