lored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond in
the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many
unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain?
or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the
first water which Concord wears in her coronet.

Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of
their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond,
even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow
shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling,
approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the
race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from
time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land.
This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond
in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear
undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious
a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly
distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in
clear white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which
will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this.

The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what
period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is
commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not
corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it
was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher,
than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it,
with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of
chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which
it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and, on the other
hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that
a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded
cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which
place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen
steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet
higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago,
and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of
level,