Leaf, Heather and Cascade; in the rocky recesses of sloping
canyons,--as Susie, Lucile and the Angoras; hidden in secret recesses
of giant granite walls,--as Eagle; or sprawling in the open,--as Loon,
Spider, etc.

What a variety of sizes, shapes and characteristics they present.
There are no two alike, yet they are nearly all one in their
attractive beauty, in the purity of their waters, and in the glory,
majesty, sublimity and beauty mirrored on their placid faces.

In poetic fashion, yet with scientific accuracy, John Muir thus
describes their origin in his _Mountains of California_, a book
every Tahoe lover should possess:

When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it
first opens to the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless
crescent, inclosed in banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated
rock on the lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the
upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until at
length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons,
the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin,
leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time,
thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier
that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is
reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy
surface, and the sun thrills it with throbbing spangles,
while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless
shores,--sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars
at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only
visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and
numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring
down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to
margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come
many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching
leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow
warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take
their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians,
daisies, dodecatheons, violets, honey-worts, and many a lowly
moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new gardens,--kalmia
with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic willow,
making soft woven carpets, together with the healthy bryanthus
and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects
now enrich the air, frogs