LAKE CICOTT’S SEVEN-YEAR RISE.
INDIANA PHENOMENON REAPPEARS ON SCHEDULE TIME.
Indianapolis, Aug. 1.—With neither outlet nor inlet that is at any time visible, Lake Cicott, a small body of water in Cass County, has now reached a height which it attains every seven years, and hundreds of acres of fine corn land are covered by several feet of water. The rural mail route, which runs along the lake’s banks, has been abandoned by the carrier, for the water covers it to a depth of three feet and stretches beyond for several hundred yards.
Lake Cicott has been an interesting phenomenon to the people of northern Indiana for many years, but the secret of its rise and fall has never been discovered. It is the only Lake in Cass County and is about one mile wide and about one mile long. The water is clear and cold and perfectly fresh. Its most mysterious characteristic is the fact that it overflows its banks every seventh year. The farmers who own the land upon its banks have become so used to this that they never attempt to cultivate the land in the seventh year, but give it up without protest, as they know it is sure to be claimed by the waters.
The Pottawattomie Indians who inhabited what is now Cass and adjoining counties were familiar with the characteristic of the lake. They believed that its bottom was inhabited by a powerful spirit, which at intervals of seven years caused the lake to overflow. They construed this action as approval of the tribe by the spirit, and watched anxiously for the time to come, for they saw in the rising waters a sure indication that they had done nothing to displease it. The early white settlers became acquainted with the legend and the oldest inhabitant is not able to recall a time that the overflow did not take place when expected.
The water has now reached its highest point, and will soon begin to recede and continue to do so till the old confines are reached. Residents of the locality say that the weather conditions have no effect upon the lake, for its rise in the seventh year takes place regardless of the fact of rain or drouth. Amos Jordan, a veteran of the civil war, who lives on a bluff overlooking the lake, says the only apparent difference between wet and dry seasons when the rise occurs is that the water appears to be colder in time of drouth. What is true of the rise of the waters is also true of their recession, for they gradually disappear regardless of the amount of rainfall in the county.
The phenomenon is explained on the theory that there is a subterranean outlet, which becomes closed in some way and is opened by the pressure of the water when the highest point is reached every seventh year; but this is mere guesswork and nothing has ever been discovered to justify such a theory. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, which owns a number of ice-houses on the edge of the lake, made soundings at different places before the rise began, and found the greatest depth to be ninety feet.
Hundreds more of such clippings have been preserved in a scrap book describing similar phenomena all over the Earth, all of which seem solvable through claims herein set forth, in the combined influences of frictional and volcanic heat, and the occasional contact with outpouring streams from the internal ocean of fresh water.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.