Thoreau writes in his journal:
Observed the Nuphar advena, yellow water-lily, in blossom; also the Laurus Benzoin, or fever-bush, spice-wood, near William Wheeler’s in Lincoln, resembling the witch-hazel . . . As I looked today from Mt. Tabor in Lincoln to the Waltham hill, I saw the same deceptive slope, the near hill melting into the further inseparably, indistinguishably.