at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by
the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must
be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same
summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this
fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many
years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two
falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will
again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile eastward,
allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets,
and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and
recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the
latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond.

This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least;
the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it
makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which
have sprung up about its edge since the last rise--pitch pines, birches,
alders, aspens, and others--and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed
shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a
daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side
of the pond next my house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet high, has
been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put
to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have
elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond
asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees
cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake,
on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the
water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a
mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their
stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the
ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and I have known the high
blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear
an abundant crop under these circumstances.

Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved.
My townsmen have all heard the tradition--the oldest people tell me that
they heard it in their youth--that anciently the Indians were holding
a pow-wow upon a hill here, which