Sunset from the mountain-top.

October 19. 

October 19, 2017 6:09PM

Mr. Sanborn tells me that he looked off from Wachusett last night, and that he saw the shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon. Thought it extended as much as two diameters of the moon on to the sky, in a small cone. This was like the spectre of the Brocken. 

Harris says the crickets produce their shrilling by shuffling their wing-covers together lengthwise. I should have said it was sidewise, or transversely to the insect's length, as I looked down on it. 

You may see these crickets now everywhere in the ruts, as in the cross-road from the Turnpike to the Great Road, creeping along, or oftenest three or four together, absorbed in feeding on, i. e. sucking the juices of, a crushed companion. 

There are two broad ruts made by ox-carts loaded with muck, and a cricket has been crushed or wounded every four or five, feet in each. It is one long slaughter-house. But as often as a cart goes by, the survivors each time return quickly to their seemingly luscious feast. At least two kinds there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 19, 1857

The shadow of the mountain gradually extend itself eastward not only over the earth but finally on to the sky in the horizon.See October 20, 1854 ("Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State"); see also October 19, 1856 ("I see Wachusett. How little unevenness and elevation is required for Nature's effects!"); October 19, 1854 ("With a glass you can see vessels in Boston Harbor from the summit.....")