Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/145

Rh being bared to the fiery particles in the air, the building explodes. The powder on the floor of the bared press house was six inches deep in some places, and the crowd were thoughtlessly going into it. A few windows were broken thirty or forty rods off. Timber six inches square and eighteen feet long was thrown a dozen rods over a hill eighty feet high at least. Thirty rods was about the limit of fragments. The drying house, in which was a fire, was perhaps twenty-five rods distant and escaped. Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees where undoubtedly their bodies had been and left them. Put the different buildings thirty rods apart, and then but one will blow up at a time.

Jan. 7, 1854. To Ministerial Swamp. I went to these woods partly to hear an owl, but did not. Now that I have left them nearly a mile behind, I hear one distinctly, hoorer hoo. Strange that we should hear this sound so often, yet so rarely see the bird, oftenest at twilight. It has a singular prominence as a sound. It is a sound which the wood or the horizon makes.

Jan. 7, 1855. Cloudy and misty. On opening the door I feel a very warm southwesterly wind contrasting with the cooler air of the house, and find it unexpectedly wet in the street.