Thoreau writes in his journal:
I can sound the swamps and meadows on the line of the new road to Bedford with a pole, as if they were water… I drink at the black and sluggish run which rises in Pedrick’s Swamp and at the clearer and cooler one at Moore’s Swamp, and, as I lie on my stomach, I am surprised at the quantity of decayed wood continually borne past . . .
