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James, George Wharton, 1858-1923

"rs, Birds, Animals, Trees, and Chaparral, with a Full Account of the Tahoe National Forest, the Public Use of the Water of Lake Tahoe and Much Other Interesting Matter"

The senses are kept keenly alert, for not only have we the
Lake, the bay and the mountains, but part of the way we have flowers
and shrubs by the thousands, bees and butterflies flit to and fro, and
singing streams come foaming white from the snowbanks above, eager to
reach the Lake. As our car-wheels dash across these streamlets they
splash up the water on each side into sparkling diamonds and on every
hand come up the sweet scents of growing, living things. Now Mt.
Tallac, in all his serene majesty, looms ahead. Snow a hundred or
more feet deep in places covers his rocky sides. Here we can see where
glaciers were born in the early days when Tallac was several thousand
feet higher than it now is.
Below us is the emerald-ringed bay, with its romantic little island
at the west end, and nearby the joyously-shouting Eagle Creek as it
plunges over the precipice and makes the foam-flecked Eagle Falls. Our
road here was blasted through some fiercely solid and hostile rock.
One boulder alone that stood in the way weighed (it was estimated by
the engineers) from 800 to 1000 tons. Fifty cases of highly explosive
powder were suitably placed all around it.


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