last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some
think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would
say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants,
except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly
belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush,
nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and
potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a
bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like
the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the
water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts,
where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the
leaves, which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a
bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter.

We have one other pond just like this, White Pond in Nine Acre Corner,
about two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am acquainted with
most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this center, I do not know a
third of this pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance
have drunk at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its
water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps
on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, Walden
Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle
spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with
myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still
such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and
fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the
world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how may unremembered
nations' literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain?[66] or what
nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first