THE PONDS. 
193 
those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vis¬ 
tas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of 
its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal 
quantity of air. It is well known that a large plate of 
glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, 
to its “ body,” but a small piece of the same will be col¬ 
orless. How large a body of Walden water would be 
required to reflect a green tint I have never proved. 
The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to 
one looking directly down on it, and, like that of most 
ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellow¬ 
ish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that 
the body of the bather appears of an alabaster white¬ 
ness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are mag¬ 
nified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, 
making fit studies for a Michael Angelo. 
The water is so transparent that the bottom can easi¬ 
ly be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. 
Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the 
surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only 
an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their 
transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic 
fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, 
many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through 
the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I 
tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil 
genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly 
into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five 
feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and 
looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on 
one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and 
gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; 
and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in 
13 
