Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/73

Rh surfaces, more securely than you could walk there perhaps on any other material. You can pursue swiftly the most intricate and winding path, even leaping obstacles that suddenly present themselves.

H H was fishing a quarter of a mile this side of Hubbard's Bridge. He had caught a pickerel twenty-six inches long,  a very handsome fish. Dark brown above, yellow and brown on the side, becoming at length almost a clear golden yellow low down, with a white abdomen and reddish fins. They are handsome fellows, both the pikes in the water and the tigers in the jungle. What tragedies are enacted under this dumb, icy platform in the fields! What an anxious and adventurous life the small fishes must live, liable at any moment to be swallowed by the larger. No fish of moderate size can go stealing along safely in any part of the stream but suddenly there may come rushing out from this jungle or that, some greedy monster and gulp him down. Parent fishes, if they care for their offspring, how can they trust them abroad out of their sight.

It takes so many fishes a week to fill the maw of this large one. And the large ones! H H and company are lying in wait for them.

Dec. 29, 1859. Very cold morning. About