the Thoreau Log.
29 August 1853. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  The 25th and 26th I was surveying Tuttle’s farm. The northeast side bounds on the Mill Brook and its tributary and is very irregular . . . The eye is very much deceived when standing on the brink, and one who had only surveyed a brook so would be inclined to draw a succession of pretty regular serpentine curves. But, accurately plotted, the regularity disappears, and there are found to be many straight lines and sharp turns. I want no better proof of the inaccuracy of some maps than the regular curving meanders of the streams . . .

  Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them . . .

(Journal, 5:400-402)

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