ll surface ripples that
nearly always exist on ordinary streams and lakes are visible.

The various angles of vision present the most charming scene. Yonder the
lake looks like a quiet mass of molten silver; yonder, where the rays of
the sun meet you, is a gorgeous array of crimson and gold; then there is
a range of purest emerald, deepening into blue-black as the scene
stretches away from you, bespangled in the distance by the rising
white-caps. This, fringed with the green of the deep pine-forests that
skirt the mountains, and capped with the everlasting snows, made radiant
with the flood of sunlight, furnishes a picture of incomparable beauty,
and worthy of a master's brush.

But here by you, right at your feet, is one of the most pleasing
features of all: so still in the morning quietness, and such air-like
purity withal. You think you can reach down and pick up those shining
pebbles, and yet they are twenty, thirty, or forty feet beneath you. And
that boat or skiff seems to be poised in mid-air. You can count the
small indentures and nail-heads in the very keel.

You cringe with fear as your boat glides towards that huge boulder, as
large as a church, thinking surely your vessel will be wrecked; but
there is no danger, as the rock is many feet beneath you. The
transparency of the water makes the danger seem so near.

How often have I wished this place--mountains, lake, and all--could be
the place of one of the grand Eastern camp-meetings! This bracing air,
this unique spot, this wonderful lake, this rich, healthful aroma of
deep pine-forests, this grand scenery, all combined, make it one of the
best of places for religious summer resort.

Yonder is a quaint spot, a veritable Gibraltar on a small scale, a
lonely, rocky island in the centre of Emerald Bay. Some foolish man
built a tomb in the solid rock on its summit, intending to be buried
there, where the marks of decay would come slowly over his grave, and
where he might sleep undisturbed amid the incomparable grandeur that
would have surrounded him. His sarcophagus and all were prepared, but
the treacherous billows of the lake, that occasionally foam and roar
with fury, seized him, and he lies buried at the bottom,--no man knows
where, for no one going down ever comes up again from these waters.

It was first an artless, genial party of three of us that drank in the
poetry of the scenery around Lake Tahoe. The "elect lady," whose
presence has ever been an i