New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1879-01-29
The Birth Of q Lake.

= OVuU AulE WllLcS, III ECJIC7IET JOE
January. Of ''The Mountain Lakes of
California. Wequotc: IA -
The MERGED River, IS whole, is re-
markably like an e]m-t tree, and it re-
quires but little effort on the part OF
the imagination to picture it standing
upright, with all its lakes hanging upon
its spreading branches, the topmost
eighty miles in height. Now add all
the other lake-bearing rivers of the
Sierra, each in its place, and you will
have truly glorious spectacle an av-
enue the length and width of the range;
the long, slender, gray shafts, the
milky-way of arching branches, and
the moon-like lakes all clearly defined
and shining on the blue sky. How ex-
citedly such an addition to astronomy
would be gazcd at! Yet these }akeful
rivers arc still more excitingly bcauti-
full and impressive in their natural po-
sitions to those who have the eyes to
sec them US they lie imbcddcd in their
meadows and forests and glacicr-sculpt-
ur - rocks.
When q mountain-lake is born
when, like q young eye, it first opens
to the Light is an irregular, express
sionless crescent, inclosed in banks of
rock and ice-bare, glaciated rock on
the lower side, the rugged snout of
glacier on the upper. In this condition
it remains for many q year. until at
length, toward the end of some auspi.
cious cluster of seasons, the glacier re-
cedes beyond the upper margin, leav-
ing it open from shore to shore, for the
first time, thousands of years after its
conception beneath the glacier that
scooped its basin. The landscape. cold
and bare, is reflected in its pure depths;
the winds ruff1e its CLASSY surface, and
the sun fills it with throbbine spangles,
while its waves begin to lap and MUIR
muir around its leafess shores
sun-spangles and stars 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. To
these fresh soil-beds COME many a
waiting plant. First, a hardy carex,
with arching leaves and q spike of
brown flowers: then, as the seasons
grow warmer, and the s,il-beds deeper
and wider, other sedges take their ap.
pointed places, and these are Joined by
blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons,
violets, honeyworts and many a lowly
moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to
tho new gardens-kalmia, with its
glossy leaves and purple flowers, the
Arctic willow, making soft woven
carpets, together with the healthy
brYanthus and cassiope fairest and
dearest of them all. Insects now en-
rich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the
shadows, soon followed by the ou:el,
which is the first bird to visit glacier
lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.
So the young lake grows in beauty.
becoming moro and moro humanity
lovable from century to century.
Groves Of aspen spring up, and hardy
pines, and the Williamson spruce, until
richly overshadowed and embowereo
But while its shores are being enriched,
the soil-beds creep out with incessant
growth, contracting it's area, while the
lighter mud particles deposited on the
bottom cause it to grow constantly
shallower, until at length the last rem
nant of the lake vanishes- closed for
ever in ripe and natural old age. And
now its feeding stream goes winding
on through the new gardens and groves
that have taken its place without halt
ing for moment.