I drink at the black and sluggish run

July 6 . 

I can sound the swamps and meadows on the line of the new road to Bedford with a pole, as if they were water. 

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet, where the surface is dry. 

Cut a straight sapling, an inch or more in (diameter]; sharpen and peel it that it may go down with the least obstruction.

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp?

I drink at the black and sluggish run which rises in Pedrick's Swamp and at the clearer and cooler one at Moore's Swamp, and, as I lie on my stomach, I am surprised at the quantity of decayed wood continually borne past. 

It is this process which, carried on for ages, formed this accumulation of soil. The outlets of a valley being obstructed, the decayed wood is no longer carried off but deposited near where it grew.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1853

It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet. See July 1, 1853 (“ In the swamp or meadow this side of Pedrick's . . . I ran a pole down nine feet”) Compare February 1, 1858 ("Measured Gowing's Swamp . . . the pole went hard at first, but broke through a crust of roots and sphagnum at about three feet beneath the surface, and I then easily pushed the pole down just twenty feet.")

The larch grows in both Moore's and Pedrick’s swamps. See February 1, 1858 ("There were three or four larch trees three feet high or more between these holes, or over exactly the same water")

The new road to Bedford. See October 8, 1853 ("Surveying on the new Bedford road to-day,"); October 11, 1853 ("While surveying the Bedford road to-day."); July 1, 1853 (“I am surveying the Bedford road these days, and have no time for my Journal.”); May 3, 1859 ('Surveying the Bedford road.")