alone. Let our lakes
receive as true names at least as the Icarian Sea, where "still the
shore" a "brave attempt resounds."

Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint's; Fair Haven, an
expansion of Concord River, said to contain some seventy acres, is a
mile southwest; and White Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a
half beyond Fair Haven. This is my lake country. These, with Concord
River, are my water privileges; and night and day, year in year out,
they grind such grist as I carry to them.

Since the wood-cutters, and the railroad, and I myself have profaned
Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all
our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond;--a poor name from its
commonness, 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 Walden, 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 cartloads, to make sandpaper with, and I
have continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to
call it Virid 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 "Topographical
Description of the Town of Concord," by one of its citizens, in the
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical 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 place measures fourteen inches in diameter." In the spring of
'49 I talked with the man who lives nearest