A FOREST ANTHEM. 155 



their wings and hopping back and forth from 

 branch to branch. The centre of attraction 

 seemed to be an idea, not carrion or an owl. I 

 tested this by hooting like a barred owl. In- 

 stantly sixteen pairs of wings brought sixteen 

 excited birds across the ravine in search of hated 

 Strix, but I lay low under a hemlock and the 

 crows returned to their rendezvous and their 

 clamorous debate. Several times during the 

 afternoon faint echoes of their oratory reached 

 me at my house half a mile away. 



At sunset I walked to the rustic bridge be- 

 tween the lakes and let the wonderful beauty of 

 the scene flow in and fill every corner of my be- 

 ing. Against the northern sky rose Chocorua, 

 Paugus, Passaconaway and Whiteface, four con- 

 nected mountains, each beautiful, but all differ- 

 ing one from another. Chocorua 011 the east, 

 and due north of the lakes, sustains a horn of 

 naked rock upon shoulders of converging wooded 

 ridges. Paugus, heavily wooded, yet with many 

 ledge faces and scars showing light among its 

 hemlocks, is a mountain of curves and wrinkles, 

 having no one definite summit, but many fire 

 and wind swept domes. Passaconaway is an im- 

 mense spruce-covered pyramid, pathless and for- 

 bidding. Whiteface, at the west, is a shoulder 

 of rock 4,000 feet high, draped in forest except 

 where an avalanche has rent its covering" and 



