Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/391

Rh and it has no especially curious feature like the geysers of the last; but for immensity, for a certain chaotic sublimity, for the rich and sombre grandeur of the purple and garnet, dusky, and indigo-tinted shore views, Chelan surpasses any of the others, while in its water views,—such colourings and such blendings, light-green, ultramarine, lapis lazuli, violet, indigo, almost black,—such light and shade, "sea of glass mingled with fire," where every cloud in the changing sky and all the untold majesty of the hills find their perfect mirror, all hues and forms, a kaleidoscope of earth and heaven, beyond imagination to conceive or pen to describe or brush to portray,—in all this, Chelan is without a rival.

As we round a shaggy promontory, there the snow-peaks stand in battle array, azure, purple, amethystine, with lines and masses of glistening white, flushed on their topmost pinnacles with rosy light from the westering sun, solemn, solitary, very oracles of mountain revelation, so grand, so beautiful, so true, looking as though they had been there forever waiting for an interpreter,—before that scene we bow the head and make involuntary obeisance, the homage of the true in man to the true in nature, that is, the recognition of a common brotherhood in one divine origin.

Not of every scene on this lake of wonders can we speak. Yet every mile brought its special revelation. Sometimes we found the lake in storms. As we rowed in what seemed a summer calm, Winter from his throne eight thousand feet above sent forth his cloud-legions, which, like the "thunder birds" of Indian story, spread their wings and came down. The thunder clash went echoing in long reverbera-