204 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
locusts were also evidently depressed by the cool 
weather, and they played their tunes rarely and 
without much spirit. Listening to them and 
to the sounds which the wind made in a bunch 
of dry brakes, I fancied that I saw in what 
quarter the first grasshopper took his music 
lessons. The rubbing together of the parts of 
the withered fronds produced sounds almost 
exactly like the locust’s strident playing. 
Taking the Hammond path, I ascended the 
eastern spur of Chocorua. The side of the 
mountain was one vast bed of loosely scattered 
leaves. Next spring each leaf will be pressed 
so closely upon its neighbor that the veining of 
one will be imprinted upon the face of the other. 
Now they are still free to drift with wind ed¬ 
dies, and to rustle noisily around the feet of the 
passer-by. The smell of oak leaves, newly 
fallen, is very powerful, and, except as a re¬ 
minder of autumn walks, too much like ink to 
be pleasant. Among the fallen leaves the 
bright green of checkerberry, club mosses, and 
wintergreen showed now and then, while the 
dark liver-colored leaves of a goldenrod con¬ 
trasted with the brown of the beech leaves. 
I must have climbed fully eight hundred feet 
from the level of the pastures before snow be¬ 
gan to appear along the path, and it was not 
until the line of low spruces was gained that 
