308 
WALDEN. 
not like cups between tbe hills; for this one, which is so 
unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section 
through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. 
Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more 
hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is 
so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usual¬ 
ly so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in 
Scotland, which he describes as “ a bay of salt water, 
sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth,” 
and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, 
observes, “ If we could have seen it immediately after 
the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature 
occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid 
chasm it must have appeared! 
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad, and deep, 
Capacious bed of waters- 
But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we ap¬ 
ply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, 
appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow 
plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much for 
the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when 
emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its 
stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a “ horrid 
chasm,” from which the waters have receded, though it 
requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist 
to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. 
Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a 
primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subse¬ 
quent elevation of the plain have been necessary to 
conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who 
work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the 
