Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and

suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger.

I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who

roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones

with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and

ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These

are the gentry that named the Lake.

People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake"--"Limpid Water"--"Falling

Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger

tribe,--and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these

practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was

any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an

extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have

camped with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part

in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I

have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would

gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance.

But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the

lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the

truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it

does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five

hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist's

measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand

229

The Innocents Abroad