Lake Zirknitz lies in a deep valley surrounded by beautiful hills. It is a fair sheet of water, six miles long and three miles broad, and teeming with fishes and water-fowl. The monotony of this large expanse of water is relieved by five small islands, on one of which is the village of Ottok. These islands are favorite resorts for picnic parties. The bottom of the lake is formed of limestone rock, and is full of clefts and fissures. During prolonged dry weather the waters pass into these caverns, carrying their finny inhabitants with them. The church bells give warning when the first sign of the sinking of the lake is observed, and the people hasten to make the most of the fishing while there is yet time.
When the water has entirely disappeared, a crop of luxuriant herbage takes its place, affording pasture for the cattle of the neighboring farmers, who are thus enabled to reap where before they went a-fishing. With the recurrence of heavy rains the lake gushes forth from its under-ground retreat, rises speedily to its normal level, and resumes its ordinary appearance.
Until a comparatively recent time the causes of the periodical disappearance of the lake were involved in mystery, and people were content to accept as a fact that which they could not explain. In later years, however, scientific men have devoted many years of their lives to the task of exploring these under-ground recesses, and with the happiest results.
Although the subterranean geography of this region has been, to the present, only sketched out, still enough has been discovered to satisfy them that many of the under-ground passages extend to long distances, and it has been conclusively proven that the waters of the Zirknitz Lake at the periods of their recession flow through under-ground channels into the river Unz, which further on joins the river Save, a tributary of the Danube.
[THE LITTLE GRANDMOTHER.]
BY MARY A. LATHBURY.
It had been an eventful morning in the attic. There were six of us—three of the Guernsey cousins and three of ourselves. Fanny Guernsey and our Ned had been reading Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, and so we had all suffered a most horrible shipwreck, and had finally been cast upon a desert island. The ship was an ancient cradle, into which we were packed like sardines, and which, owing to Ned's vigorous efforts at "the wheel," lurched around the attic in a fearful way, and finally tumbled us all out in a heap upon an old-fashioned braided rug in a corner. We found ourselves too dense a population for "the island," and so Jamie Guernsey and I paddled off to the wreck, and got aboard. Then all at once a change passed over the wreck, and we (Jem and I) were Mr. and Mrs. Noah, urging our sons and daughters to hurry into the ark, and be saved. They at once saw that they were huddled upon the highest peak of a mountain, and must soon be drowned, so in they clambered, bringing two dolls with them to make out eight souls, and again we went sailing over the floods. It was Ned who first thought of our little oversight in forgetting to take animals into the ark.
"What on earth are we to do?" he cried.