It is
perhaps four miles in circumference, its waters generally shallow, and
so covered with pond lilies, and skirted with wild grass, as to form
the most luxuriant pasture for the deer and moose to be found in all
this region. Of all the lakes I have visited in these northern wilds,
this is the most gloomy. Indeed it is the only one that does not wear
a cheerful and pleasant aspect. It seems to be the highest water in
this portion of the wilderness, lying, as one of our boatmen
expressed it, "up on the top of the house." In only one direction
could any higher land be seen, and that was a low hill on the
western shore, not exceeding fifty feet in height. There are no
tall mountain peaks reaching their heads towards the clouds,
overlooking the waters; no ranges stretching away into the distance;
no gorges or spreading valleys; no sloping hillsides, giving back the
sunlight, or along which gigantic shadows of the drifting clouds
float. All around it are fir, and tamarac, and spruce of a stinted and
slender growth, dead at the top, and with lichens and moss hanging
down in sad and draggled festoons from their desolate branches. It is,
in truth, a gloomy place, typical of desolation, which it is well to
see once, but which no one will desire to visit a second time. We
noticed on the sandy beach tracks of the wolf, the panther, the moose,
and in one place the huge track of a bear.
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