Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/196

186 The veiny-leaved hawk-weed out. A large swelling pasture hill with hickories left for shade, and cattle now under them. The bark is rubbed smooth and red with their hides. Pleasant to go over the hills, for there most air is stirring, but you must look out for bulls in the pastures. Saw one here reclining in the shade amid the cows. His short sanguineous horns betrayed him, and we gave him a wide berth, for they are not to be reasoned with. On our right is Acton, on our left is Stow, and forward, Boxboro. Thus King Richard sailed the Ægean, and passed kingdoms on his right and left. We are on one of the breezy hills that make the western horizon from Concord, from which we see our familiar Concord hills much changed and reduced in height and breadth. We are in a country very different from Concord, of swelling hills and long vales on the bounds of these three towns, more up-countryish. It requires considerable skill in crossing a country to avoid the houses and too cultivated parts, somewhat of the engineer's or gunner's skill so to pass a house (if you must go near it through high grass), pass the enemy's lines where houses are thick, as to make a hill or wood screen you, to shut every window with an apple-tree, for that route which most avoids the houses is not only the one in which you will be least molested, but it is by far