466 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 240. 



toral inland country in an equally brief space of time. Nor 

 do we always think that we must go far in either direction, for 

 even the roads nearest about us offer perpetual variety, now 

 crossing salt-marshes and causeways over rippling arms of 

 water ; now threading tall Pine-groves, and now Oak-thickets, 

 to bring us out on modest elevations, which we are pleased to 

 call cliifs, where, suddenly, tlie wide azure expanse of the bay 

 is seen beneath our feet ; now taking us between hay-fields 

 and small fruit-farms, where the houses are prettily gray or 

 white and tlie barns are bigger than the houses ; and, again, 

 leading us through miles of narrow roads, where woods of 

 some twenty years' growth come close to the carriage-wheels, 

 the boughs meet overhead, and the grass grows tall between 

 the three ruts worn by the never frequent, but never alto- 

 gether failing passage of the typical vehicles of the country — 

 the shackly, faded buggy and the black-liooded, four-seated 

 carryall, each drawn by its single horse. Two-horse convey- 

 ances cannot comfortably penetrate these wood-roads, although 

 for a one-horse vehicle they offer very good driving, the sandy 

 soil of the Cape only appearing here and there in very brief 

 stretches. No visitor should bring his own one-horse vehicle 

 to this part of the world, but should depend upon those he will 

 find awaiting him. Our axles are so wide that an imported 

 carriage does not " track," and the difference between driv- 

 ino' in such a one and in one which does track is the differ- 

 ence between entire comfort and an exasperating tilt and 

 joggle. 



Of course, it is in the mountain regions of central and 

 northern New England that the colors of the American 

 autumn show in the grandest and most amazing way. But 

 our vegetation "turns" very beautifully; and it reveals its 

 beauty, so to say, in a much more intimate fashion. The 

 finest autumnal features of an inland scene are distant 

 stretches of parti-colored hill-side, tall, broken masses of va- 

 riegated forest in the middle distances, and, sprinkled about in 

 the nearer meadows, superb single examples of flaming red or 

 yellow or purple trees. But we have no liill-sides ; when we 

 see a mass of woods in the middle distance it is low and draws 

 a nearly straight line across the horizon ; and, in our most 

 characteristic drives, the trees are small, and one sees them 

 very close at hand, crowded beside us, and their boughs close 

 above our heads. Here and there we get fine open views of 

 meadows and marshes bounded by woodland or sea. But 

 they are all flat views, and, as a rule, there are few isolated 

 large trees. The colors in autumn lie in low far-extending 

 level masses, or, when we thread the forest-roads, strike the 

 eye as a perpetual succession of details, rather than as broad 

 effects. Roads such as these are called, I believe, "green- 

 ribbon roads" in some parts of New England. Ours are cer- 

 tainly ribbon-like, perpetually and gracefully meandering with 

 never the smallest stretch of straightness, and in summer thev 

 have a green all their own, for no inland light brings out the 

 keenest emerald tints possible to foliage as does the salt- 

 spangled light of these sea-shore parts. But when we look 

 along them in autumn we feel as though we had put an im- 

 mense kaleidoscope to our eye, so many are the colors they 

 assume, and so impossibly vivid each one seems. 



Of course, it is not in the first half of September, not until 

 October, that, in these mild regions, one sees autumn in a very 

 brilliant guise. But the beginning of tlie red and yellow sea- 

 son has a special charm of its own. Autumn is setting her 

 palette, trying her effects with little streaks and spots and 

 splashes, indicating what she means to do, sketching in her 

 color-scheme; and every one knows that a great arfist's sketches 

 have a peculiar value to the understanding eye. A tricksy 

 and willful sprite is this particular great artist, in those yoi:th- 

 ful days when her Christian name has not been changed from 

 "Early" to "Late." There seems no reason in her work, al- 

 though everything she does rhymes delightfully with the next 

 thing. I pity any scientific student who should come to our 

 woods in mid-September, trying to unravel why our foliage 

 "turns." Neither frost, nor sun, nor moisture, nor dryness 

 can be credited witli any distinct influence; little can be laid 

 to the account of family traits when tree is compared with 

 tree ; nor does soil or situation seem to have a discernible 

 effect upon the gay beginning of the masquerade. 



We may say, in a rough sense, that the Tupelos turn first. 

 But some of them turned in August, and some have not yet 

 begun to turn, while some are russet and others are redder 

 than scarlet. And a green one may stand close beside the 

 brightest red one, or one bough may be scarlet wliile all the 

 others are emerald still. But even the Tupelos are not so in- 

 dividually willful as the Maples. They are all Scarlet Maples 

 by name (the Sugar Maple does not grow wdth us), but they 

 are not all equally scarlet by nature ; or, at least, they do not 



all reveal this nature at the same time or in the same way. 

 This year they began to enliven themselves unusually early — 

 a week or more ago many of the smaller ones were already 

 vivid. But I have never noted a year when they enlivened 

 themselves in so fragmentary and fantastic a fashion. It is 

 hard, as yet, to find an example which is red all over. I passed 

 a wide swamp the other day which was surrounded by hun- 

 dreds of them and thickly beset with others, all hardly more 

 than saplings, gracefully tall and slender. Everyone of them, 

 I think, showed some brilliant red; but not one of them, as 

 far as I could see, had more than one or two red boughs. It 

 was not as though each tree had assumed a new garment ; it 

 was as though each had flung out a bold banner of its own. 

 Often, in the narrow woodland roads, one comes upon a Maple 

 with not a whole bough, but merely the end of a bough flam- 

 ing; or not the whole end, but justacouple of swinging leaves. 

 In my drive to-day I came upon a good-sized symmetrical 

 specimen, still perfectly fresh and green, with one single scar- 

 let leaf hung out over the roadway; and immediately beyond 

 it was another with only half a leaf tinted, the line between 

 green and red being as neatly drawn as though by a painter's 

 brush. And as the Maples are behaving, just so are the Scar- 

 let Oaks, wdiile their big brothers, the White Oaks, give no 

 sign that they know the summer is past. 



Where the roads skirt the salt-marshes splendid effects of 

 color may already be seen, although these are less vivid than 

 those which will soon follow. The marshes (we call them 

 " ma'shes " here, and so, says an English friend, are they called 

 in South Devon) are not orange-colored yet, but they are a fine 

 dullish yellow, streaked with green and brown, and here and 

 there accented by big patches and ribbons of a blood-like deep 

 red. From a distance the plant which gives this remarkable 

 color looks like some species of Salicornia, but I have never 

 been able to get near enough on the yielding soil to see it dis- 

 tinctly. Around these marshes the woods are still chiefly green. 

 No brown tones yet appear, and of yellow tones only the dull 

 neutral tints of the little Birches. But a splash of scarlet shows 

 occasionally where a Maple or Tupelo stands with its foot in 

 the wet. 



Where the roads go beneath tall Pine-groves not a sign or 

 symbol of autumn appears. The sparse growths beneath are 

 as freshly verdant as the soft svi'irling canopy of needles 

 above. But the open roadsides are gay, for we pride ourselves 

 on our variety in shrubs and vines, and these turn early; and, 

 moreover, the Asters and Golden-rods are still at their finest. 

 No withered grayish plumes stand for the Golden-rod yet, but 

 along the shores the thick-leaved maritime species is in per- 

 fection, and on drier spots other tall or low paniculated kinds, 

 and the softer, more poetic fiat-topped masses of the corym- 

 bose species. The Vacciniums, which later will spread a 

 carpet of glory along the roadsides and through the woodland 

 glades, are already, some of them, bronzed and some of them 

 red. Here and there a Clethra has turned bronze-like too. 

 Once in a while we come upon a little Sassafras whose mitten- 

 like leaves are yellow and red in spots like a particularly 

 speckled apple. Now and then, like a flash of flame, a thin 

 garland of Virginia Creeper encircles a Pine-tree trunk ; near 

 it flaunts a mass of Poison Ivy, and, further on, a streamer of 

 Smilax tries to make us believe it is a Virginia Creeper too. 

 Sometimes, lying low beside the road, beneath an arboreal 

 canopy still entirely green, there is a mass of varied tangled 

 color enchanting to behold ; and, again, the undergrowth is as 

 green as the trees, except for tiny spikes and spots of russet 

 and scarlet. 



The eye which can appreciate accents as well as broad ef- 

 fects, which loves details as well as masses, and which can be 

 delighted by a little colored leaf as well as by a huge colored 

 tree, finds infinite satisfaction in our country in these early 

 autumn days. And what a sky covers this diversified pano- 

 rama of simple beauties ! People wdio live among the hills 

 must do without real horizons. They never know what it is 

 to see the edge of their world in every direction, and to know 

 what the sun's rays are about in all quarters of the sky. They ■ 

 never see a sunset as we see it here all around tlie margin of I 

 the heavens. This is particularly the month for sunsets, and • 

 we usually have four of them every night. There will be a / 

 crimson one flaring in tlie west and a rosy one blushing in 

 the east ; one with masses of dark purple clouds lying over a I 

 purple sea to the southward, and a colder, purer, even more I 

 enchanting one in the north, pale green as to its sky, palest 

 lavender as to its clouds. No mountain region can do this for 

 you, and you must come to our individual little corner of the 

 world, just under the heel of Cape Cod, to know exactly what 

 you miss by living in the mountain. 



Marion, Mass. M. G. Vail Rensselaer. 



