Lake Tahoe

Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake Tahoe, a crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite bottom visible at the depth of up to a hundred feet, its banks a celestial garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long and ten wide, and nearly seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven.