d it answers; all the
colors of the rainbow gather upon it, receiving in their turn
affectionate recognition. Man has meddled with it little more
than with the sky; the primeval spell is upon it, the hush,
the solitude of the old gods. The breath of powers invisible,
awful, rouse it to the sublimity of untamable energy; again,
hush it into deepest slumber. Night and day it is guarded,
seemingly, by wonder-working forces known to man only through
the uncertain medium of the imagination. The traveler who
looks upon Lake Tahoe for a few hours only learns little of
its rich variety. Like all things wild and shy, it must be
approached slowly and with patience.

But our sketch must not include more than the hasty glimpses
of a day. The stage conveyed us directly to the wharf, which
we reached at ten o'clock, having accomplished our fourteen
mile ride up the valley in about two and a half hours. As we
boarded the little steamer awaiting us and looked over its
side into the water below, the immediate shock of surprise
cannot be well described. Every pebble at the bottom showed as
distinctly as if held in the open hand. We had all seen clear
water before, but, as a severe but unscholarly sufferer once
said of his rheumatism, "never such as _these_." The
day being perfect, no breeze stirring, and the Lake without
a ripple, the gravelly bottom continued visible when we had
steamed out to a point where the water reached a depth of
eighty feet. Two gentlemen on board who had made a leisurely
trip round the world and were now on their way home to
England, remarked that they had seen but one sheet of water
(a lake in Japan) of anything like equal transparency. It is
presumed that they had not visited Green Lake, Colorado.

Our course lay along the California shore, toward its southern
extremity, the steamer stopping at several points for exchange
of mail. These stopping places are all summer-resorts, where
the guests, snugly housed at the base of the mountain-range,
divide the time between lounging or rambling under the shadow
of the tall pines and angling for the famous Tahoe trout in
the brightness of the open Lake. All looked inviting, but we
were not wholly enchanted until,
gliding past many a snowy peak, we suddenly changed course
and put into Emerald Bay. This little bay,