With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not
easy to realize that the old glacier that made them vanished tens of
centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the
changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the
weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance that
it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has
undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is growing old.
More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with
meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of alluvium
stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently growing out
all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
forever.
Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day
through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the
basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand
upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges,
interrupted here and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond
this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of
Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced
nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic
Silver Fir 200 feet high.
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