Thoreau writes in his journal:
Thomas Fuller relates that “in Merionethshire, in Wales, there are high mountains, whose hanging tops come so close together that shepherds on the tops of several hills may audibly talk together, yet will it be a day’s journey for their bodies to meet, so vast is the hollowness of the valleys betwixt them.” As much may be said in a moral sense of our intercourse in the plains, for, though we may audibly converse together, yet is there so vast a gulf of hollowness between that we are actually many days’ journey from a veritable communication.
