Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/202

188 many words) since the use of water rights is a fruitful source of contention between such neighbors, the word has acquired this secondary sense. My friends are my rivals on the Concord in the primitive sense of the word. There is no strife between us respecting the use of the stream. The Concord offers many privileges, but none to quarrel about. It is a peaceful, not a brawling stream. Bailey, I find, has it, &quot;Rival [Rivalis L.  qui juxta eundem rivum pascit].&quot;

Jan. 16, 1859. To Walden, and thence via Cassandra ponds to Fair Haven, and down river. As we go southwestward through the Cassandra hollows toward the declining sun, they look successively, both by their form and color, like burnished silver shields in the midst of which we walked, looking toward the sun. The whole surface of the snow, the country over, and of the ice, as yesterday, is rough, as if composed of hailstones half melted together.

The snow which three quarters conceals the Cassandra in these ponds, and every twig and trunk and blade of withered sedge, is cased with ice, and accordingly, as I have said, when you go facing the sun, the hollows look like glittering shields set round with brilliants. That bent sedge in the midst of the shield, each particular blade of it, being married to an icy wire, twenty