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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-Walden by Henry David Thoreau


goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very
inconsiderable compared with its breadth.

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the
bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors
which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general
regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than
almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one
instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more
than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could
calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction
beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to
speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like
this, but the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all
inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the
shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a
distant prom-ontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the
pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the
opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and
gorge deep water and channel.

When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and
put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed this
remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number indicating
the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a
rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my
surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of
greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth,
notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of the
pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were got
by measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but
this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of
a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of
mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill
is not highest at its narrowest part.

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed
to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so
that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not
only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent
pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar.
Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In
proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with its
length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the
basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the
character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements
enough to make out a formula for all cases.

In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, at the
deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a surface and
the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which
contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor
any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very
near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached
each other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point

a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest
length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to be within one
hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had
inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of
course, a stream running through, or an island in the pond, would
make the problem much more complicated.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or
the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular
results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is
vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature,
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-Walden by Henry David Thoreau



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