February 23

9 A. M. - To Fair Haven Pond, up river. A still warmer day. The snow is so solid that it still bears me, though we have had several warm suns on it. It is melting gradually under the sun.

In the morning I make but little impression in it. As it melts, it acquires a rough but regularly waved surface. It is inspiriting to feel the increased heat of the sun reflected from the snow. There is a slight mist above the fields through which the crowing of cocks sounds springlike.

At 2 P. M. the thermometer is 47°. Whenever it is near 40 there is a speedy softening of the snow.I read in the papers that the ocean is frozen - not to bear or walk on safely - or has been lately, on the back side of Cape Cod; at the Highland Light, one mile out from the shore. A phenomenon which,it is said, the oldest have not witnessed before. (1856)

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Melvin tells me that he saw shiners while fishing in Walden yesterday. The ice-men worked till midnight night before last at Loring's Pond, to improve the short cold.

I think myself in a wilder country, and a little nearer to primitive times, when I read in old books which spell the word savages with an l (salvages), like John Smith's "General Historie of Virginia, etc.," reminding me of the derivation of the word from sylva. There is some of the wild wood and its bristling branches still left in their language. The savages they described are really salvages, men of the woods. (1853)

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