Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/166

156, all the ranunculus at least, had drifted and lodged against them. Their stems are so nearly horizontal near the mud and water that you can clamber along on them over the water many rods. It is one of the wildest features in our scenery. There is scarcely any firm footing on the ground except where a musk-rat has made a heap of clam shells. Picture the river at a low stage of the water, the pads, shriveled in the sun, hanging from the dark brown stems of the button-bushes which are all shaggy with masses of dark rootlets, an impenetrable thicket, and a stake-driver or Ardea minor sluggishly winging his way up the stream.

The breams nests, like large, deep milk pans, are left high and dry on the shore. They are not only deepened within, but have raised edges. In some places they are as close together as they can be, with each a great bream in it whose waving fins and tail are tipped with a sort of phosphorescent luminousness.

We sailed all the way back from Baker Farm, though the wind blew very nearly at right angles with the river much of the way. By sitting on one side of the boat we made its edge serve for a keel, so that it would mind the helm. The dog swam for long distances behind us. Each time we passed under the lee of a wood, we were becalmed, and then met with contrary and flawy