The waters of Lake Tahoe are very clear, and it never freezes over, as I was told, although the weather is sufficiently cold; but really I do not see what makes the place so celebrated. It is a beautiful lake, thirty miles long, surrounded by wooded hills, but place it in New England and it would hardly be noticed among the many there fully as beautiful. The clearness of the water is remarkable, but no more so than the water of any lake situated high up in the mountains, where there is nothing but the pure white snow to furnish a water supply, and where there is no loam, mud, or vegetable matter to discolor it. There are no other attractions, unless it be the Hot Springs, and as we did not go over there, five miles away, of course I cannot form an opinion of that place. A steamer goes around the lake once a day, carrying mail and merchandise. We rowed and fished some, that is pulled out the same fish, the minnows, that we threw in, but the rest, lying on the pebbly beach, with the sound of the swash of the waves in my ears, was enjoyed the most of any part of the day. And perhaps that is the very reason why the lake is so noted. People from the East come to it after days of travel over the sandy plains and alkali deserts of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, and the change from the hot, dusty ride to the clear, cold waters of the lake in the mountains, is so delightful that the lake gets its full share, and more too, of the credit for the pleasure in the change. Both going up and coming down I must have passed hundreds of snake tracks in the road, some of them two or three inches wide. What size the snakes must have been to make such tracks I could only imagine; but the woods were surely full of snakes.