YELLOWSTONE LAKE 137 



I have said that the lake is mysterious. Its 

 watershed does not account for its volume or 

 depth. It has changed its outlet twice, first flow- 

 ing one way to the Atlantic, then to the Pacific, 

 and now again to the Atlantic. It is subject to 

 strange storms, for which its winds do not suffi- 

 ciently account. At times there passes over it a 

 strange moaning sound that no one has ever been 

 able to explain. Lightning strikes its surface from 

 a clear sky. Is this a traveler's tale? I tell you 

 true, that, more than once, the levin bolt has 

 proven fatal when not a cloud was to be seen. In 

 1885, one of the members of a Government sur- 

 veying party was so stricken and killed. 



Its water seems like other water. It dimples in 

 the wind, sparkles in the breeze. Its waves caress 

 the shore with the same vague whisperings that 

 other waters have, and yet, at the last, there is 

 something austere about it; something chill, 

 remote, inhuman. You feel about it a threat; 

 a something sinister; menacing. You would 

 never trust it, nor love it, as you would the Italian 

 lakes or the waters of lower altitudes. Its scenery 



