A TALE OF THE GEAND JAEDIN 



craft ever launched on its gloomy sur- 

 face. 



"I began fishing at once, but nothing 

 stirred ; this was what one might expect 

 in water without a ripple, beneath a 

 cloudless sky; there could be no fair 

 trial under such conditions, before the 

 time of the evening rise. I made some 

 soundings, but my two lines together 

 did not fetch bottom a hundred feet 

 from the shore. The slope under water 

 is very steep, and huge fragments of 

 stone hanging there, seem ready, at a 

 touch, to plunge into the depths. It is 

 hard to describe the colour of the water ; 

 like neither the clear brown of the river 

 we fished to-day, nor the opaque black- 

 ness of the swamp rivulets ; transpar- 

 ent ink comes nearest to it. 



"No stream feeds the lake, but there 

 must be powerful springs below, for the 

 decharge flows strongly through a chan- 

 nel of boulders, with water weed moving 

 in the current like something snaky and 



154 



