We went on through the beautiful breezy country for some distance farther, till on one side we were looking down into a valley and on the other side into a lake, and I soon found that the lake had been formed just as we schoolboys used to make a dam across a ditch or stream when we were going to bale it out and get the fish.
“Why,” I cried, as we walked out on to the great embankment, “this has all been made.”
“To be sure,” said Uncle Dick. “Just the same as our little dam is at the works. That was formed by building a strong stone wall across a hollow streamlet; this was made by raising this great embankment right across the valley here and stopping the stream that ran through it. That’s the way some of the lakes have been made in Switzerland.”
“What, by men?”
“No, by nature. A great landslip takes place from the mountains, rushes down, and fills up a valley, and the water is stopped from running away.”
We walked right out along what seemed like a vast railway embankment, on one side sloping right away down into the valley, where the remains of the stream that had been cut off trickled on towards Arrowfield. On the other side the slope went down into the lake of water, which stretched away toward the moorlands for quite a mile.
“This needs to be tremendously strong,” said Uncle Jack thoughtfully, as we walked on till we were right in the middle and first stood looking down the valley, winding in and out, with its scattered houses, farms, and mills, and then turned to look upward towards the moorland and along the dammed-up lake.
“Why, this embankment must be a quarter of a mile long,” said Uncle Jack thoughtfully.
“What a pond for fishing!” I cried, as I imagined it to be peopled by large jack and shoals of smaller fish. “How deep is it, I wonder?”
Did you ever know a boy yet who did not want to know how deep a piece of water was, when he saw it?