Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/379

Rh kind of disease which I have often observed on them.—I wonder if any Roman emperor ever indulged in such a luxury as this—of walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head. What were the baths of Caracalla to this? Now we traverse a long watery plain some two feet deep; now we descend into a dark river valley, where the bottom is lost sight of arid the water rises to our armpits; now we go over a hard iron pan; now we stoop and go under a low bough of the Salix nigra; now we slump into soft mud, amid the pads of the Nymphœa odorata, at this hour shut. On this road there is no other traveler to turn out for. We finally return to the dry land and recline in the shade of an apple-tree on a bank overlooking the meadow. When I first came out of the water the short, wiry grass was burning hot to my feet, and my skin was soon parched and dry in the sun.—I still hear the bobolink. The stones lying in the sun on this hillside, where the grass has been cut, are as hot to the hand as an egg just boiled, and very uncomfortable to hold; so do they absorb the heat. Every hour do we expect a thunder-shower to cool the air, but none conies. We say they are gone down the river.

St. John's-wort is perhaps the prevailing flower now. Many fields are very yellow with