The Innocents Abroad


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hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced  
terms--Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I  
abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those strangely  
magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the  
large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may see every  
pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk  
of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own  
experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I  
have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four  
feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their  
gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at  
that distance in the open air.  
As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the  
snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong  
upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in  
that august presence.  
Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to  
year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests  
no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea  
in the clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at  
times, at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded  
by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand  
feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose  
belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!  
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226 227 228 229 230

Quick Jump
1 187 374 560 747