Dutch Flat—A Retrospect 169 
fisherman’s blood inme. Inimagination one 
could see the trout lurking in those glassy 
green pools and eddies. In that day, the fish 
here were peculiarly coy and difficult to take 
and such, it is said, is still the case. 
Stretching along the shore of the lake is a 
remnant of what was the most majestic forest 
onearth. It was to any other what the gorge 
of the Colorado is to cafions. The cafion 
remains, but the forest dwindles. Well, it is 
something to have known such a forest, to 
have spent some small part of your life in 
such vast halls of the world. Yet there were 
those living there, perhaps, upon whom it 
made as little impression as upon the ants, 
who cannot see the trees for their very size. 
No longer are the mountains so high, but 
the trees appear as tall and as stately as of old. 
A splendid fringe of cedar, fir and pine skirts 
the lake, and here I pass, as in some garden 
of the gods, the brief time at my disposal. 
The lake is very lovely—one of the beautiful 
lakes of America,—the water is marvellously 
clear, the mountains rugged and snow-covered. 
Through the great columnar trunks one has 
charming vistas, all the more ethereal because 
of the altitude. The poetaster might rhap- 
sodise and call it the lake of the sky; for one 
