But the native Arab goes further. Not far from the borders of the Dead Sea is a mountain of salt called Jebel Usdem, which "the early and later rains" in the course of ages have dissolved into many fantastic shapes. Among these strange figures is a pillar tapering toward the top, on which is a wide cap of stone, such as that shown on page 60 and such as are often seen on detached and pillared rocks.
But this gaunt remnant of grisly gray, although it is still obviously a part of the mountain and cannot be less than forty feet high, your Arab friend insists was once the wife of Lot!
HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY
If you were hunting for mountain lakes where would you expect to find the most, in high mountains or in low?
Rivers sometimes make lakes by using the same stuff the small boys do, just plain mud. Look at Lake Pontchartrain in the map of Louisiana and you can see one of the ways in which this is done. Remember that all the land around this lake is part of the delta of the Mississippi. The river deposits have simply enclosed a portion of the shallow sea.
Or—this is another way in which rivers make lakes by building mud walls—a river emptying at right angles into a narrow gulf may build a dam clear across it. The rich Imperial Valley of southern California was cut off from the Gulf of California in this way. Look at the map and you can see just how this was done.
One of the puzzles about mountain lakes is how frogs got into them. The frogs never climbed up there, you may be sure. Muir thinks maybe the ducks did it. How do you suppose? See if you can imagine and then see what Muir says about it.[43]
[43] "The Mountains of California."
In connection with what was said about lakes playing they are oceans—not these little mountain lakes, of course, but great big lakes—you will be interested in what Lord Bryce says in his "Travels in South America" about why lakes may even look larger than the ocean.
In the Britannica and other books that you may not yet be old enough to read you will find many more curious things about lakes. I can't tell which one of my readers you are, you see, but if you belong to the "younger set," father, mother, or some other member of the family can do the looking up and then tell you about it.[44] In the Britannica will be found such interesting things as this: