t cold
water. It seemed to Dick that every minute of his wanderings
revealed to him some new and interesting sight, while on all
sides of the little valley rose the mighty mountains, their
summits in eternal snow.

A great relief was mingled with the intense interest that Dick
felt. He had been sure at first that he saw the camp fires of
the Sioux, but after the revulsion it seemed as if it were a
place never visited by man, either savage or civilized. As he
continued down the valley, he noticed narrow clefts in the
mountains opening into them from either side, but he felt sure
from the nature of the country that they could not go back far.
The clefts were four in number, and down two of them came
considerable streams of clear, cold water emptying into the main
creek.

The valley now narrowed again and Dick heard ahead a slight
humming sound which presently grew into a roar. He was puzzled
at first, but soon divined the cause. The creek, or rather
little river, much increased in volume by the tributary brooks,
made a great increase of speed in its current. Dick saw before
him a rising column of vapor and foam, and in another minute or
two stood beside a fine fall, where the little river took a sheer
drop of forty feet, then rushed foaming and boiling through a
narrow chasm, to empty about a mile farther on into a beautiful
blue lake.

Dick, standing on a high rock beside the fall, could see the lake
easily. Its blue was of a deep, splendid tint, and on every side
pines and cedars thickly clothed the narrow belt of ground
between it and the mountains. The far end seemed to back up
abruptly against a mighty range crowned with snow, but Dick felt
sure that an outlet must be there through some cleft in the
range. The lake itself was of an almost perfect crescent shape,
and Dick reckoned its length at seven miles, with a greatest
breadth, that is, at the center, of about two miles. He judged,
too, from its color and its position in a fissure that its depth
must be very great.

The surface of the lake lay two or three hundred feet lower than
the rock on which Dick was standing, and he could see its entire
expanse, rippling gently under the wind and telling only of peace
and rest. Flocks of wild fowl flew here and there, showing white
or black against the blue of its waters, and at the nearer shore
Dick thought he saw an animal like a deer drinking, but the
distance was too great to tell certainly.

He le