284 
WALDEN. 
numerous posterity have inherited the land of their 
fathers ? The sterile soil would at least have been 
proof against a low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little 
does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance 
the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps, Nature 
will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised 
last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. 
I am not aware that any man has ever built on the 
spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on 
the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are 
ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched 
and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary 
the earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminis¬ 
cences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. 
At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the 
snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house 
for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as 
snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which 
are said to have survived for a long time buried in 
drifts, even without food; or like that early settler’s fam¬ 
ily in the town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage 
was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 
when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the 
hole which the chimney’s breath made in the drift, and 
so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian con¬ 
cerned himself about me ; nor needed he, for the master 
of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How 
cheerful it is to hear of! When the farmers could not 
get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and 
were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their 
houses, and when the crust was harder cut off the trees 
