ver clean glacier pavements, where but little
moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a small
rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material
within its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries,
while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean,
enduring pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger,
may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years.

[Illustration: Tamarack and Echo Lakes]

[Illustration: Cascade Lake, Near the Automobile Bouldvard, Lake Tahoe]

[Illustration: Memorial Cross at Donner Lake]

Many striking examples of these successive processes may be seen in
the Tahoe region, as, for instance, Squaw Valley, which lies between
the spurs of Squaw Peak and Granite Chief. This was undoubtedly
scooped out by a glacier that came down from Squaw Peak and Granite
Chief. The course of the ice-sheet was down to the Truckee River.
When the glacier began to shrink it left its terminal moraine as a
dam between the basin above and the river below. In due time, as the
glacier finally receded to a mere bank of half-glacierized snow on the
upper portions of the two peaks, the basin filled up with water and
thus formed a lake. Slowly the sand and rocky debris from the peaks
filled up the lake, and in the course of time a break was made in
the moraine, so that the creek flowed over or through it and the lake
ceased to exist, while the meadow came into existence.

CHAPTER X

DONNER LAKE AND ITS TRAGIC HISTORY

Closely allied to Lake Tahoe by its near proximity, its situation on
the Emigrant Gap automobile road from Sacramento to Tahoe, and that
it is seen from Mt. Rose, Mt. Watson, and many Tahoe peaks, is Dormer
Lake,--lake of tragic memories in the early day pioneer history of
this region.

It was in 1846 that James T. Reed, of Springfield, Ill., determined to
move to California. This land of promise was then a Mexican province,
but Reed carefully and thoroughly had considered the question and
had decided that, for his family's good, it was well to emigrate. He
induced two other Illinois families to accompany him, those of George
and Jacob Donner. Thursday, April 15th, 1846, the party started, full
of high hopes for the future. The story of how they met with others
bound for California or Oregon, at Independence, Mo., journeyed
together over the plains and prairies to Fort Hall, where Lansford W.
Hastings, either in person or