Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/402

388 directions, and some of them equally distant. At the same time I had an eye for birds and whatever else might offer.

Dec. 4, 1859. Awake to winter, and snow two or three inches deep, the first of any consequence.

Dec. 5, 1853. Got my boat in. The river frozen over thinly in most places, and whitened with snow which was sprinkled on it this noon.

4 To Cliffs. Now for short days and early twilight, in which I hear the sound of wood-chopping. The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened. The partridge is budding on the apple-tree, and bursts away from the pathside. Before I got home, the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with a mellow, yellowish light equally diffused, so that it seemed much lighter around me than immediately after the sun sank behind the horizon-cloud fifteen minutes before. Apparently not till the sun had sunk thus far, did I stand in the angle of reflection.

Dec. 5, 1856. As I walk along the side of the hill, a pair of nuthatches flit by toward a walnut tree, flying low in mid course, and then ascending to the tree. I hear one's faint tut-tut or quah-quah (no doubt heard a good way off by its mate, now flown to the next