The water is now tepid in the morning to the hands (may have been a day or two), as I slip my hands down the paddle. Hear the wood pewee, the warm weather sound. As I was returning over the meadow this side of the Island, I saw the snout of a mud turtle above the surface . . .

  P.M.—To Cedar Swamp via Assabet . . .

  There is a surprising change since I last passed up the Assabet; the fields are now clothed with so dark and rich a green, and the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, and red maple keys are seen at a distance against the tender green of birches and other trees, tingeing them . . .