Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/302

bewildering. You would think the rock you steered for was some large boulder twenty rods off, or perchance it looked like the brow of a distant spur, but a dozen steps would take you to it, and it would suddenly have sunk into the ground. Discovering this illusion, I said to my companions, "You see that boulder of a peculiar form, slanting over another. Well, that is in our course. How large do you think it is? and how far?" To my surprise, one answered, three rods, but the other said nine. I guessed four, and we all thought it about eight feet high. We could not see beyond it, and it looked like the highest point of a ridge before us. At the end of twenty-one paces, or three and a half rods, I stepped upon it less than two feet high, and I could not have distinguished it from the hundred similar ones around it, if I had not kept my eye on it all the while. It is unsafe for one to ramble over these mountains at any time, unless he is prepared to move with as much certainty as if he were solving a geometrical problem. A cloud may at any moment settle around him, and unless he has a compass and knows which way to go, he will be lost at once. One lost on the summit of these mountains should remember that if he will travel due east or west eight or nine miles, or commonly much less, he will strike a public road; or whatever direction he might