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

Rh very gracefully. I followed examining his tracks. There was about a quarter of an inch of recent snow above the crust, but for the most part he broke in two or three inches. I slumped from one to three feet. He went off at an easy gliding pace such as he might keep up for a long time, pretty direct after his first turning.

Feb. 10, 1857. Burton, the traveler, quotes an Arab saying, &quot;Voyaging is a victory,&quot; which he refers to the feeling of independence on over coming the difficulties and dangers of the desert. But I think that commonly voyaging is a defeat, a rout to which the traveler is compelled by want of valor. The traveler's peculiar valor is commonly a bill of exchange. He is at home anywhere but where he was born and bred, petitioning some Sir Joseph Banks or other representative of a Geographical Society to avail himself of his restlessness, and if not receiving a favorable answer, necessarily going off some where next morning. It is a prevalent disease which attacks Americans especially, both men and women, the opposite to nostalgia. Yet it does not differ much from nostalgia. I read the story of one voyager round the world, who it seemed to me, having started, had no other object but to get home again, only she took the longest way round. The traveler, fitted out by