Dry Lake

“ Little or nothing is known of the dreary solitudes beyond Lake Superior; enormous muddy ponds and marshes are succeeded by open, dry, sandy plains; then forests of hemlock and spruce arise, again swamp, bog, windfalls, and stagnant water succeed; in the course of many miles there may not be one dry spot found for a resting-place. The cold is intense in this desolate region; in winter spirits freeze into a consistency like honey ”

“ We had come out on a point extending into Apmoojenegamook, or Chamberlain Lake, west of the outlet of Mud Pond, where there was a broad, gravelly, and rocky shore, encumbered with bleached logs and trees. We were rejoiced to see such dry things in that part of the world. But at first we did not attend to dryness so much as to mud and wetness. We all three walked into the lake up to our middle to wash our clothes. ”

“ Residents of the locality say that the weather conditions have no effect upon the lake, for its rise in the seventh year takes place regardless of the fact of rain or drouth. Amos Jordan, a veteran of the civil war, who lives on a bluff overlooking the lake, says the only apparent difference between wet and dry seasons when the rise occurs is that the water appears to be colder in time of drouth. What is true of the rise of the waters is also true of their recession, for they gradually disappear regardless of the amount of rainfall in the county. ”

“ As I had frequently observed that in the dry channels of creeks traversing very level country a heavy shower in the lower part of its course often causes a strong current of water to rush up the stream-bed and leave flood marks, which would mislead a person examining them in the dry season, it seemed probable that this must be the case with the creek entering the salt lake at its south-west angle, as it might be the outlet of the lake when filled by Sturt's Creek flowing into it, though in ordinary seasons the flow of water would be into the lake ”

“ As we descend from Karimi to the basin of the Albert Edward the first thing we become conscious of is that we are treading the dry bed of a lake. We do not require a gifted geologist to tell us that. Five feet of rise to the lake would increase its extent five miles to the north and five miles to the south. Fifty feet of rise would restore the lake to its old time-honoured condition, when its waves rolled over the pebbled beach under the shadows of the forest near Mtsora. ”

“ From a bed of cattle-ploughed mud interspersed with reedy water-holes; in summer a dry and dust-swept hollow: from this, the vast natural depression had been transformed into a graceful lake, some three hundred acres in extent. On its surface pleasure boats lay at their moorings by jetties and boatsheds ”

“ If I find that the dirt there is rich enough, I shall build, across the river near Quesnelle Lake, a dam strong enough to hold back for three or six months of the year—during the dry season, in other words—the water of the lake, so that the volume which passes through the river channel will be greatly diminished. ”

“ In twenty days after the disappearance of the water, grass springs up, and produces very good hay; numbers of birds flock to the fields, and the bed of the lake then becomes a sporting ground. The disappearance of the waters, however, is by no means certain, for sometimes a whole year will elapse without the lake becoming dry, while at times it will sink and re-appear twice, or even thrice, in one year. ”

“ Probably the birds stay away during the rainy season, because the lake has no beach; but I think it probable that ducks, herons, and pelicans frequent the lake in the dry season when the water has fallen perhaps full five metres and large portions of the shore are above water. We found the water very deep everywhere, and therefore used only oars and never poles. ”

“ In many of these ancient lake-basins the draining is not yet completed, the lowest parts being still marshes or ponds of water. The Mohawk and the Connecticut flow each through a bead-roll of small lake-basins, walled around by solid rock. Through their margins the rivers for untold ages have been deepening their channels until the lake-bottoms have become dry land, and the homes of men. The Great Lakes themselves have, from a like cause, been much reduced from their former dimensions. ”

“ Springs of pure water were in abundance, trickling down the steep rugged sides of this wooded glen. The children wandered onwards, delighted with the wild picturesque path they had chosen, sometimes resting on a huge block of moss-covered stone, or on the twisted roots of some ancient grey old oak or pine, while they gazed with curiosity and interest on the lonely but lovely landscape before them. Across the lake, the dark forest shut all else from their view, rising in gradual far-off slopes, till it reached the utmost boundary of sight. ”

“ Here is the fashion in which a mountain stream gets down from the perennial pastures of the snow to its proper level and identity as an irrigating ditch. It slips stilly by the glacier scoured rim of an ice bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken ledges to another pool, gathers itself, plunges headlong on a rocky ripple slope, finds a lake again, reinforced, roars downward to a pot-hole, foams and bridles, glides a tranquil reach in some still meadow, tumbles into a sharp groove between hill flanks, curdles under the stream tangles, and so arrives at the open country and steadier going. ”

“ It is horribly mutilated and defaced. Its sides are thickly sowed with stunted trees, that bury their roots in its cracks and rents with a gripe of iron. In effect it is the barbican of the great ravine. Crouched underneath, by the shore of the lake, is a matted forest of firs and spruces, dwindled to half their usual size, grizzled with long lichens, and occupying, as if by stealth, the debatable ground between life and death. It is, in fact, more dead than alive. Deeply sunk beneath is the lake.
Hermit Lake—a little pool nestling underneath a precipice—demands a word. ”

“ Toward Fond du Lac, on the south, the horizon is the lake. South-southwestward, Black Wolf Point runs out, just over the verge, and the tops of the tall trees upon it peep up into view, like shadowy pile-work. Westward are the well-kept hospital grounds, fringed with stately elms overhanging the firm, gravelly beach, studded with ice-heaved bowlders, which extends northward to Neenah. The view to the north and northeast is delightfully hazy, being now dark with delicate fringes of forest which cap the occasional limestone promontories, and again losing itself in a watery sky-line. ”

“ The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun thrills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,—sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. ”

“ The dark line of pines that bound the opposite side of the lake is already hoary and heavy with snow, while the half-frozen lake has a deep leaden tint, which is only varied in shade by the masses of ice which shoot out in long points, forming mimic bays and peninsulas. The middle of the stream, where the current is strongest, is not yet frozen over, but runs darkly along like a river between its frozen banks. In some parts where the banks are steep and overhung with roots and shrubs, the fallen snow and water take the most fantastic forms. ”

“ A wilderness of bowlders compels the winding about of the trail, but we hear and see Five Lake Creek, roaring and dashing along, for it has a large flow of water and its course is steep and rocky. We pass through groups of willows, wild currants and alders, enter a sparsely wooded meadow and in a few moments see the first of the Five Lakes. There is but little difference in their levels, though their sizes vary considerably. The first one is the largest. Here is a log cabin and two or three boats. These are owned by the Deer Park Springs resort, and are for their fishing and hunting patrons. ”

“ Here, then, at the head of the valley, sheltered by one of the rounded hills that formed its sides, our young people erected a summer hut, somewhat after the fashion of an Indian wigwam, which was all the shelter that was requisite while the weather remained so warm. Through the opening at the gorge of this ravine they enjoyed a peep at the distant waters of the lake which terminated the vista, while they were quite removed from its unwholesome vapours. ”

“ And so the starfish arms of the little lake at my feet seemed to have plunged into this wilderness tangle only to reappear at greater distance. Like swamp-fire, it lured the imagination always on and on and on through the secret waterways of the uninhabited North. It was as though I stood on the dividing ridge between the old and the new. Through the southern haze, hull down, I thought to make out the smoke of a Great Lake freighter; from the shelter of a distant cove I was not surprised a moment later to see emerge a tiny speck whose movements betrayed it as a birch canoe. ”

“ During the spring and summer months, these men spread themselves through the trackless forests, and along the shores of nameless lakes and unknown streams, to cut the pine or oak lumber, such being the name they give to the felled stems of trees, which are then hewn, and in the winter dragged out upon the ice, where they are formed into rafts, and floated down the waters till they reach the great St. Lawrence, and are, after innumerable difficulties and casualties, finally shipped for England. ”

“ And the lake, a gem in the mountain fastness, how calm it is! There is no melody in the pines this morning, their sighing is hushed, and the lake is still, its smooth surface only dotted here and there with the widening rings made by the leaping trout. How deep it is no man knows; how cruel it has been is the subject of many a story within the experience of the whites about its shores, and legends not a few among the red men. Seductive it is in its silent beauty, and treacherous as grand. Cold and relentless as fate, “it never surrenders its dead.” ”

“ The slope up which the trail now ascends with gradual rise is covered with variegated chaparral, making a beautiful mountain carpet and cushion for the eye. To the foot and body it is entangling and annoying, placing an effectual barrier before any but the most strenuous, athletic and determined of men.
Now the white firs, with their white bark, and the red-barked yellow pines begin to appear. They accompany us all the rest of the way to the peak and lake.
Soon we cross Burton Creek, a mere creek except during the snow-melting or rain-falling time. It empties into Carnelian Bay. ”

“ Because of its somewhat widening character a small lake forms,—a heavy body of water pressing every moment more and more heavily against the culvert. When the former has swollen to a great size this latter gives way. There is a downward rush of water—a small mountain of water, no less. Bridges, culverts, houses built over the brook, houses for two blocks on either hand, are suddenly pressed against or even partially filled by water. Citizens reading their evening newspapers, or playing the accordeon or the victrola or cards or checkers or what you will, feel their houses begin to move. ”

“ The sides were most gracefully adorned with flowering shrubs, wild vines, creepers of various species, wild cherries of several kinds, hawthorns, bilberry bushes, high-bush cranberries, silver birch, poplars, oaks and pines; while in the deep ravines on either side grew trees of the largest growth, the heads of which lay on a level with their path. Wild cliffy banks, beset with huge boulders of red and grey granite and water-worn limestone, showed that it had once formed the boundary of the lake, though now it was almost a quarter of a mile in its rear. ”

“ Having refreshed themselves by bathing their hands and faces in the lake, they cheerfully renewed their wanderings, though something loath to leave the cool shade and the spring for an untrodden path among the hills and deep ravines that furrow the shores of the Rice Lake in so remarkable a manner; and often did our weary wanderers pause to look upon the wild glens and precipitous hills, where the fawn and the shy deer found safe retreats, unharmed by the rifle of the hunter, where the osprey and white-headed eagle built their nests, unheeded and unharmed. ”

“ Not seeing any signs of game, however, they steered out so as to clear the various little capes or woody points of land inclosing the numerous coves scattered along the indented shore, and struck a line for the great inlet at the head of the lake, which they now soon reached, and commenced rowing against the at first gentle and then rapid current, which here pours down from, the upper lakes, through the rocky and picturesque defiles, in the form of a magnificent river, rivalling in its size the midway portions of the Connecticut or Hudson. ”

“ At times, when the water is very high, the current will cut a new route across the low isthmus, or neck, of a peninsula, around which sweeps a long reach of the main channel, leaving the tortuous bend which it has deserted to be gradually filled up with snags, deposits of alluvium, and finally to be carpeted with a vegetable growth. In some cases, as the stream works away to the eastward or westward, it remains an inland crescent-shaped lake, numbers of which are to be found in the wilderness many miles from the parent stream. ”