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 Paiute--possibly it is Digger. Iam 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 Paiutes as well. It isn't worthwhile, 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 them steal cattle; I have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance.
But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the lakes.
Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the center, by the state geologist's measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand feet high, but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is--a good honest lie.
The lake is a mile wide here and maintains at>out that width from this point to its northern extremity--which is distant sixteen miles, from here to its southern extremity--say fifteen miles--it is not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in the distance, the Alps.
Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in winter.
It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here--an old soldier of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his campaigns in these sunny lands.** Colonel J. Heron Foster, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As these sheets are being prepared for the press Iam pained to learn of his decease shortly after his return home-- M.T.