"Just as the Rob Roy passed below Wady Fik a strange, distant hissing sounded ahead where we could see a violent storm was raging. The waves had not time to rise. The gusts had come down on calm water and they whisked long wreaths of it up into the sky. This torrent of heavy, cold air was pouring over the mountain crests into the deep caldron of the lake below. Just as it says in Luke 8:23. 'There came _down_ a storm upon the lake.'" [Illustration: ON THE BORDERS OF THE SEA OF GALILEE You can see this is in a desert, mountainous country, and, from the dress of the man, that it is in the Orient. The beach is wide--for so small a lake--because of those frequent and severe storms that drive the waves, loaded with sand and pebbles, far back from the shore. ] This peculiarity of squalls among mountains is known to all who have boated much on lakes, but on the Sea of Galilee the wind has a singular force and suddenness. This is no doubt because the sea is so deep in the world that the sun rarefies the air in it enormously and the wind, speeding swiftly over a long and level plateau, suddenly comes upon this huge gap in the way and tumbles down into it. III. How Lakes Grow Old and Pass Away But, however formed, lakes, of all the features of our landscape, are the soonest to pass away. Because of the sediment brought into them by the rivers they keep getting more and more shallow and at last, in the course of time, are quite filled up. The waves of the lakes themselves help to bring this about by cutting material from their shores and washing it into the water. So the time will come when all lakes now in existence will have passed away. But the people of those times will not be without their lakes. New lakes will probably be made by the same causes which produced the lakes of to-day; for Nature's great processes do not change. WHY LILIES COME TO THE DYING LAKES Meanwhile how beautifully they pass, these lakes; particularly the little lakes like that in Rousseau's painting. First, on the margin of a dying lake the lilies gather. Lilies grow only in quiet waters and these they find in the shallow margins of lakes that are filling up. LAST OF ALL COME THE TREES Next after the lilies come the sedges, grasslike herbs that grow in marshy places. And after they are well established they get things ready for the next arrivals; for these plants come in a regular procession. The dense tufts of the sedges make mats on which soil gathers. In this soil shrubs begin to grow. From the decay of all this vegetation more soil is formed in which the seeds of spruce and tamarack spring up. Then come willows, then poplars and maples, and last of all the oaks and nut-bearing trees, which march into new lands slowly because they must depend on their heavy seeds to move them forward, while the little seeds of maple, willow, poplar, and pine are easily carried by the wind. [Illustration: _"The Lake." From the painting by Rousseau_