214 
WALDEN. 
have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, 
if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of 
the woods, is White Ponda poor name from its com¬ 
monness, whether derived from the remarkable purity 
of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in 
other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. 
They are so much alike that you would say they must 
be connected under ground. It has the same stony 
shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Wal¬ 
den, in sultry dog-day weather, looking down through 
the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep 
but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its 
waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. 
Many years since I used to go there to collect the sand 
by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have con¬ 
tinued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it pro¬ 
poses to call it Yirid Lake. Perhaps it might be called 
Yellow-Pine Lake, from the following circumstance. 
About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch- 
pine, of the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though 
it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface 
in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even 
supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was 
one of the primitive forest that formerly stood there. I 
find that even so long ago as 1792, in a “Topograph¬ 
ical Description of the Town of Concord,” by one of its 
citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts His¬ 
torical Society, the author, after speaking of Walden 
and White Ponds, adds: “ In the middle of the latter 
may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which 
appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, 
although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the 
water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that 
