Three miles from Truckee, Nevada County, California, lies one of the
fairest and most picturesque lakes in all the Sierra. Above, and on
either side, are lofty mountains, with castellated granite crests, while
below, at the mouth of the lake, a grassy, meadowy valley widens out and
extends almost to Truckee. The body of water is three miles long, one
and a half miles wide, and four hundred and eighty-three feet in depth.

Tourists and picnic parties annually flock to its shores, and Bierstadt
has made it the subject of one of his finest, grandest paintings. In
summer, its willowy thickets, its groves of tamarack and forests of
pine, are the favorite haunts and nesting places of the quail and
grouse. Beautiful, speckled mountain trout plentifully abound in its
crystalline waters. A rippling breeze usually wimples and dimples its
laughing surface, but in calmer moods it reflects, as in a polished
mirror, the lofty, overhanging mountains, with every stately pine,
bounding rivulet; blossoming shrub, waving fern, and--high above all,
on the right--the clinging, thread-like line of the snow-sheds of the
Central Pacific. When the railroad was being constructed, three thousand
people dwelt on its shores; the surrounding forests resounded with the
music of axes and saws, and the terrific blasts exploded in the lofty,
o'ershadowing cliffs, filled the canyons with reverberating thunders,
and hurled huge bowlders high in the air over the lake's quivering
bosom.

In winter it is almost as popular a pleasure resort as during the
summer. The jingling of sleighbells, and the shouts and laughter of
skating parties, can be heard almost constantly. The lake forms the
grandest skating park on the Pacific Coast.

Yet this same Donner Lake was the scene of one of the most thrilling,
heart-rending tragedies ever recorded in California history. Interwoven
with the very name of the lake are memories of a tale of destitution,
loneliness, and despair, which borders on the incredible. It is a tale
that has been repeated in many a miner's cabin, by many a hunter's
campfire, and in many a frontiersman's home, and everywhere it has been
listened to with bated breath.

The pioneers of a new country are deserving of a niche in the country's
history. The pioneers who became martyrs to the cause of the development
of an almost unknown land, deserve to have a place in the hearts of
its inhabitants. The far-famed Donner Party were, in a peculiar