Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/226

204 I suspect that this was the same place the gardener’s son deceived the Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage somewhere:

“A deep vale,

Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,

Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold

And whispering myrtles:

Glassing softest skies, cloudless,

Save with rare and roseate shadows;

A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,

From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds.”

That is all very well, except the “clear” part of the lake. It certainly is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are compared with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the north shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at fifty per cent. discount. At this rate I find some takers; perhaps the reader will receive it on the same terms—ninety feet, instead of one hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced: terms—Sheriff’s sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those strangely magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet—may see every pebble on the bottom—might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own experience I know they can not compare with those I am speaking of. I have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at that distance in the open air.

As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in that august presence.