“Say, I’d like to have been here with the old kodak!” Bennie cried. “And then what happened?”
“Well, then the bottom of the crater evidently started to spit again, and build up a new mountain. It built up a perfect cone, just the shape of the old mountain, almost to the level of the rim. That’s Wizard Island out there. Wizard Island is a later kind of lava and volcanic stuff than what you find in the rim walls. But the old mountain got tired about then, and decided to call it a day, and it’s been resting ever since.”
“But how did the water get here?” Dumplin’ asked.
“Out of the sky. There are no springs, so far as anybody knows, in the crater. That water has just come from the snow and rain—mostly snow, which has been falling into the hole for untold ages. Over on the east side of the lake, it is 2,000 feet deep.”
“Say, you could almost dive there without hitting your head on bottom, couldn’t you?” Bennie laughed. “What makes it so blue?”
“Nobody seems to know that. Some people think there must be some chemical or mineral gets into it. Anyway, there’s no other lake in the world which has its color.”
“I’ll bet there isn’t!” Spider declared. “My, it’s a beautiful thing. When are we going down to it? Are there boats on it? How do they get the boats down there?”
“One at a time!” Mr. Stone laughed. “We’ll go down as soon as the trail is opened. They get the boats down the trail on wheels, by man power, and keep ’em winters over on Wizard Island. You could see the boat-house if it wasn’t so dark.”
“Let’s go over to the hotel and find out if the trail is open yet!” the boys cried, and led the way without waiting for an answer.
No, the trail wasn’t open, the hotel manager told them. But the boatmen had been down and got some rowboats out, and two men had gone down fishing that afternoon.