206 
WALDEN. 
the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles 
on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless 
water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating 
through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming 
impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they 
were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my 
level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all 
around them. There were many such schools in the 
pond, apparently improving the short season before win¬ 
ter would draw an icy shutter over their broad sky¬ 
light, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as 
if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. 
When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they 
made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if 
one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and in¬ 
stantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind 
rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, 
and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out 
of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at 
once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of 
December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, 
and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the 
air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at 
the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed 
rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and 
I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the 
dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, 
which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths, 
and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent 
a dry afternoon after all. 
An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly 
sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding for¬ 
ests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all 
