This picture of the lake of the Great St. Bernard was taken by Phyllis M. Pulliam, who sent it to St. Nicholas with a long, enthusiastic letter, such as only school-girls know how to write. Among other things she met a great St. Bernard dog that had saved more than fifty lives.
Mountain lakes are usually as clear as crystal, and, like perfect mirrors, reflect the outlines and coloring of the clouds and the neighboring peaks. They are apt to contain mica and feldspar ground out of the granite rock by the glacier that made their basins. Then the sunlight falling on these rock particles gives them the color of jade or Nile green, or dark green like a peacock's tail. They are constantly changing color with the changing angles of the light from morning until sunset; and under the passing clouds and the rippling of the winds. The deeper lakes are dark blue in the deepest parts, turning to green in the shallow waters near shore where the yellow of the sun rays and the sand mixes most with the blue of the waters.[38]
[38] Van Dyke: "The Mountain."
THE MYSTERY IS IN THE SECRET PASSAGE
In Florida there are sister lakes so sympathetic that their waters rise and fall together. One responds to the mood of the other as promptly as your right eye waters in sympathy when you get a grain of dust in the left. The reason for this goes back to the days when the corals helped build Florida. They did this by leaving their "bones" on the coral reefs when that part of North America was in the making. These remains formed limestone. Then, in this limestone, "sink holes" were formed on the surface leading to underground passages, just as they do over the land surface in the cave regions of Kentucky. These sink holes often fill with water and form little lakes. These lakes, being connected by the underground passages, rise and fall together. It looks very strange, even when you know the secret of it; and still stranger when you don't.
Yet I shouldn't be surprised if a bright boy or girl seeing two lakes rising or falling together would suspect the underground connection; for, of course, we all know about springs and their underground channels. But what would you say to this:
A lake that, a moment before, was as smooth as glass suddenly begins to shiver all over as one shivers in a sudden draught. But there is no breeze stirring! A moment later the water rises and falls along the banks; an inch, two inches, a foot, two feet. Then, in the course of a couple of hours, the sky, which before was without a cloud, begins to grow black and there follows a terrific storm.
A KIND OF NATURAL BAROMETER
The cause of the rising of the water is the heavier pressure of the air at the farther end of the lake, the region of the coming storm. The water, being forced down at one end of the basin, you see, rises at the other. Then as the storm advances toward you the pressure is released and the water falls again; but for a while it rocks to and fro as water will do in a basin if you tip it up at one end and then let it down again.
THE TIDES IN A TEACUP