ths. 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 fun 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 seared 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 forests, tells me that in those days he
sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water-fowl, and that
there were many eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an
old log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of two white pine
logs dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square at the ends.
It was very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became
water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it
was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his anchor of
strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived
by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron
chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come
floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back
into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log
canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but
more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the
bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a
generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I
first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen
indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over
formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper;
but now they have mostly disappeared.

When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by
thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape-vines
had run over the trees next the water and fo