f dull
uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At
length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some homed pout
squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially
in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal
themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to
interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if I
might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into
this element which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as
it were with one hook.

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful,
does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not
long frequented it, or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so
remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular
description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a
mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one
and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods,
without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and
evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the
height of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they
attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively,
within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland.
All our Concord waters have two colors at least, one when viewed at a
distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends
more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer,
they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a
great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of
a dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and
green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have
seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water
and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue "to be the
color of pure water, whether liquid or solid." But looking directly down
into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different
colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the
same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes
of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the
sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the sho