Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/107

Rh may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly. No thicket will seem so unexplored now that I know a stake and stones may be found in it.

In these respects those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness you are treading is after all some villager's familiar wood-lot, from which his ancestors have sledded their fuel for a generation or two, or some widow's thirds, minutely described in some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan too, and of which the old boundmarks may be found every forty rods, if you will search.

What a history this Concord wilderness, which I affect so much, may have had! How many old deeds describe it, some particular wild spot, how it passed from Cole to Robinson, and Robinson to Jones, and from Jones finally to Smith in course of years. Some had cut it over three times during their lives, built walls and made a pasture of it perchance, and some burned it and sowed it with rye.

In the Maine woods you are not reminded of these things. 'Tis true the map informs you that you stand on land granted by the State to such an academy, or on Bingham's purchase; but these names do not impose on you, for you