Page 16 (1/2)

After a still winter night I aith the impression that so in vain to answer in my sleep, as what -- hohen -- where? But there was dawning Nature, in who in at my broad ith serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we o taken her resolution "O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day coreat work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether"

Then to o in search of water, if that be not a drea-rod to find it Every winter the liquid and tre surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished fro hills, it closes its eyelids and beco on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture ah a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open aunderto drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through aof ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the sans as in the a to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads

Early in the s are crisp with frost, -reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsether in parts where else they would be ripped They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial They never consulted with books, and know and can tell s which they practice are said not yet to be known Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait You look into his pail onder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at hoet these in round froze, and so he caught them His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist The latter raises the ently with his knife in search of insects; the fors to their core with his axe, andtrees Such a ht to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in hirub-worm, the pickerel ss the perch, and the fisher-man ss the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled

When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance fro fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled doould shohen he had a bite These alders looular intervals as you walked half way round the pond

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see the on the ice, or in the hich the fisher a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fareen like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are thedoht here -- that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teahs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven

As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in &039;46, with co line There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for the men will believe in the botto the trouble to sound it I have visited two such Bottohborhood Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe So down through the illusive ain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay ht be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions froe with a "fifty-six" and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any botto by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness But I can assure ht bottoh at an unusual, depth I fatho about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottoot underneath to help reatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to whichone hundred and seven This is a remarkable depth for so sination What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol While ht to be botto what depth I had found, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dale But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fatho, surrounded by mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chash as heaved the tumid hills, so low

Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,

Capacious bed of waters"

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow So much for the increased horrors of the chas valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chash it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal their history But it is easiest, as they ork on the highways know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower The aive it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth

As I sounded through the ice I could deterreater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary enerally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches Soerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circuularity of the bottohboring hills were so perfect that a distant pros quite across the pond, and its direction could be deter the opposite shore Cape becoe deep water and channel

When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed this re noticed that the nureatest depth was apparently in the centre of the thwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to th intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of the pond far froot byinto the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of arded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its entrance In proportion as the th, the water over the bar was deeper coth and breadth of the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have alh to make out a formula for all cases