coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or

lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own

over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal

who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities

his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend

describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep,

together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat

spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of

subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal

cakes slips from the ice-mans sled into the village street, and

White Pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like this,

breadth.

or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the

shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial.

as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets,

only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a

know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount

crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked

a spiders web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the

feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of

on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the

glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was

stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side

science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural

blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they

third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a

of it is, the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper

unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and

dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered

or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all

our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the

which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in

cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition

not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if

solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to

sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat

thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and

surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of

Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the

soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be

work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether."

through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of

all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the

there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work

confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which

projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of

has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate

To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers,

it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of

smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold

pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the

to cut holes for sounding there were three or four inches of water

heaven.

of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the

never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities,

When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes

foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream running

tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell

at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a

this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great

leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally

the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of

be cut out.

but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a

that if such a "leach-hole" should be found, its connection with the

taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless

found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected

extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carloads

pond recovered the greater part.

Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some

cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to

sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the

the like; and now they are all gone, and in t九九藏書hirty days more,

teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road,

usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap,

polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic

have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and

moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking

fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and

Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery

down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became

the outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though

if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of

meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who

they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was

plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through

question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to

meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some, colored

of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts.

well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or

kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here --

worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught

indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the

laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher

high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between

water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and

cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different

hard winter. They went to work at once, plowing, barrowing,

these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an

this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the

small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which

though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was

gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander

When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch,

and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every

recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that

observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water

thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the

amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted.

determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and

before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was

even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and

at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his

rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a

marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes

Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending

particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and

and soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the

and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be

line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The

peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the

with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the

or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the

a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my

diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it,

where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays

yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch

in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly

destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some

came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it

and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is

their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways

which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable

cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, with a

like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the

probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green

the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing

is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so

with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a

of ungainly-looking farming tools -- sleds, plows, drill-barrows,

there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn

pines, nor gray九_九_藏_書 like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they

clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a

them. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of

deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still

powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a

swallows the perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so

possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates

ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer;

the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain,

Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green

got by measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but

vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four

sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into

double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in the

but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is

trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature

unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest

which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and

this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its

flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if

bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and

man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon

through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more

hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty,

turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a

kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my

implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of

vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the

remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next

state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the

up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a

"cradle-holes" were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the

other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.

plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel.

As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden

the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The

mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately after the

reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination

oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a

Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,

four miles in breadth," and about fifty miles long, surrounded by

breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the

wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to

thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for.

their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might

for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond,

which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general

ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances

ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They

capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that

irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements

In the winter of 46-7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean

an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form.

the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable

Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its

stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from

conditions -- changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet

bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors

He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in

when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder

and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of

times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of

water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to

topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or

good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid,

is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only

cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have

mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it

They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It

in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in

While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick,

ohttps://read.99csw.comnly heard the names.

interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had

regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level

the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting

still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells

to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over

this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number

made them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me

carried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel

order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the

drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not like

"So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low

almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases.

foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January -- wearing a

be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source

inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.

as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had

side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a

stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately

servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who

Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though

ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle,

deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman

steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of

in another place what they thought was a "leach-hole," through which

made in the winter of 46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand

or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it

lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope

contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an

Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six" and a

was a very springy soil -- indeed all the terra firma there was --

draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a

some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as

modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt

the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has

is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the

to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds,

the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance

exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five

accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy

the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth,

calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its

the difference between the affections and the intellect.

within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within

worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of

really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more

map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and

It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool

their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the

cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were

and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in

all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the

deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a

from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick

while the "fifty-six" was resting by the way, they were paying out

dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad

so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the

middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in

channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre.

or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which

like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted

with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied

shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no

can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow?

saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the

is to level all inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its

feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This

ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its

not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these

and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic

had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some https://read.99csw.comother kind of grain

Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that

search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy

and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the

line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth,

has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the

existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay

level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its greatest

soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested,

me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten

ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship

they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the

Capacious bed of waters."

of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of

some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great

some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of

mans particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves

mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill

results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but

wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for

notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of

sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are

side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface

windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips.

snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired

an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his

difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began

the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were

me to saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.

insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and

run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every

New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they

receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter

A factory-owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it

in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual

the almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the

thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless

appeared!

favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer

them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose

winter, and was not quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the

its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not

beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like

making this a model farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what

the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the

bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as

is not highest at its narrowest part.

proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a

of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward!

at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a

before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have

were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is

who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through

the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored.

lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were

Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston

warmest in winter. When the ice-men were at work here in 46-7, the

guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but

that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling

this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as

course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar

answer in my sleep, as what -- how -- when -- where? But there was

air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the

complicated.

cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for

toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch,

In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience,

but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was

farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and was only one

Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this

stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond,

the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin

currents concur to individualize them.

concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances,

than almost any field whread.99csw.comich is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow.

a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry

found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She

servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in

fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the

and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed

strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of

conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were

correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he

rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on

compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared

Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in

than they have done. The things which they practice are said not

years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our

determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of

passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably

down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the

than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns

night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid

inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the

kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there.

46, with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many

undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a

heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth,

we are detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations are

thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove,

lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men,

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact,

In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not

any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are

probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments

precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei

farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money,

same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond will,

could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams,

Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I

latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of

man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground

destiny from what was intended; for, either because the ice was

and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my

jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite

infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides,

you walked half way round the pond.

and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and

Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its

his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They

is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it

stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet

peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water -- for it

the particles carried through by the current.

in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little

As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any

retreated. How, pray, did he get these in midwinter? Oh, he got

like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the

Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate

ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of

were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of

steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and had to

how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without

surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our

his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond,

tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was

Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men

marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac --

at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider

into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and

I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow

come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine

fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed

entireness.

feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need