There have been caught in Walden pickerel,one weighing seven pounds,-to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity,which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him,-perch and pouts,some of each weighing over two pounds,shiners,chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus),a very few breams,and a couple of eels,one weighing four pounds,-I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame,and these are the only eels I have heard of here;-also,I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long,with silvery sides and a greenish back,somewhat dace-like in its character,which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable.Nevertheless,this pond is not very fertile in fish.Its pickerel,though not abundant,are its chief boast.I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds:a long and shallow one,steel-colored,most like those caught in the river;a bright golden kind,with greenish reflections and remarkably deep,which is the most common here;and another,golden-colored,and shaped like the last,but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots,intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones,very much like a trout.The specific name reticulatus would not apply to this;it should be guttatus rather.These are all very firm fish,and weigh more than their size promises.The shiners,pouts,and perch also,and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond,are much cleaner,handsomer,and firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds,as the water is purer,and they can easily be distinguished from them.Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them.There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises,and a few mussels in it;muskrats and minks leave their traces about it,and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it.Sometimes,when I pushed off my boat in the morning,I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night.Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall,the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor)skim over it,and the peetweets (Totanus macularius)“teeter”along its stony shores all summer.I have sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the water;but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull,like Fair Haven.At most,it tolerates one annual loon.These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now.
You may see from a boat,in calm weather,near the sandy eastern shore,where the water is eight or ten feet deep,and also in some other parts of the pond,some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height,consisting of small stones less than a hen's egg in size,where all around is bare sand.At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose,and so,when the ice melted,they sank to the bottom;but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that.They are similar to those found in rivers;but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here,I know not by what fish they could be made.Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin.These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom.
The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous.I have in my mind's eye the western,indented with deep bays,the bolder northern,and the beautifully scalloped southern shore,where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between.The forest has never so good a setting,nor is so distinctly beautiful,as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water's edge;for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case,but,with its winding shore,the most natural and agreeable boundary to it.There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there,as where the axe has cleared a part,or a cultivated field abuts on it.The trees have ample room to expand on the water side,and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction.There Nature has woven a natural selvage,and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees.There are few traces of man's hand to be seen.The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.It is earth's eye;looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it,and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.