Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/139

Rh also give him a sense of ownership in his favorite walks. There can be no doubt that he planned to have a study on the opposite shore of the pond from that chosen by Thoreau. No place about Concord was more wildly picturesque and, at the same time, accessible for Thoreau's experiment than Walden. Distant about a mile and a half from the town centre, it is reached by a gradual incline, bordered by brambles, wayside flowers and trees of varied kinds. As the visitor looks across the meadow he recalls that Thoreau found a shorter path to the homes of his friends, a by-road traversing the fields and entering the main road just below Emerson's house and nearly opposite the "Wayside," then called "The Hillside," and at that time the home of Alcott. With the keen eye of a resident poet, Thoreau has described Walden Pond, the peculiar clarity and varying tints, blue, green, and gray, with the arching hills, from forty to one hundred and fifty feet high.

The legends, no less than the scenery, attracted him thither. This region, now consecrate to peaceful memories, was earlier a place of uncanny and gruesome traditions. It was an Indian haunt and Thoreau asserts that the pond may have been named from an Indian squaw, Walden, who escaped after a frightful pow-wow where the