The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-05-27
THE BOTTOMLEsS BLACK POND

About half q mile from the town of
Danford, there was an extensive and
beautiful piece of forest land. Many of
the trees were large and picturesque, the
ground beneath them was generally free
from unpleasant underground and BUSH
es, and, in some places, it was covered
with moss and delicately- colored wild
flowers; there were green open, glades,
where the bright sunshine played fam
tastic tricks with the shadows of the sur
rounding trees, and, altogether, the
Danford forest was delightful place,
and any visitor, of ordinary reasoning
powers, would have supposed it to be a
favorite resort of the toWns-people.
But it was not so; very few people,
excepting now and then some boys of a
disobedient turn of mind, ever visited it.
The reason for this was the fact that
near the center of the woods lay large
pond which had a bad reputation.
This pond was so large that in some
parts of the country, where such bodies
of water are not common, it would have
been called lake.
In ordinary cases the presence of
such sheet of water would have greatly
added to the attractions of the place, but
this pond exercised an influence which
overbalanced all the attractive beauties
of the woods, and made it a lonely and
deserted spot.
The reason of this was the peculiar
reputation of the Black Pond. A great
many strange things were said about it..
Its color was enough to mystify some
people, and terrify others, for it was as
black as ink. Persons who had stood
upon its edge and had looked down upon
it, and over its wide expanse, were un-
able to see an inch below the surface of
the water, which, instead of being trans
parent, appeared, when there was no
wind, like one of those dark-colored
mirrors called t" Claude Lorraine glass
es," in which a whole landscape is re-
fected like little living picture, with
all its proportions, its perspective and
its colors, perfectly preserved.
1t might have been supposed that this
lake would have presented an attractive
picture, on bright days, when the sky,
the clouds and the overhanging foliage
were reflected in its smooth and pol
ished surface; but water which is as
black as ink is not the kind of water that
people generally like to look at. There
are ordinary ponds and lakes and rivers,
in which the sky, clouds and trees are
reflected in a way that is good enough
for anybody.
But although it was in color such q
blot upon the beauty of the Danford
woods, the blackness of this pond was
not the greatest objection to it. The
most dreadful thing about it was that it
had no bottom! There is something
truly terrifying in the idea of body Of
water that is bottomless. There are
persons who would feel much safer in
sailing over those portions of the ocean
which have been proved to be five or six
miles deep, than over the vast expanses
of rolling pillows where bottom has
never been found.
And it was well known that bottom
had never been found in the Black
Pond. Sons had heard this from their
fathers, and fathers from their fathers,
for Danford was an old town, and the
Black Pond had always been the same,
as far back as the local history and ira
ditions went.
For long time no attempts at sound
ing or examining in any way the waters
of the pond had been made. Any un.
dertaking of the kind would have been
too dangerous. There was no boat on
the pond, and it was not easy to carry
one there, and if persons wished to 90
out in the middle of the pond to make
soundings a raft would have to be built,
and the consequences to any one falling
off this would be too terrible to c0ntem-
plate. Even the best swimmer would
fear to find himself in water where he
would probably become cramped and
sink, and be sucked down, and down,
and down, nobody knows where.
In winter, when the pond was frozen
over, and so might have offered a temp
tation to the skating boys of the town
for there are boys who think that any
kind of water is safe if it is covered with
ice-the parents and guardians of DAN
ford so sternly forbade any venturing
on the surface of that dangerous pond
that no owner of skates ever dared to
try them on the dark ice which covered
q still darker mystery beneath.
In fact, those boys who had even ven