9 January 1854 – 15 January 1854

P. M.— To Heywood’s Pond with Tap- pan. We were looking for rainbow-tinted clouds, small whiffs of vapor which form and disperse, this clear, cold afternoon, when we saw to our surprise a star, about half past three or earlier, a mere round white dot. Is the winter then such a twilight? I wonder if the savages ever detected one by day. This was about an hour and a half before sunset. T. said he had lost fowls by the owls. They selected the roosters and took off their heads and ate their insides. Found many snow- fleas, apparently frozen, on the snow.’ T. has a singularly elastic step. He will run through the snow, lifting his knees like a child who enjoys the - motion. When he slumped once through to water and called my attention to it, with an indescribable flash of his eye, he reminded me forcibly of Hawthorne’s litile son Julian. He uses the greatest economy in specch of any man I know. Speaks low, beside, and without em- phasis; in monosyllables. I cannot guess what the word was for a long time. His language is different from the Algonquin. Jan.10. I cannot thaw out to life the snow-fleas which yesterday covered the snow like pepper, in a frozen state. How much food they must afford to small birds, — chickadees, etc. The snow went off remarkably fast in the thaw before the 7th, but it is still deep, lying light in swamps and sprout-lands, somewhat hollow beneath. The thaw produced those yellowish pools in hollows in the fields, where water never stands else, and now per- haps there is a bottom of snow; and now for the last three days they have afforded good sliding. You got a start by running over the snow-crust. In one place, where the depression was inconsiderable but more ex- tensive than usual, I found that it was mere glazed snow on which I slid, it having rapidly frozen dry. The sportsmen chose the late thaw to go after quails. They come out at such times to pick the horse-dung in the roads, and can be traced thence to their haunts. When we were walking last evening, Tappan admired the soft rippling of the Assabet under Tarbell’s bank. One could have lain all night under the oaks there lis- tening to it. Westward forty rods, the surface of the stream reflected a silvery whiteness, but gradually dark- ened thence eastward, till beneath us it was almost quite black. What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day, from the aspect it wore when you were at its base, or generally, as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance. With Tappan, his speech is frequently so frugal and reserved, in monosyllables not fairly uttered clear of his thought, that I doubt if he did not cough merely, or let it pass for such, instead of asking what he said or meant, for fear it might turn out that he coughed merely.

Thick fog in the night. The trees, ac- cordingly, now white with hoary frost, just as the frost forms on a man’s beard or about a horse’s mouth. P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. The north side of all stubble, weeds, and trees, and the whole forest is covered with a hoar frost a quarter to a half inch deep. It is easily shaken off. The air is still full of mist. No snow has fallen, but, as it were, the vapor has been caught by the trees like a cobweb. The trees are bright hoary forms, the ghosts of trees. In fact, the warm breath of the earth is frozen on its beard. Closely examined or at a distance, it is just like the sheaf-like forms of vegetation and the diverg- ing crystals on the window-panes. The stiff stubble has a soft, drooping look; now feels the wind and waves like plumes. It is a chevaux-de-frise or armor of frost- needles, exclusively on the north side, with a myriad diverging feathery points, sheaves of darts. It covers the width of the twigs, but only a narrow and irregular strip on the larger limbs and trunk; also on the edges and protuberances of the leaves still turned toward the northern foe. Even birds’ nests have a white beard. — , Birches, especially, are the trees for these hoar frosts and also for glazes. They are so thickly twigged and of such graceful forms and attitudes. I can distinguish a birch now further off than ever. As I stand by its north side (Hubbard’s Grove), almost the whole forest is concealed by the hoar frost. It is as if the mist had been caught on an invisible net spread in the air. Yet the white is tinged with the ground color of reddish oak leaves and even green pine-needles. You look up. and behold the hugest pine, as tall as a steeple, all frosted over. Nature is now gone into her winter palace. The trunks of the pines, greened with lichens, are now more distinct by contrast. Even the pale yel- lowish green of lichens speaks to us at this season, reminding us of summer. The humblest weed is indescribably beautiful, of purest white and richest form. The hogweed becomes a fairy’s wand. The blue-curls, rising from bare gray sand, is perhaps particularly beautiful. Every part of the plant is concealed. Its expression is changed or greatly enriched by this exaggeration or thickening of the mere linear original. It is an exquisitely delicate frost plant, trembling like swan’s-down. As if Nature had sprinkled her breast with down this cold season. The character of each tree and weed is rendered with spirit, — the pine plumes and the cedar spires. All this you see going from north to south; but, going the other way (perchance ?), you might not be struck with the aspect of the woods. Now (or a little earlier, just after the thaw, when it began to freeze) is the time to go out and see the ice organ-pipes. I walked the whole length of the Cliffs, just at the base of the rocks, for this purpose; but [it] is rather late; no water is flowing now. These great organ-pipes are formed where the water flows over triangular . «2 projections of the rocks. The perpen- sh dicularity of the icicles contrasts strangely x with the various angles of the rocks. It is now quite cold, and in many places only a sharp spear of purest crystal, which does not reach the rock below, is left to tell of the water that has flowed here. These solid, pipe-like icicles commonly unite by their sides and form rows of pillars or irregu- lar colonnades, run together, between which here and there you can insert your hand, revealing a peculiar internal structure, as of successive great drops. Thus when the water has fallen perpendicularly. And be- hind these perpendicular pipes, or congregated pillars, or colonnades run together, are formed the prettiest little aisles or triangular alcoves with lichen-clad sides. Then the ice spreads out in a thin crust over the rock, with an uneven surface as of bubbling water, and you can see the rock indistinctly through ice three or four inches thick, and so on, by successive steps or shelves down the rock. Saw where a squirrel, probably a red one, had ap- parently brought up to the mouth of his hole quite a quantity of walnuts and eaten them there. IT observe that the surface of the snow under the se hemlocks is now very thickly strewn with cones and scales. Was it done by the thaw? Or did the partridges help do it? The ends of the lower limbs are still under the snow. at At night a fine freezing rain begins, which turns the frost to a glaze.

A.M.—lIt still rains very finely. The ground, etc., is covered with a black glaze, wet and shiny like water, like an invisible armor, a quarter of an inch or more thick. Every winter the surface of the pond to the depth of a foot becomes solid so as to support the heaviest teams, and anon the snow covers it to an equal depth, so that it is not to be distinguished from a level field. Thus, like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it too closes its eyelids and becomes partially dormant.' Coarse, hard rain from time to time to-day, with much mist, —thaw and rain. The cocks crow, for the ground begins to be bare in spots. Walking, or wading, very bad.

Still warm and thawing, springlike; no freezing in the night, though high winds. Are we not apt to have high winds after rain ? P. M.— To Walden, Goose Pond, and Britton’s Camp. The landscape is now patches of bare ground and snow; much running water with the sun reflected from it. Lately all was clean, dry, and tight. Now, though clear and bright, all is moist and dissolving. The cocks crow with new brag. Even the telegraph harp seems to sound as with a vernal sound, heralding a new year. Those pools of greenish-yellow water with a snow bot- tom, in hollows in fields and woods, are now much increased, ready to be frozen. These thawing days must have been to some extent lichen days too. I did not examine. The stumps are now richly bronzed with greenish mealy lichens. A rich scale is slowly creeping over and covering them. How the red coxcomb lichens contrast with the snow! Some of these days I have heard Therien’s axe more than a mile distinctly. He has already carried it home and ground it twice, hav- ing dulled .it on a stone. Walden is covered with pud- dles, in which you see a dim reflection of the trees and hills, as in weak soapsuds, on the grayish or light-colored snow-ice. I saw yesterday my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white. The water on Walden has been flowing into the holes cut for pickerel and others. It has carried with it, ap- parently from the surface, a sort of dust that collects on the surface, which produces a dirty or grayish-brown foam. It lies sometimes several feet wide, quite motion- less on the surface of the shallow water above the ice, and is very agreeably and richly figured, like the hide of some strange beast——how cheap these colors in nature !— parts of it very much like the fur of rabbits, the tips of their tails. I stooped to pick it up once or twice, — now like bowels overlying one another, now like tripe, now like flames, 2. e. in form, with the free, bold touch of Nature. One would not believe that the impurities which thus color the foam could be arranged in such pleasing forms. Give any material, and Nature begins to work it up into pleasing forms. In the deep hollow this side of Britton’s Camp, I heard a singular buzzing sound from the ground, ex- actly like that of a large fly or bee in a spider’s web. I kneeled down, and with pains traced it to a small bare spot as big as my hand, amid the snow, and searched there amid the grass stubble for several minutes, putting the grass aside with my fingers, till, when I got nearest to the spot, not knowing but I might be stung, I used a stick. The sound was incessant, like that of a large fly in agony, but though it made my ears ache, and I had my stick directly on the spot, I could find neither prey nor oppressor. At length I found that I interrupted or changed the tone with my stick, and so traced it to a few spires of dead grass oc- cupying about a quarter of an inch in diameter and standing in the melted snow water. When I bent these one side it produced a duller and baser tone. It was a sound issuing from the earth, and as I stooped over it, the thought came over me that it might be the first puling infantine cry of an earthquake, which would ere long ingulf me. There was no bubble in the water. Perhaps it was air confined under the frozen ground, now expanded by the thaw, and escaping upward through the water by a hollow grass stem. I left it after ten minutes, buzzing as loudly as at first. Could hear it more than a rod. Schoolcraft says, ‘‘'The present name is derived from the Dutch, who called it Roode Eylant (Red Island), from the autumnal color of its myectage: ” (Coll. R. I. Hist. Soc. vol. iii.)

If the writers of the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself to them, and leave those of the Augustan age to dust and the book- worms. Was surprised this morning to see how much the river was swollen by the rain of day before yesterday. The channel, or river itself, is still covered with ice, but the meadows are broad sheets of dark-blue water, con- trasting with the white patches of snow still left. The ice on the river rises with the water in this case, while it remains attached to the bottom by one edge on each side, and is heaved up and cracked in consequence along the line of the willows, thus: — 2 aan Fm All the water on the meadows lies over ice and snow. The other day I started a partridge from a sumach bush with berries on it, and to-day from a barberry bush with berries. I suspect that they eat the berries of both. Cato makes the vineyard of first importance to a farm; second, a well-watered garden; third, a willow plantation (salictum); fourth, an olive-yard (oletum); fifth, a meadow or grass ground (? ) (pratum); sixth, a orain-field ortillage (? ) (campus frumentarius) ; seventh, a copsewood (?) for fuel (?) (silva caedua) (Varro speaks of planting and cultivating this); eighth, an t arbustum (Columella says it is a plantation of elms, etc., for vines to rest on) (arbustum); ninth, a wood that yields mast (glandaria silva). He says elsewhere the arbustum yields ligna et virgae. He says: “In earliest manhood the master of a family must study to plant his ground; as for building he must think a long time about it (diw cogitare); he must not think about planting, but do it. When he gets to be thirty-six years old, then let him build, if he has his ground planted. So build, that the villa may not have to seek the farm, nor the farm the villa.” This contains sound advice, as pertinent now as ever. As for farming implements, I do not see but the Romans had as great a variety as are now exhibited in the Crystal Palace. The master of a family must have in his rustic villa ‘*cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat cari- tatem exspectare, et rei et virtuti, et gloriae erit ” (an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue and glory). This, too, to make farmers prudent and thrifty: ‘‘ Cogitato quotannis tempestates magnas venire, et oleam dejicere solere’’ (Consider that great tempests come every year, and the olive is wont to fall). The steward must not lend seed for sowing, etc. He may have two or three families of whom to borrow and to whom to lend and no more. I just had a coat come home from the tailor’s. Ah me! Who am I that should wear this coat? It was fitted upon one of the devil’s angels about my size. Of what use that measuring of me if he did not mea- sure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang it on. This is not the figure that I cut. This is the figure the tailor cuts. That pre- sumptuous and impertinent fashion whispered in his ear, so that he heard no word of mine. As if I had said, “ Not my will, O Fashion, but thine be done.” We worship not the Parcee, nor the Graces, but Fash- ion, offspring of Proteus and Vanessa, of Whim and Vanity. She spins and weaves and cuts with the au- thority of the Fates. Oh, with what delight I could thrust a spear through her vitals or squash her under my heel! Every village might well keep constantly em- ployed a score of knights to rid it of this monster. It changes men into bears or monkeys with a single wave of its wand. The head monkey at Paris, Count D’Or- say, put on the traveller’s cap, and now all the monkeys in the world do the same thing. He merely takes the breadth of my shoulders and proceeds to fit the gar- ment to Puck, or some other grotesque devil of his acquaintance to whom he has sold himself. I despair of ever getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press, @ la cider-mill, that their old notions might be thoroughly squeezed out of them, and it would be some time be- fore. they would get upon their legs again. ‘Then un- doubtedly there would be some one with a maggot in his head, offspring of an egg deposited there nobody knows when; fire does not kill these things, and you would have lost your labor.’ I could cry, if it were not for laughing. “If you have done one thing late, you will do all your work late,”’ says Cato to the farmer. They raised a sallow (salicem) to tie vines with. Ground subject to fogs is called nebulosus. They made a cheap wine of poor grapes, called wnum praeliganeum, for the labor- ers to drink. (So our farmers give their men rum or weak cider.) | Oxen “ must have muzzles [or little baskets, jiscel- las],? that they may not go in quest of grass (ne herbam sectentur) when they plow.”