Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/99

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SUMMER.
89

What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called? Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures. It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrook Place, the Old Lime Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also, the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark's. Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south. There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman's Pond on its edge. What shall the whole be called? The old Carlisle road which runs through the middle of it is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many or most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are, for the most part, concealed by birches and pines. These orchards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples. It is a paradise for walkers in the fall. There are also boundless huckleberry pastures, as well as many blueberry swamps. Shall we call it the Easterbrook Country? It would make a princely estate in Europe. Yet it is owned