When the day is calm there is a ring around the Lake extending from a hundred yards to a mile from the shore which is the most brilliant green; within this ring there is another zone of the deepest blue, and this gives place to royal purple in the distance; and the color of the Lake changes from day to day and from hour to hour.  It is never twice the same—­sometimes the blue is lapis lazuli, then it is jade, then it is purple, and when the breeze gently ruffles the surface it is silvery-gray.  The Lake has as many moods as an April day or a lovely woman.  But its normal appearance is that of a floor of lapis lazuli set with a ring of emerald.

The depth of the water, varying as it does from a few feet to nearly or over 2000 feet, together with the peculiarly variable bottom of the Lake, have much to do with these color effects.  The lake bottom on a clear wind-quiet day can be clearly seen except in the lowest depths.  Here and there are patches of fairly level area, covered either with rocky bowlders, moss-covered rocks, or vari-colored sands.  Then, suddenly, the eye falls upon a ledge, on the yonder side of which the water suddenly becomes deep blue.  That ledge may denote a submarine precipice, a hundred, five hundred, a thousand or more feet deep, and the changes caused by such sudden and awful depths are beyond verbal description.

Many of the softer color-effects are produced by the light colored sands that are washed down into the shallower waters by the mountain streams.  These vary considerably, from almost white and cream, to deep yellow, brown and red.  Then the mosses that grow on the massive bowlders, rounded, square and irregular, of every conceivable size, that are strewn over the lake bottom, together with the equally varied rocks of the shore-line, some of them towering hundreds of feet above the water—­these have their share in the general enchantment and revelry of color.

Emerald Bay and Meek’s Bay are justly world-famed for their triumphs of color glories, for here there seem to be those peculiar combinations of varied objects, and depths, from the shallowest to the deepest, with the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom, as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere.  The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes.  Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but childish and puerile attempts at reproduction, and finest Turkish shawls, Bokhara rugs or Arab sheiks’ dearest-prized Prayer Carpets are but glimmering suggestions of what the Master Artist himself has here produced.