Lake Umbagog.
1907.
August
  When the lake was at its highest stage
in spring most of the stub forests were flooded to depths
varying from two or three to six or eight feet and one
could traverse them easily and very pleasantly in a
boat or a canoe. But later in the season they were
usually free from water and in many places separated
from the lake by wide margins of grassy marsh,
light green in summer, russet brown in autumn. Still
further out there might be ranks upon ranks of dark green
bullrushes growing in shallow water and swaying rythmically to
and fro as the waves rolled in among them from the
open lake. Beyond the bullrushes, where the water deepened to
six or eight feet and the bottom was muddy or sandy, one would
be likely to find clusters of lily pads (usually those of the
common cow lily) and of the leaves of the pretty little floating
heart with perhaps a few broad rafts of (?)
gay in late August with spikes or rose red flowers. There might
be Potamogetons, also, and here and there a patch of a peculiar
kind of grass which often grows in water of considerable depth
sending up broad, flat blades, tinged slightly with salmon or purplish
which float in clustering strands on the surface. They are remarkable
for their immunity from the usual effects of submersion. Often
when the lake was white-capped have I watched the big waves
breaking directly over this grass leaving it quite dry, apparently,
or, at the most, spangled with only a few quicksilver-like
globules such as those which may be seen on the leaves of the
lupine or of the mountain holly, after heavy rain.
  By midsummer the stretches of meadow grass, and perhaps
the beds of bullrushes as well, were brightened almost everwhere
by the yellow flowers of the loosestrife, by the creamy white
ones of the arrow head, and by the pale, slightly greenish, white