STILL WATERS 



179 



vellous complexity, and if one tries to trace 

 the cause or give the reason for this or that 

 affect, he soon finds himself involved in many 

 contradictions. The determination of the local 

 hue of lake water is, to start with, a difficult 

 task. It may be almost any color, taking its 

 hue from the vegetable or mineral matter car- 

 ried in solution. Draining a marshy or heavily 

 wooded district, it may be brownish or amber- 

 hued, as in many of the smaller Adirondack 

 and Scotch lakes ; if the shores are rocky, or 

 the country drained is hard and mountainous, 

 the hue of the water will be blue or bluish- 

 green, as one may see in the Alpine lakes, par- 

 ticularly Lake Geneva. Again, in the Yellow- 

 stone region the lakes are often of varied and 

 brilliant hues owing to the earth or minerals in 

 the water. 



But the actual color of the water when taken 

 up in a vessel, and the apparent color lying in 

 the bed of the lake, are two different things. 

 Local color, especially if it be delicate, is in- 

 fluenced, changed, oftentimes utterly destroyed 

 so far as our vision is concerned, by back- 

 grounds and reflections. For instance, the bed 

 or bottom of a lake, where the water is shallow, 

 may decide the apparent hue, just as the green 



