THE POND IN WINTER. 
315 
and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter 
air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there. It 
looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through 
the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of 
jest and sport, and when I went among them they were 
wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I stand¬ 
ing underneath. 
In the winter of ’46-7 there came a hundred men 
of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond 
one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking 
farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, 
spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a 
double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in 
the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not 
know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter 
rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced 
from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they 
meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil 
was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said 
that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, 
wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, 
amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover 
each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only 
coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of 
a hard winter. They went to work at once, ploughing, 
harrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if 
they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I 
was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped 
into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly 
began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a pecu¬ 
liar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water,— 
for it was a very springy soil,—indeed all the terra jirma 
there was,-—and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed 
