Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/34

24 only the sound of our companion's breathing, or of a bug in our spruce roof. I thought I heard once, faintly, the barking of a dog far down under the mountain.

A little after one I woke and found that the moon had risen, and heard some little bird near by sing a short strain of welcome to it, song-sparrow-like. Before dawn the night-hawks commenced their sounds again, which were as good as a clock to us, telling how the night got on. At length, by three o'clock, June 3d, the signs of dawn appear, and soon we hear the robin and the Fringilla hiemalis (its prolonged jingle as it sat on the top of a spruce), the chewink, and the wood-thrush. Whether you have slept soundly or not, it is not easy to lie abed under these circumstances, and we rose at half past three, in order to see the sun rise from the top and get our breakfast there. It was still hazy, and we did not see the shadow of the mountain until it was comparatively short, nor did we get the most distant views, as of the Green and White mountains, while we were there.

We concluded to explore the whole rocky part of the mountain in this wise: to saunter slowly around it at about the height and distance from the summit, of our camp, or say half a mile, more or less, first going north, and returning by