September 8, 2025 • 27 mins
20 - Chapter 15. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
Walden, series of 18 essays by Henry David Thoreau, published in 1854. An important contribution to New England Transcendentalism, the book was a record of Thoreau’s experiment in simple living on the northern shore of Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts (1845–47). Walden is viewed not only as a philosophical treatise on labour, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism but also as an influential piece of nature writing. It is considered Thoreau’s masterwork.
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This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox dot
o r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by
Henry David Thoro, Chapter fifteen, Winter Animals. When the ponds
(00:27):
were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter
roots to many points, but new views from their surfaces
of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's
Pond after it was covered with snow, though I had
often paddled about and skated over it, it was so
unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of
(00:49):
nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln Hills rose up around
me at the extremity of a snowy plain, and which
I did not remember to have stood before. And the fishermen,
at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about
with their wolfish dogs, passed for seilers or eskimox or
(01:13):
in misty weather, loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did
not know whether they were giants or pigmies. I took
this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in
the evening traveling in no road and passing no house.
Between my own hut and the lecture room in Goose Pond,
(01:34):
which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt
and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none
could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden being
like the rest, usually bare of snow, or with only
shallow and interrupted drifts on It was my yard where
I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two
(01:55):
feet deep on a level elsewhere, and the villagers were
confined to their streets. There, far from the village street,
and except at very long intervals from the jingle of
sleigh bells, I slid and skated as in a vast
moose yard, well trodden overhung by oak woods and solemn pines,
(02:17):
bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. For sounds.
In winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard
the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl, indefinitely
far such a sound as the frozen earth would yield
if struck with a suitable plectrum. The very lingua vernacula
(02:42):
of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me. At last,
though I never saw the bird while it was making it.
I seldom opened my door in a winter evening without
hearing it. Hoo hoo, hoo, hoo, whoo sounded sonorously, and
(03:05):
the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do
or sometimes who who? Only one night in the beginning
of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock,
I was startled by the loud honking of a goose,
(03:26):
and stepped to the door. Heard the sound of their
wings like a tempest in the woods, as they flew
low over my house. They passed over the pond toward
fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their
commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly,
(03:47):
an unmistakable cat owl from very near me, with the
most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any
inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose,
use as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder
from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume
(04:10):
of voice in a native and boohoo him out of
concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the citadel
at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you
think I am ever caught napping at such an hour,
and that I have not got lungs and alarnics as
(04:31):
well as yourself. Woo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo. It
was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard,
And yet if you had a discriminating year, there were
in it the elements of a concord, such as these
planes never saw nor heard. I also heard the whooping
(04:54):
of the ice in the pond, my great bedfellow in
that part of concord, as if it were restless in
its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency,
and had dreams. Or I was waked by the cracking
of the ground by the frost, as if some one
had driven a team against my door, and in the
(05:17):
morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter
of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the
snow crust in moonlight nights in search of a partridge
or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs,
(05:38):
as if laboring with some anxiety or seeking expression, struggling
for light, and to be dogs outright and run freely
in the streets. For if we take the ages into
our account, may there not be a civilization going on
among brutes as well as men. They seemed to me
(06:01):
to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defense,
awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window,
attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me,
and then retreated. Usually the red squirrel Siurius Hodsonius waked
(06:28):
me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up
and down the sides of the house, as if sent
out of the woods for this purpose. In the course
of the winter, I threw out half a bushel of
ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on
to the snow crust by my door, and was amused
by watching the motions of the various animals which were
(06:49):
baited by it. In the twilight and the night. The
rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal all day long.
The red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much
entertainment by their maneuvers. One would approach at first warily
through the shrub oaks, running over the snow crust by
(07:09):
fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind.
Now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and
waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his trotters, as
if it were for a wager. And now as many
paces that way, but never getting on more than half
(07:30):
a rod at a time, and then suddenly pausing with
a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all
the eyes in the universe were eyed on him. For
all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most
solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as
(07:51):
those of a dancing girl, wasting more time and delay
and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance.
I never saw one walk. And then suddenly, before you
could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top
of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and
chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquising and talking to all the
(08:16):
universe at the same time, for no reason that I
could ever detect, or he himself was aware of. I
suspect at length he would reach the corn and selecting
a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain triggonymmetrical
way to the topmost stick of my wood pile before
(08:37):
my window, where he looked me in the face, and
there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear,
from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously, and throwing
the half naked cobs about, till at length he grew
more dainty still, and played with his food, tasting only
(08:57):
the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was
held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipping from
his careless grasp, and fell to the ground when he
would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty,
as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind
not made up whether to get it again or a
(09:20):
new one, or be off now thinking of corn, then
listening to hear what was in the wind. So the
little impudent fellow would waste many an year in a forenoon,
till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one considerably
bigger than himself, and skillfully balancing it, he would set
(09:44):
out with it to the woods like a tiger with
a buffalo, by the same zig zag course and frequent pauses,
scratching along with it as if it were too heavy
for him, and falling all the while making its fall
a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to
put it through at any rate a singularly frivolous and
(10:10):
whimsical fellow, And so he would get off with it
to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top
of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and
I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods
in various directions. At length the jays arrive, whose discordant
screams were heard long before, as they were warily making
(10:34):
their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in
a stealthy and sneaking manner, they flit from tree to tree,
nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the
squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough,
they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which
(10:54):
is too big for their throats and chokes them, And
after great labor, they discorge it and spend an hour
in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with
their bills. They were manifestly thieves and I had not
much respect for them. But the squirrels, though at first shy,
(11:15):
went to work as if they were taking what was
their own. Meanwhile, also came the chickadees in flocks, which,
picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to
the nearest twig, and, placing them under their claws, hammered
away at them with their little bills as if it
(11:35):
were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently
reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these
tit mice came daily to pick a dinner out of
my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint, flitting,
lisping notes like the tinkling of icicles in the grass,
(11:57):
or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely,
in spring like days, a wiry summery phoebe from the
wood side. They were so familiar that at length one
alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying
in and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once
(12:21):
had a sparrow a light upon my shoulder for a
moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and
I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
than I should have been by any epaulet I could
have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be
quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe when that
(12:44):
was the nearest way, when the ground was not yet
quite covered. And again near the end of winter, when
the snow was melted. On my south hill side and
about my woodpile, the partridges came out of the woods
morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk
in the woods, the partridge bursts away on whirring wings,
(13:09):
jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on
high which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust.
For this brave bird is not to be scared by winter.
It is frequently covered up by drifts, and it is
said sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow,
(13:33):
where it remains concealed for a day or two. I
used to start them in the open land, also where
they had come out of the woods at sunset, to
bud the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every
evening to particular trees where the cunning sportsman lies in
(13:54):
wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer.
Thus not a little I am glad that the partridge
gets fed at any rate. It is nature's own bird
which lives on buds and diet drink. In dark winter
mornings or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a
(14:19):
pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry
and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase,
and the note of the hunting horn at intervals, proving
that man was in the rear. The woods ring again,
and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open
(14:41):
level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their actaeon
and perhaps at evening, I see the hunters returning with
a single brush, trailing from their sleigh for a trophy,
seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox
would rem in the bosom of the frozen earth, he
(15:02):
would be safe, or if be would run in a
straight line away, no foxhound could overtake him. But having
left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and
listen till they come up. And when he runs he
circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however,
(15:24):
he will run upon a wall many rods, and then
leap off far to one side, and he appears to
know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter
told me that he once saw fox pursued by hounds,
burst out onto walden, when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to
(15:46):
the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here
they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves
would pass my door and circle round my house and
yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by
a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them
(16:08):
from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon
the recent trail of a fox. For a wise hound
will forsake everything else for this. One day a man
came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his
hound that made a large track and had been hunting
for a week by himself. But I fear that he
(16:30):
was not the wiser for all I told him, for
every time I attempted to answer his questions, he interrupted
me by asking, what do you do here? He had
lost a dog but found a man one old hunter
who has a dry tongue, who used to come to
bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest,
(16:52):
and at such times looked in upon me, told me
that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon
and went out for a crew ruse in Walden Wood,
and as he walked the Wayland road, he heard the
cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped
the wall into the road, and as quick as thought
(17:13):
leaped the other wall out of the road, and his
swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came
an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit,
hunting on their own accord, and disappeared again in the woods.
Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the
(17:33):
thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of
the hounds far over toward fair Haven, still pursuing the fox,
and on they came their hounding cry, which made all
the woods ring, sounding nearer and nearer, now from well Meadow,
now from the Baker farm. For a long time he
(17:55):
stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to
a hunter's ear, When suddenly the fox appeared, threading the
solemn isles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was
concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves. Swift and
still keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind, and
(18:20):
leaping upon a rock amid the woods. He sat erect
and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a
moment compassion restrained the latter's arm, But that was a
short lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought,
his piece was leveled, and whang, the fox, rolling over
(18:43):
the rock, lay dead on the ground. The hunter still
kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on
they came, and now the near woods resounded through all
their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length, the old
hound burst into view, with muzzle to the ground and
(19:05):
snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to
the rock. But spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased
her hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked
round and round him in silence, And one by one
her pups arrived and, like their mother, were sobered into
(19:29):
silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and
stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They
waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed
the brush awhile and at length turned off into the
woods again. That evening a Western squire came to the
Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told
(19:53):
how for a week they had been hunting on their
own account from Western woods. The Concord hunter told him
what he knew and offered him the skin, but the
other declined it and departed. He did not find his
hounds that night, but the next day learned that they
had crossed the river and put up at a farm
house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they
(20:16):
took their departure early in the morning. The hunter who
told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used
to hunt bears on fair Haven ledges and exchange their
skins for rum in Concord village, who told him even
that he had seen a moose there nothing had a
(20:36):
famous foxhound named Burgoyne. He pronounced it Bogeen, which my
informant used to borrow in the wast book of an
old trader of this town who was also a captain,
town clerk and representative, I find the following entry January
(20:59):
eighteentheventeen forty two forty three John Melvin credited by one
gray fox zero two three. They are not now found here,
And in his ledger February seventh, seventeen forty three, Hesekiah
Stratton has credit by one half a cat skin zero
(21:26):
one four plus of course a wild cat, for Stratton
was a sergeant in the Old French War, and would
not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit
is given for deer skins also, and they were daily sold.
(21:47):
One man still preserves the horns of the last deer
that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told
me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle
was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew.
Here I remember well one gaunt nimrod who would catch
up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain
(22:08):
on it, Wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me,
than any hunting horn. At midnight when there was a moon,
I sometimes met with hounds in my path, prowling about
the woods, which would skulk out of my way as
if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I
(22:32):
had passed squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store
of nuts. There were scores of pitch pines around my house,
from one to four inches in diameter, which had been
gnawed by mice the previous winter, a Norwegian winter for them,
for the snow lay long and deep, and they were
obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with
(22:55):
their other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flewishing
at midsummer, and many of them had grown afoot, though
completely girdled. But after another winter such were, without exception dead.
It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be
allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round
(23:19):
instead of up and down it. But perhaps it is
necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont
to grow up densely. The hares Lepus americanus were very familiar.
One had her form under my house all winter, separated
from me only by the flooring, and she startled me
(23:41):
each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir, thump, thump, thump,
striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry.
They used to come round my door at dusk to
nibble the potato pairings which I had thrown out, and
were so nearly the color of the ground that they
could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight
(24:04):
I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless
under my window. When I opened my door in the
evening off they would go with a squeak in a
bounce near at hand. They only excited my pity. One
evening one sat by my door two paces from me,
at first, trembling with fear yet unwilling to move. A
(24:29):
poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and
sharp nose, scant tail, and slender paws. It looked as
if nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods,
but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared
(24:51):
young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step and
lo away its gud with an elastic spring over the
snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length,
and soon put the forest between me and itself, the
wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of nature.
(25:19):
Not without reason was its slenderness, such then was its
nature Lepis levipis light foot. Methinks, what is a country
without rabbits and partridges. They are among the most simple
(25:39):
and indigenous animal products, ancient and venerable families known to antiquity,
as to modern times of the very hue and substance
of nature nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,
and to one another. It is either winged or it
(26:00):
is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen
a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away,
only unnatural one as much to be expected as rustling leaves.
The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive,
like true natives of the soil. Whatever revolutions occur. If
(26:25):
the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which
spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous
than ever. That must be a poor country, indeed, that
does not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both,
and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or
(26:47):
rabbit walk beset with twiggy fences and horse hair snares,
which some cowboy tends. End of Chapter fifteen
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox dot
o r G. This reading by Gordon mackenzie Walden by
Henry David Thoro, Chapter fifteen, Winter Animals. When the ponds
(00:27):
were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter
roots to many points, but new views from their surfaces
of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's
Pond after it was covered with snow, though I had
often paddled about and skated over it, it was so
unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of
(00:49):
nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln Hills rose up around
me at the extremity of a snowy plain, and which
I did not remember to have stood before. And the fishermen,
at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about
with their wolfish dogs, passed for seilers or eskimox or
(01:13):
in misty weather, loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did
not know whether they were giants or pigmies. I took
this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in
the evening traveling in no road and passing no house.
Between my own hut and the lecture room in Goose Pond,
(01:34):
which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt
and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none
could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden being
like the rest, usually bare of snow, or with only
shallow and interrupted drifts on It was my yard where
I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two
(01:55):
feet deep on a level elsewhere, and the villagers were
confined to their streets. There, far from the village street,
and except at very long intervals from the jingle of
sleigh bells, I slid and skated as in a vast
moose yard, well trodden overhung by oak woods and solemn pines,
(02:17):
bent down with snow or bristling with icicles. For sounds.
In winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard
the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl, indefinitely
far such a sound as the frozen earth would yield
if struck with a suitable plectrum. The very lingua vernacula
(02:42):
of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me. At last,
though I never saw the bird while it was making it.
I seldom opened my door in a winter evening without
hearing it. Hoo hoo, hoo, hoo, whoo sounded sonorously, and
(03:05):
the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do
or sometimes who who? Only one night in the beginning
of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock,
I was startled by the loud honking of a goose,
(03:26):
and stepped to the door. Heard the sound of their
wings like a tempest in the woods, as they flew
low over my house. They passed over the pond toward
fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their
commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly,
(03:47):
an unmistakable cat owl from very near me, with the
most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any
inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose,
use as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder
from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume
(04:10):
of voice in a native and boohoo him out of
concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the citadel
at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you
think I am ever caught napping at such an hour,
and that I have not got lungs and alarnics as
(04:31):
well as yourself. Woo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo. It
was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard,
And yet if you had a discriminating year, there were
in it the elements of a concord, such as these
planes never saw nor heard. I also heard the whooping
(04:54):
of the ice in the pond, my great bedfellow in
that part of concord, as if it were restless in
its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency,
and had dreams. Or I was waked by the cracking
of the ground by the frost, as if some one
had driven a team against my door, and in the
(05:17):
morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter
of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the
snow crust in moonlight nights in search of a partridge
or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs,
(05:38):
as if laboring with some anxiety or seeking expression, struggling
for light, and to be dogs outright and run freely
in the streets. For if we take the ages into
our account, may there not be a civilization going on
among brutes as well as men. They seemed to me
(06:01):
to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defense,
awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window,
attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me,
and then retreated. Usually the red squirrel Siurius Hodsonius waked
(06:28):
me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up
and down the sides of the house, as if sent
out of the woods for this purpose. In the course
of the winter, I threw out half a bushel of
ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on
to the snow crust by my door, and was amused
by watching the motions of the various animals which were
(06:49):
baited by it. In the twilight and the night. The
rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal all day long.
The red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much
entertainment by their maneuvers. One would approach at first warily
through the shrub oaks, running over the snow crust by
(07:09):
fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind.
Now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and
waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his trotters, as
if it were for a wager. And now as many
paces that way, but never getting on more than half
(07:30):
a rod at a time, and then suddenly pausing with
a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all
the eyes in the universe were eyed on him. For
all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most
solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as
(07:51):
those of a dancing girl, wasting more time and delay
and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance.
I never saw one walk. And then suddenly, before you
could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top
of a young pitch pine, winding up his clock and
chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquising and talking to all the
(08:16):
universe at the same time, for no reason that I
could ever detect, or he himself was aware of. I
suspect at length he would reach the corn and selecting
a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain triggonymmetrical
way to the topmost stick of my wood pile before
(08:37):
my window, where he looked me in the face, and
there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear,
from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously, and throwing
the half naked cobs about, till at length he grew
more dainty still, and played with his food, tasting only
(08:57):
the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was
held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipping from
his careless grasp, and fell to the ground when he
would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty,
as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind
not made up whether to get it again or a
(09:20):
new one, or be off now thinking of corn, then
listening to hear what was in the wind. So the
little impudent fellow would waste many an year in a forenoon,
till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one considerably
bigger than himself, and skillfully balancing it, he would set
(09:44):
out with it to the woods like a tiger with
a buffalo, by the same zig zag course and frequent pauses,
scratching along with it as if it were too heavy
for him, and falling all the while making its fall
a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to
put it through at any rate a singularly frivolous and
(10:10):
whimsical fellow, And so he would get off with it
to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top
of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and
I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods
in various directions. At length the jays arrive, whose discordant
screams were heard long before, as they were warily making
(10:34):
their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in
a stealthy and sneaking manner, they flit from tree to tree,
nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the
squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough,
they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which
(10:54):
is too big for their throats and chokes them, And
after great labor, they discorge it and spend an hour
in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with
their bills. They were manifestly thieves and I had not
much respect for them. But the squirrels, though at first shy,
(11:15):
went to work as if they were taking what was
their own. Meanwhile, also came the chickadees in flocks, which,
picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to
the nearest twig, and, placing them under their claws, hammered
away at them with their little bills as if it
(11:35):
were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently
reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these
tit mice came daily to pick a dinner out of
my woodpile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint, flitting,
lisping notes like the tinkling of icicles in the grass,
(11:57):
or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely,
in spring like days, a wiry summery phoebe from the
wood side. They were so familiar that at length one
alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying
in and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once
(12:21):
had a sparrow a light upon my shoulder for a
moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and
I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
than I should have been by any epaulet I could
have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be
quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe when that
(12:44):
was the nearest way, when the ground was not yet
quite covered. And again near the end of winter, when
the snow was melted. On my south hill side and
about my woodpile, the partridges came out of the woods
morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk
in the woods, the partridge bursts away on whirring wings,
(13:09):
jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on
high which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust.
For this brave bird is not to be scared by winter.
It is frequently covered up by drifts, and it is
said sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow,
(13:33):
where it remains concealed for a day or two. I
used to start them in the open land, also where
they had come out of the woods at sunset, to
bud the wild apple trees. They will come regularly every
evening to particular trees where the cunning sportsman lies in
(13:54):
wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer.
Thus not a little I am glad that the partridge
gets fed at any rate. It is nature's own bird
which lives on buds and diet drink. In dark winter
mornings or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a
(14:19):
pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry
and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase,
and the note of the hunting horn at intervals, proving
that man was in the rear. The woods ring again,
and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open
(14:41):
level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their actaeon
and perhaps at evening, I see the hunters returning with
a single brush, trailing from their sleigh for a trophy,
seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox
would rem in the bosom of the frozen earth, he
(15:02):
would be safe, or if be would run in a
straight line away, no foxhound could overtake him. But having
left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and
listen till they come up. And when he runs he
circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however,
(15:24):
he will run upon a wall many rods, and then
leap off far to one side, and he appears to
know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter
told me that he once saw fox pursued by hounds,
burst out onto walden, when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to
(15:46):
the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here
they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves
would pass my door and circle round my house and
yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by
a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them
(16:08):
from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon
the recent trail of a fox. For a wise hound
will forsake everything else for this. One day a man
came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his
hound that made a large track and had been hunting
for a week by himself. But I fear that he
(16:30):
was not the wiser for all I told him, for
every time I attempted to answer his questions, he interrupted
me by asking, what do you do here? He had
lost a dog but found a man one old hunter
who has a dry tongue, who used to come to
bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest,
(16:52):
and at such times looked in upon me, told me
that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon
and went out for a crew ruse in Walden Wood,
and as he walked the Wayland road, he heard the
cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped
the wall into the road, and as quick as thought
(17:13):
leaped the other wall out of the road, and his
swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came
an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit,
hunting on their own accord, and disappeared again in the woods.
Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the
(17:33):
thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of
the hounds far over toward fair Haven, still pursuing the fox,
and on they came their hounding cry, which made all
the woods ring, sounding nearer and nearer, now from well Meadow,
now from the Baker farm. For a long time he
(17:55):
stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to
a hunter's ear, When suddenly the fox appeared, threading the
solemn isles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was
concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves. Swift and
still keeping the round, leaving his pursuers far behind, and
(18:20):
leaping upon a rock amid the woods. He sat erect
and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a
moment compassion restrained the latter's arm, But that was a
short lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought,
his piece was leveled, and whang, the fox, rolling over
(18:43):
the rock, lay dead on the ground. The hunter still
kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on
they came, and now the near woods resounded through all
their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length, the old
hound burst into view, with muzzle to the ground and
(19:05):
snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to
the rock. But spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased
her hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked
round and round him in silence, And one by one
her pups arrived and, like their mother, were sobered into
(19:29):
silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and
stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They
waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed
the brush awhile and at length turned off into the
woods again. That evening a Western squire came to the
Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told
(19:53):
how for a week they had been hunting on their
own account from Western woods. The Concord hunter told him
what he knew and offered him the skin, but the
other declined it and departed. He did not find his
hounds that night, but the next day learned that they
had crossed the river and put up at a farm
house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they
(20:16):
took their departure early in the morning. The hunter who
told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used
to hunt bears on fair Haven ledges and exchange their
skins for rum in Concord village, who told him even
that he had seen a moose there nothing had a
(20:36):
famous foxhound named Burgoyne. He pronounced it Bogeen, which my
informant used to borrow in the wast book of an
old trader of this town who was also a captain,
town clerk and representative, I find the following entry January
(20:59):
eighteentheventeen forty two forty three John Melvin credited by one
gray fox zero two three. They are not now found here,
And in his ledger February seventh, seventeen forty three, Hesekiah
Stratton has credit by one half a cat skin zero
(21:26):
one four plus of course a wild cat, for Stratton
was a sergeant in the Old French War, and would
not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit
is given for deer skins also, and they were daily sold.
(21:47):
One man still preserves the horns of the last deer
that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told
me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle
was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew.
Here I remember well one gaunt nimrod who would catch
up a leaf by the roadside and play a strain
(22:08):
on it, Wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me,
than any hunting horn. At midnight when there was a moon,
I sometimes met with hounds in my path, prowling about
the woods, which would skulk out of my way as
if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I
(22:32):
had passed squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store
of nuts. There were scores of pitch pines around my house,
from one to four inches in diameter, which had been
gnawed by mice the previous winter, a Norwegian winter for them,
for the snow lay long and deep, and they were
obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with
(22:55):
their other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flewishing
at midsummer, and many of them had grown afoot, though
completely girdled. But after another winter such were, without exception dead.
It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be
allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round
(23:19):
instead of up and down it. But perhaps it is
necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont
to grow up densely. The hares Lepus americanus were very familiar.
One had her form under my house all winter, separated
from me only by the flooring, and she startled me
(23:41):
each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir, thump, thump, thump,
striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry.
They used to come round my door at dusk to
nibble the potato pairings which I had thrown out, and
were so nearly the color of the ground that they
could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight
(24:04):
I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless
under my window. When I opened my door in the
evening off they would go with a squeak in a
bounce near at hand. They only excited my pity. One
evening one sat by my door two paces from me,
at first, trembling with fear yet unwilling to move. A
(24:29):
poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and
sharp nose, scant tail, and slender paws. It looked as
if nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods,
but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared
(24:51):
young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step and
lo away its gud with an elastic spring over the
snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length,
and soon put the forest between me and itself, the
wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of nature.
(25:19):
Not without reason was its slenderness, such then was its
nature Lepis levipis light foot. Methinks, what is a country
without rabbits and partridges. They are among the most simple
(25:39):
and indigenous animal products, ancient and venerable families known to antiquity,
as to modern times of the very hue and substance
of nature nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,
and to one another. It is either winged or it
(26:00):
is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen
a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away,
only unnatural one as much to be expected as rustling leaves.
The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive,
like true natives of the soil. Whatever revolutions occur. If
(26:25):
the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which
spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous
than ever. That must be a poor country, indeed, that
does not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both,
and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or
(26:47):
rabbit walk beset with twiggy fences and horse hair snares,
which some cowboy tends. End of Chapter fifteen
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