d haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They
are not green 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 themselves small Waldens in the animal
kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here--that
in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and
chaises and tinkling sleighs 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 '46, with
compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told
about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had
no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe
in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound
it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this
neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to
the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for
a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with
watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the
fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which
a load of hay might be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the
undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from
these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a "fifty-six"
and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom;
for while the "fifty-six" was resting 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 my readers that Walden has a
reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual,
depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about
a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the
bottom, by having to pull so much harder before th