190 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The typical 
mountain- 
lake. 
The pond. 
artificial growths. A sheet of clear water in a 
framing of green hills, dotted by many lovely 
islands and colored by as bright a sky as ever 
arched the earth, it seems to epitomize all lake 
loveliness, and to exemplify the luxuriant splen- 
dor of untrammelled nature. The breath of the 
wilderness is still there, though man has begun 
to tenant its shores in places. The wind that 
blows over it is pure, and those timbered 
heights above it are, as yet, comparatively un- 
trodden. Its beauties seem as bright as when 
the earth and the firmament and the sea were 
first created ; and to-day, as for many centuries, 
a light seems to come out of the west at sun- 
set, tingeing the green-garmented shoulders of 
Black Mountain with a golden hue unknown 
to the Alps and the Pyrenees—a hue belong- 
ing to the primitive world, put on by nature 
for its own splendor and its own pleasure. 
A pond or a pool is often little more than a 
diminutive lake, filling a depression and pro- 
duced by an embankment after the fashion 
of almost all still waters. It differs from a 
mountain-lake by usually having low-lying 
shores without tall timber or rocks, a sandy 
or muddy bottom, and perhaps, flags, rushes, 
and rough grasses growing along its shallow 
