i; 4 MV LIFE 



but under t lie intense climatic changes of this region, weather* 



ing has in most cases quite obliterated it. 



Having read Miss Bird's nccount of Lake Tahoe as being 

 superbly beautiful, I determined to see it, and if the country 

 looked promising to stay a few days. I accordingly left by 

 the train on Monday morning, stayed the night at a very poor 

 hotel at Truckec, and took the stage at seven the next morning 

 for the lake, a distance of fourteen miles. The road was up 

 a very picturesque, winding valley, very precipitous and rocky 

 on the east side, more sloping on the west. The bottom of 

 the valley seemed to be granite or gneiss, but the craggy 

 heights on the east side were all of lava, sometimes scoriaceous, 

 sometimes almost columnar basalt, and occasionally laminated. 

 Sometimes there were precipices, peaks, and detached pillars 

 of scoriaceous lava, two hundred to five hundred feet high, 

 of strange forms and highly picturesque. This valley had a 

 rapid stream, which was the outlet of the lake. It had once 

 probably been full of lava and ashes, when the lake would 

 have been much deeper and larger. This was indicated by 

 stratified deposits in places at different levels, and by layers 

 of rock full of rounded pebbles. The lake itself, though a 

 fine piece of water, did not come up to my expectations. The 

 mountains around were bare and monotonous, rather higher 

 and snow-flecked on the west, but the highest peaks visible not 

 more than ten thousand feet. On the west side there was most 

 wood, but the mountains were not more than two thousand 

 to four thousand feet above the lake, and therefore not high 

 in proportion to its size, which is thirty-five miles long and 

 fifteen miles wide. It is really less striking than Loch Lomond 

 or Windermere, where the mountains are more picturesque 

 and more precipitous ; while it can bear no comparison with the 

 sub-alpine Swiss and Italian lakes. 



I strolled about the shores of the lake, and into some of 

 the woods near, but all was very dusty and arid, and I found 

 only a few flowers already familiar to me. The hotel looked 

 clean and comfortable, and I had a very good dinner there, 

 and in the afternoon sat on the verandah admiring the view 

 over the lake, it being too hot and dry to go out. I was glad 



