《瓦尔登湖·第九章·湖·The Ponds》第8节
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition, the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth, that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality,—Saffron Walden, for instance,—one might suppose that it was called originally Walled-in Pond.
注释摘要
这一段里，梭罗其实在处理一个典型的“谜”——为什么瓦尔登湖的岸边铺着这么整齐一层光滑的白色圆石，像是人铺的。他不直接给出现代地质学的答案，而是先记录了镇上流传的印第安传说：据说远古时在这里的一座山丘上，印第安人正在举行一种被早期殖民者称为“pow-wow”的仪式或集会，山丘高耸入天，就像现在湖水深陷入地一样。按着故事的说法，他们满口亵渎的话——但梭罗立刻插…