PANQUITCH LAKE— MODERN BASALT. 199 



A few miles southeast of this basaltic field is a picturesque lakelet, 

 occupying a depression in the plateau, called the Panquitch Lake — a sheet 

 of water about a mile and a half in length and a mile in width It is a 

 delightful locality, both for the tourist and the geologist. Around it stand 

 forests of pine (P. ponclerosa), while farther up the slopes of the plateau are 

 thickets of spruce and aspen. Broad and stately ravines, bearing sparkling 

 streams from the higher levels open near its margin, and the traveler, weary 

 of the desert wastes below, revels in the rank vegetation which clothes their 

 rocky slopes. Through the brief summer the longest and richest grass 

 carpets their floors and every knoll and sloping bank is a parterre of the 

 gayest flowers. 



Around this lake the volcanic strata are seen resting upon the sedi- 

 mentaries; in short, it is a locality where the eruptive rocks have diminished 

 in thickness, and they gradually disappear southward and southeastward. 

 To the west and southwest they continue still in immense bulk, with greater 

 variety and stronger contrasts than in the northern part of the plateau. 

 Here the oldest eruptives are trachytic. They are finely displayed upon 

 the northern side of the lake, where they form low cliffs or steep slopes, and 

 an abrupt canon entering from the northwest still more clearly lays them 

 open to view. As we approach the lake from the northeast (the usual 

 route), the instant we reach the summit of the hill from which we first see 

 the expanse of its surface, a most conspicuous object upon the south side of 

 the lake immediately attracts the attention. It is a flood of basalt so recent 

 and so fresh in its aspect that we wonder why there is no record or tradi- 

 tion of its eruption. It is dense black, and its ominous shade is rendered 

 still more conspicuous by the lively colors of the sedimentary rocks and 

 soil around it. We see at first only the end of a grand coulee, but beyond 

 it rise rough, angry knolls and mountainous waves as black as midnight, 

 telling of more beyond. Riding to the base of it, we find it to be com- 

 posed of numberless fragments, ranging in size from a cubic foot to many 

 cubic yards, piled up in strange confusion. A continuous bed or sheet is 

 nowhere to be seen ; nothing but this coarse rubble, looking' like an exag- 

 gerated pile of anthracite dumped from the cars at the terminus of a great 

 coal railway. A close inspection confirms this impression of recency 



