THE PONDS. 
195 
ponds within a dozen miles of this centre, I do not know 
a third of this pure and well-like character. Successive 
nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed 
it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pel¬ 
lucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps 
on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were 
driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in exist¬ 
ence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain 
accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and cov¬ 
ered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not 
heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed 
them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, 
and had clarified its waters and colored 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 ce¬ 
lestial 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 hill-side, 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 unwit¬ 
tingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. 
This is particularly distinct to one standing on the mid¬ 
dle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has 
fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unob¬ 
scured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter 
