34 Recreations of a Sportsman 



Indians were afraid to look upon it. Only 

 the medicine men of the Klamath tribes knew 

 its face. Little wonder the first white man 

 stood amazed when he climbed the peak and 

 gazed down upon the vast sheet of vivid blue 

 water a fifth of a mile below, a marvellous sap- 

 phire twenty-four square miles in extent, framed 

 by the crater walls walls of a great volcano. 

 There are many legends among the Modocs and 

 Klamaths regarding the wonderful azure lake 

 and I am indebted to Mr. M. B. Kerr of the 

 Sierra Club, who was a member of the original 

 surveying party of Crater Lake, for the follow- 

 ing which he obtained from a Klamath Indian: 



Wimawita was the pride of his family and tribe. 

 He could kill the grizzly bear and his prowess in 

 the fight was renowned even among those fierce 

 braves who controlled the entrance to the Lake of 

 the Big Medicine, where the black obsidian arrow- 

 heads are found. But the chase no longer had 

 pleasure for him and he wandered far up the slopes 

 of Shasta, where the elk and deer abound, and they 

 passed slowly by him down into the heavy growth 

 of murmuring pines, as if knowing that his mission 

 was of peace. Above was the line of perpetual 

 snow, where the tamarack was striving hard for 

 existence in the barren rock. From this great 

 height Wimawita gazed upon the lodges in the 

 prairie amongst the huge trees far below, and then, 

 suddenly descending, disappeared into the forest, ad- 



