Lake Leman

“ Lake Leman, having filtered its waters, discharges them through the “blue and arrowy Rhone,” into the tideless Mediterranean, not to pass on to the vast Atlantic, but again to rise in exhalations to the clouds, and fall—Heaven knows where. The lake of Zurich has a different taste. It sends its purified waters through the Limmatt, to mingle with the Rhine, (also freed from impurities in the lake of Constance,) and thence to find its way to the great Northern Ocean—probably to visit the Thames, the Ohio, or even the Ganges, before it makes another aerial voyage to the skies. ”

“ The charming cloud-effects which hang over and about the lofty hills which environ the capital of Tasmania, recall vividly those of the Lake of Geneva, near Chillon, while the Derwent itself, reflecting the hills upon its blue and placid surface, forms another pleasing resemblance to Lake Leman. In ascending Mount Wellington, the lion of Tasmanian scenery, when we find ourselves at an elevation of about two thousand feet, it is discovered that we have reached the Old World ocean-floor. ”

“ ON the shores of Lake Leman there are many villas. For several centuries the vine-clad banks have been a favorite resting-place for visitors from many nations. English, French, Germans, Austrians, Poles, and Russians are found in the circle of strangers whose gardens fringe the lake northward from Geneva, eastward from Lausanne, and southward from Vevey, Clarens, and Montreux. Not long ago an American joined this circle. The American was a lady named Winthrop. ”

“ PILATUS ABOVE A SEA OF CLOUDS.
9 This first view, then, of the Vierwaldstättersee from the quays at Lucerne—far more than the first view of Lake Leman from the bridges of Geneva, or of Zurich from the quays of Zurich city—is dramatic in its complete and abrupt transformation, in its turning upside-down, and twisting inside-out, of all our previous conceptions of our commonplace, workaday world! The thing in a way is sensational, but sensational within the modesty of nature, and certainly to be enjoyed at least once in a lifetime, and especially if one happen to be young. ”

“ From La Dent de Morcles to La Dent du Midi what peaks have one after the other been worn down and disappeared! The great glaciers have carried far away all this early détritus, an enormous bulk the secret of which the waters of Lake Leman possibly know more than we do.
“What has taken place since then, from the time when men first appeared in these localities cannot compare with those primal convulsions; still there is enough to overwhelm the imagination of man; it is too much for their feeble dwellings to endure. ”

“ A brisk “Bise” (north wind) has chased, and still chases away, the dense clouds, piles them together on the peaks of the Alps, where they form triumphal arches, garlands, and diadems, which mount higher and ever higher, and Lausanne “la jolie” decks herself in sunshine, with bouquets of gleaming meadows, woods, and gardens, and mirrors herself in Lake Leman, which smiles in heavenly blue towards the deep blue heaven above. ”

“ Warned by their host-postmaster of a long climb of mountain separating the Rhine and Danube rivers, in a coach and six they left him for Schaffhausen and the Rhine Falls. The mountain crest gave them a sweeping view of Lake Constance when its waters looked "dark and wild" wrote Cooper, adding, "we suddenly plunged down to the banks of the Rhine and found ourselves once more before an inn-door, in Switzerland." So in the late summer of this year their second visit was made to the land of Lake Leman, whose waters are overshadowed by noble mountains; and its surface broad, tranquil, and blue. ”

“ Man there controls the "lakes" because they are but widened river-beds — compare Lake Leman and Lake Superior — scales the mountains because, by the side of the Himalayas and the Andes, they are hillocks; joins nations together by the railway, which "crosses the European world" — no bigger than one Asiatic island — and cultivates to perfection countries which would in Asia be provinces, or in America forgotten states. ”

“ No longer has the wily boatman, as he steers his lateen-sailed lochère, any excuse for telling his occasional passenger (as he used to tell James Fenimore Cooper) that the water is bottomless. Every fish that swims in it is known and every bird that floats on its broad bosom.
A lake is by no means a lazy body of water and Leman, or Lake Geneva, as it is often called, is not so much a lake as it is a swollen river. If the Rhône is an artery, the lake is a sort of aneurism; there is a current from one end to the other which keeps it constantly changing. ”

“ Reasonable enough here, but which they are fast learning to charge at inferior inns, in other parts of the country, on account of the prodigality of "shoddy" Americans.
The view of Lake Geneva, or Lake Leman, as it is called, is beautiful from Ouchy. The panorama of mountains upon the opposite shore extends as far as the eye can reach, and in the sunset they assume a variety of beautiful hues—red, blue, violet, and rose-color. We have been particularly fortunate in arriving here while the moon is near its full ”

“ There is a kind of instinct, indeed, by which men become aware of this, and shrink from the sterner features of hill scenery into the parts possessing a human interest; and thus we find the north side of the Lake Leman, from Vevay to Geneva, which is about as monotonous a bit of vine-country as any in Europe, studded with villas; while the south side, which is as exquisite a piece of scenery as is to be found in all Switzerland, possesses, we think, two. ”

“ Hobhouse went to fish—caught one. Our carriage not come; our horses, mules, &c. knocked up; ourselves fatigued; but so much the better—I shall sleep.
"The view from the highest points of to-day's journey comprised on one side the greatest part of Lake Leman; on the other, the valleys and mountain of the Canton of Fribourg, and an immense plain, with the lakes of Neuchâtel and Morat, and all which the borders of the Lake of Geneva inherit;Pg 260 we had both sides of the Jura before us in one point of view, with Alps in plenty. ”

“ Forel knows of but twenty indigenous species (of which the Féra, or Coregonus fera, is the principal) and six that have been introduced by man in the 19th century. A number of lake dwellings, of varying dates, have been found on the shores of the lake. The first steamer placed on the lake was the “Guillaume Tell,” built in 1823 at Geneva by an Englishman named Church, while in 1873 the present Compagnie générale de navigation sur le lac Léman was formed, and in 1875 constructed the first saloon steamer, the “Mont Blanc.” ”

“ The lake is about ten times as long as it is wide and is one hundred and forty-two meters deep. Just as from the end of Leman rushes the Rhône, so from the Zürich end of its lake rushes in a torrential dash the green Limmat. ”

“ In those few delicate flakes, Lemaire and Barrett seemed to feel for the first time the ever-present hostility of nature; with such a brief, exquisite touch were they first made aware of the powers against which they strove. The new waterways seemed to stretch interminably. Each time they cleared one of the deep-cut channels which linked lake with lake as regularly as a thread links beads, they looked ahead with the same question. Each time they saw the same expanse of gray water, low islets, barren shores; the country passed them changing and unchanging as a dream. ”

“ There is a quiet horror about the Great Lakes which grows as one revisits them. Fresh water has no right or call to dip over the horizon, pulling down and pushing up the hulls of big steamers; no right to tread the slow, deep-sea dance-step between wrinkled cliffs; nor to roar in on weed and sand beaches between vast headlands that run out for leagues into haze and sea-fog. Lake Superior is all the same stuff as what towns pay taxes for, but it engulfs and wrecks and drives ashore, like a fully accredited ocean—a hideous thing to find in the heart of a continent. ”

“ The color of the water near the shore is a deep green, but off soundings it has all the dark blue appearance of the ocean. The sandy shores are more abrupt than those of any body of water I have ever seen; and within a few feet of many of its innumerable bluffs, it would be impossible for a ship to anchor. It is a singular fact that the waters of this lake are much heavier than those of Huron, which are also heavier than those of Erie and Michigan. I am informed on the best authority that a loaded canoe will draw at least two inches more water in Huron than in Superior. ”

“ It is exceedingly rocky, and so full of sunken boulders and dangerous rapids, that it never could be made navigable further up than Fon du Lac, which is twenty miles from Lake Superior. The water is perfectly clear, but of a rich snuff color, owing probably to the swamps out of which it runs. It is said to rise and fall very suddenly. Its entire shores are without a solitary habitation (excepting at the trading post already mentioned) , and the scenery is picturesque, wild and romantic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a lake that was no lake; that should have been our water-way out of the bush instead of miles of expensive road; and was no more practicable than a rope ladder to the stars. For the depth of Lac Tremblant, or its fairway, were two things no man might count on. It would fall in a night to shallows a child might wade through, among bristling rocks no one had ever guessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrub on its banks,—a sweet spread of water, with never a rock to be seen. ”

“ There was, as a matter of fact, nothing to disturb its quiet. Not a fish, so far as we could discover, lived in its opalescent water, cloudy as is all glacial water. It is only good to look at, is Lyman Lake, and there are no people to look at it. ”

“ Whichever way you go—up one of the hills or along a track near Lake Wakatipu, you are always surrounded by wonderful scenery.
From the top of Ben Lomond, at a height of between five and six thousand feet, you look down upon the lake, in colour a bright blue, toning to purple at the sides; rising steeply from the water, and sloping away from it to bare jagged peaks are mountains of five and six thousand feet; while far away, encircling the lake-head, are yet higher peaks, and to east and north, piled one behind the other, peaks and ever more peaks, purple and grey or whitely crowned with snow. ”

“ As we push our way into it we discover that it is so clear as to make little more obstruction to the view of rocks and fish below than does the air itself. This transparent torrent is the outlet of the lake. It is only four miles long and descends three hundred and eighty feet in that distance. It furnishes one hundred and twenty-five thousand horse-power at low water. The cañon, riven and tortured, through which it descends, is a fitting approach to the lake, unique Chelan. For having traversed the four miles, we find the lake outstretched before us. ”

“ The lake itself lies clear, black, and deep, a somewhat sullen, yet always beautiful sheet of water. On the left the dark masses of Ben Ledi cast their shadows upon the water, intensifying the depth of its tone, and giving the loch its distinctive character. Near the water the banks are in many places full of gentle woodland beauty, but as a rule the impression made by the overhanging bulk and the dusky-hued rocks of Ben Ledi, absorb the sense, and the loch ever presents an idea of grandeur and desolation. ”

“ The man who loves the breath of the storm and the glow of excitement will loose his boat from Tallac when the clouds swing down the canyon and speed forth borne, as it were, on the wings of the waves toward the distant foot of the Lake—past the black water wall where the waves of Emerald Bay sweep into Tahoe, through the frothy waters where the wind shifts and whips around Rubicon Point, over the white caps of Meek's Bay until by skillful maneuvering the jutting cape is weathered and quieter water is found in McKinney Bay. ”

“ I was called at the first dawn of day and told to get up: we soon had eaten our breakfast and everything made ready to leave for the Lake. We soon reached the landing, finding our boat ready. My father placed me in and getting in himself took up his paddle and shoved off for a position in the Lake where we might see the great Orb of Day bathe his face in the cloudy water of "Lake Drummond." We did not have to wait long. By the glow of light that began to show just under the eastern horizon, we were satisfied that our anticipations would soon be realized. ”

“ If one asks where to go, a bewildering group of trips and pleasures appears. But there come forth speedily from out the number a few of unsurpassed allurement. These are a ski trip from Tallac to Fallen Leaf Lake to see the breakers and the spray driven by a rising gale against the rock-bound shore, and, when the lake has grown quieter, a boat ride to Fallen Leaf Lodge beneath the frowning parapets of Mount Tallac. Next a ski trip up the Glen to the buried hostelry at Glen Alpine, where one enters by way of a dormer window but is received to a cheerful fire and with royal hospitality. ”