rtion that in those strangely
magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the
large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may see every
pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk
of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own
experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I
have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four
feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their
gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at
that distance in the open air.

As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the
snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong
upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in
that august presence.

Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to
year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests
no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea
in the clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at
times, at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded
by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand
feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose
belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!

Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and
suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger.
I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who
roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones
with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and
ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These
are the gentry that named the Lake.

People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake"--"Limpid Water"--"Falling
Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger
tribe,--and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these
practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was
any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an
extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have
camped with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part
in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped th