WATER BORDERS 



ment other than an icy trickle from some 

 high, belated clot of snow. Oftenest the 

 stream drops bodily from the bleak bowl 

 of some alpine lake ; sometimes breaks out 

 of a hillside as a spring where the ear can 

 trace it under the rubble of loose stones to 

 the neighborhood of some blind pool. But 

 that leaves the lakes to be accounted for. 



The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade 

 green, placid, unwinking, also unfathom- 

 able. Whatever goes on under the high 

 and stony brows is guessed at. It is always 

 a favorite local tradition that one or an- 

 other of the blind lakes is bottomless. Of- 

 ten they lie in such deep cairns of broken 

 boulders that one never gets quite to them, 

 or gets away unhurt. One such drops be- 

 low the plunging slope that the Kearsarge 

 trail winds over, perilously, nearing the pass. 

 It lies still and wickedly green in its sharp- 

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