As autumn starts its annual sweep, few Americans and Canadians realize how fortunate they are in having the world's finest fall coloring.
Spectacular displays of this sort are relatively rare in the entire land surface of the earth.
The only other regions so blessed are the British Isles, western Europe, eastern China, southern Chile and parts of Japan, New Zealand and Tasmania.
Their autumn tints are all fairly low keyed compared with the fiery stabs of crimson, gold, purple, bronze, blue and vermilion that flame up in North America.
Jack Frost is not really responsible for this great seasonal spectacle;
in fact, a freezing autumn dulls the blaze.
The best effects come from a combination of temperate climate and plenty of late-summer rain, followed by sunny days and cool nights.
Foliage pilgrimages, either organized or individual, are becoming an autumn item for more and more Americans each year.
Below is a specific guide, keyed to the calendar.

Nature

Canada.

Late September finds Quebec's color at its peak, especially in the Laurentian hills and in the area south of the St. Lawrence River.
In the Maritime provinces farther east, the tones are a little quieter.
Ontario's foliage is most vivid from about Sept. 23 to Oct. 10, with both Muskoka (100 miles north of Toronto) and Haliburton (125 miles northwest of Toronto) holding color cavalcades starting Sept. 23.
In the Canadian Rockies, great groves of aspen are already glinting gold.
New England.

Vermont's sugar maples are scarlet from Sept. 25 to Oct. 15, and often hit a height in early October.
New Hampshire figures its peak around Columbus Day and boasts of all its hardwoods including the yellow of the birches.
The shades tend to be a little softer in the forests that blanket so much of Maine.
In western Massachusetts and northwest Connecticut, the Berkshires are at their vibrant prime the first week of October.

Middle Atlantic states.

The Adirondacks blaze brightest in early October, choice routes being 9N from Saratoga up to Lake George and 73 and 86 in the Lake Placid area.
Farther south in New York there is a heavy haze of color over the Catskills in mid-October, notably along routes 23 and 23A.
About the same time the Alleghenies and Poconos in Pennsylvania are magnificent -- Renovo holds its annual Flaming Foliage Festival on Oct. 14, 15.
New Jersey's color varies from staccato to pastel all the way from the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May.
Southeast.

During the first half of October the Blue Ridge and other parts of the Appalachians provide a spectacle stretching from Maryland and West Virginia to Georgia.
The most brilliant displays are along the Skyline Drive above Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and throughout the Great Smokies between North Carolina and Tennessee.
Midwest.

Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota have many superb stretches of color which reach their height from the last few days of September well into October, especially in their northern sections, e.g., Wisconsin's Vilas County whose Colorama celebration is Sept. 29-Oct. 8.
In Wisconsin, take route 55 north of Shawano or routes 78 and 60 from Portage to Prairie Du Chien.
In Michigan, there is fine color on route 27 up to the Mackinac Straits, while the views around Marquette and Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula are spectacular.
In Minnesota, Arrowhead County and route 53 north to International Falls are outstanding.
Farther south, there are attractive patches all the way to the Ozarks, with some seasonal peaks as late as early November.
Illinois' Shawnee National Forest, Missouri's Iron County and the maples of Hiawatha, Kan. should be at their best in mid-October.
The West.

The Rockies have many "Aspencades", which are organized tours of the aspen areas with frequent stops at vantage points for viewing the golden panoramas.
In Colorado, Ouray has its Fall Color Week Sept. 22-29, Rye and Salida both sponsor Aspencades Sept. 24, and Steamboat Springs has a week-long Aspencade Sept. 25-30.
New Mexico's biggest is at Ruidoso Oct. 7, 8, while Alamogordo and Cloudcroft cooperate in similar trips Oct. 1.

Americana

pleasure domes.

Two sharply contrasting places designed for public enjoyment are now on display.

The Corn Palace at Mitchell, S. Dak., "the world's corniest building", has a carnival through Sept. 23 headlining the Three Stooges and Pee Wee Hunt.
Since 1892 ears of red, yellow, purple and white corn have annually been nailed to 11 big picture panels to create huge "paintings".
The 1961 theme is the Dakota Territorial Centennial, with the pictures including the Lewis and Clark expedition, the first river steamboat, the 1876 gold rush, a little red schoolhouse on the prairie, and today's construction of large Missouri River reservoirs.
The panels will stay up until they are replaced next summer.

Longwood Gardens, near Kennett Square, Pa. (about 12 miles from Wilmington, Del.), was developed and heavily endowed by the late Pierre S. Du Pont.
Every Wednesday night through Oct. 11 there will be an elaborate colored fountain display, with 229 nozzles throwing jets of water up to 130 feet.
The "peacock tail" nozzle throws a giant fan of water 100 feet wide and 40 feet high.
The gardens themselves are open free of charge the year round, and the 192 permanent employes make sure that not a dead or wilted flower is ever seen indoors or out by any visitor.
The greenhouses alone cover 3-1/2 acres.

Books

clock without hands.

Carson McCullers, after a long, painful illness that might have crushed a less-indomitable soul, has come back with an absolute gem of a novel which jumped high on best-seller lists even before official publication.
Though the subject -- segregation in her native South -- has been thoroughly worked, Miss McCullers uses her poet's instinct and storyteller's skill to reaffirm her place at the very top of modern American writing.
Franny and Zooey.

With an art that almost conceals art, J. D. Salinger can create a fictional world so authentic that it hurts.
Here, in the most eagerly awaited novel of the season (his first since The Catcher In The Rye ,) he tells of a college girl in flight from the life around her and the tart but sympathetic help she gets from her 25-year-old brother.
The Head Of Monsieur M.,

Althea Urn.
A deft, hilarious satire on very high French society involving a statesman with two enviable possessions, a lovely young bride and a head containing such weighty thoughts that he has occasionally to remove it for greater comfort.
There is probably a moral in all this about "mind vs. heart".
A Matter Of Life And Death.

Virgilia Peterson, a critic by trade, has turned her critical eye pitilessly and honestly on herself in an autobiography more of the mind and heart than of specific events.
It is an engrossing commentary on a repressive, upper-middle-class New York way of life in the first part of this century.
Dark Rider.

This retelling by Louis Zara of the brief, anguished life of Stephen Crane -- poet and master novelist at 23, dead at 28 -- is in novelized form but does not abuse its tragic subject.
Rural Free,

Rachel Peden.
Subtitled A Farmwife's Almanac Of Country Living, this is a gentle and nostalgic chronicle of the changing seasons seen through the clear, humorous eye of a Hoosier housewife and popular columnist.

Dance

Russians, Filipinos.

Two noted troupes from overseas will get the fall dance season off to a sparkling start.
Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, famous for classic purity of technique, begins its first U.S. tour in New York (through Sept. 30).
The Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company, with music and dances that depict the many facets of Filipino culture, opens its 60-city U.S. tour in San Francisco (through Sept. 24) then, via one-night stands, moves on to Los Angeles (Sept. 29 thru Oct. 1).

Festivals

across the land.

With harvests in full swing, you can enjoy festivals for grapes at Sonoma, Calif. (Sept. 22-24), as well as for cranberries at Bandon, Ore. (Sept. 28 thru Oct. 1), for buckwheat at Kingwood, W. Va. (Sept. 28-30), sugar cane at New Iberia, La. (Sept. 29 thru Oct. 1) and tobacco at Richmond, Va. (Sept. 23-30).

The mule is honored at Benson, N.C. (Sept. 22, 23) and at Boron, Calif. (Sept. 24 thru Oct. 1), while the legend of the Maid of the Mist is celebrated at Niagara Falls through the 24th.
The fine old mansions of U.S. Grant's old home town of Galena, Ill. are open for inspection (Sept. 23, 24).
An archery tournament will be held at North Falmouth, Mass. (Sept. 23, 24).
The 300th anniversaries of Staten Island (through Sept. 23) and of Mamaroneck, N.Y. (through Sept. 24) will both include parades and pageants.

Movies

Purple Noon:

This French film, set in Italy, is a summertime splurge in shock and terror all shot in lovely sunny scenery -- so breath-taking that at times you almost forget the horrors the movie is dealing with.
But slowly they take over as Alain Delon (Life, Sept. 15), playing a sometimes appealing but always criminal boy, casually tells a rich and foot-loose American that he is going to murder him, then does it even while the American is trying to puzzle out how Delon expects to profit from the act.

Records

Norma.

Callas devotees will have good reason to do their customary cart wheels over a new and complete stereo version of the Bellini opera.
Maria goes all out as a Druid princess who gets two-timed by a Roman big shot.
By turns, her beautifully sung Norma is fierce, tender, venomous and pitiful.
The tenor lead, Franco Corelli, and La Scala cast under Maestro Tullio Serafin are all first rate.
Jeremiah Peabody's polyunsaturated quick dissolving fast acting pleasant tasting green and purple pills.

In a raucous take-off on radio commercials, Singer Ray Stevens hawks a cure-all for neuritis, neuralgia, head-cold distress, beriberi, overweight, fungus, mungus and water on the knee.
Of the nation's eight million pleasure-boat owners a sizable number have learned that late autumn is one of the loveliest seasons to be afloat -- at least in that broad balmy region that lies below America's belt line.
Waterways are busy right now from the Virginia capes to the Texas coast.
There true yachtsmen often find November winds steadier, the waters cooler, the fish hungrier, and rivers more pleasant -- less turbulence and mud, and fewer floating logs.

More and more boats move overland on wheels (1.8 million trailers are now in use) and Midwesterners taking long weekends can travel south with their craft.
In the Southwest, the fall brings out flotillas of boatsmen who find the summer too hot for comfort.
And on northern shores indomitable sailors from Long Island to Lake Michigan will beat around the buoys in dozens of frostbite races.
Some pleasant fall cruising country is mapped out below.

Boating

west coast.

Pleasure boating is just scooting into its best months in California as crisp breezes bring out craft of every size on every kind of water -- ocean, lake and reservoir.
Shore facilities are enormous -- Los Angeles harbors 5,000 boats, and Long Beach 3,000 -- but marinas are crowded everywhere.
New docks and ramps are being rushed at Playa Del Rey, Ventura, Dana Point, Oceanside and Mission Bay.

Inland, outboard motorists welcome cooler weather and the chance to buzz over Colorado River sandbars and Lake Mead.
Newest small-boat playground is the Salton Sea, a once-dry desert sinkhole which is now a salty lake 42 miles long and 235 feet below sea level.
On Nov. 11, 12, racers will drive their flying shingles in 5-mile laps over its 500-mile speedboat course.
In San Francisco Bay, winds are gusty and undependable during this season.
A sailboat may have a bone in her teeth one minute and lie becalmed the next.
But regattas are scheduled right up to Christmas.
The Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon launches its winter races Nov. 5.
Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Carla damaged 70% of the marinas in the Galveston-Port Aransas area but fuel service is back to normal, and explorers can roam as far west as Port Isabel on the Mexican border.
Sailing activity is slowed down by Texas northers, but power cruisers can move freely, poking into the San Jacinto, Trinity and Brazos rivers (fine tarpon fishing in the Brazos) or pushing eastward to the pirate country of Barataria.
Off Grand Isle, yachters often visit the towering oil rigs.
The Mississippi Sound leads into a protected waterway running about 200 miles from Pascagoula to Apalachicola.
Lower Mississippi.

Memphis stinkpotters like McKellar Lake, inside the city limits, and sailors look for autumn winds at Arkabutla Lake where fall racing is now in progress.
River cruising for small craft is ideal in November.
At New Orleans, 25-mile-square Lake Pontchartrain has few squalls and year-long boating.
Marinas are less plush than the Florida type but service is good and Creole cooking better.
tva lakes.

Ten thousand twisty miles of shoreline frame the 30-odd lakes in the vast Tennessee River system that loops in and out of seven states.
When dam construction began in 1933, fewer than 600 boats used these waters;
today there are 48,500.