ENCHANTED WATERS
I
There is a lake in the cloistered fastnesses of Sin-yal-min, named by
the Jesuit priests St. Mary's, but called by the Indians the Waters
of the Forgiven. It is a small body of water overshadowed by abrupt
mountains, fed by a beautiful fall and for some reason, impossible
to explain, it is haunted by an atmosphere at once ghostly and sad.
So potent is this intangible dread, this fear of something unseen,
this melancholy begotten of a cause unknown, that every visitor is
conscious of it. Most of all, the Indians, impressionable and fanciful
as children, feel the weird spell and cherish a legend of it as nebulous
as the mists that flutter in pale wraith-shapes across its enchanted
depths.
The story goes that once, long ago, someone was killed upon the lake and
the troubled spirit returns to haunt the scene of its mortal passing,
but the murderer, smitten with remorse and repenting of his crime was
finally forgiven by the Great Spirit, and the lake became known as the
Waters of the Forgiven. The shadow of that crime has never lifted and
it broods forever over the lake's dark face and upon the mountains that
hold it in their cup of stone. There the echo is multiplied. If one
calls aloud, a chorus of fantastic, mocking voices takes up the sound
and it goes crying through the solitude like lost souls in Purgatory.
The Waters of the Forgiven exhale their eternal sigh, their pensive
gloom, even when the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel the
fullness of its spectral melancholy, one must seek it out in the secrecy
of night. Then, as the mellow moon rises over the mountain tops laying
the pale fingers of its rays suggestively on rock and tree, touching
them with magical illusion and transforming them to goblin shapes, one
palpitates with strange fear, is impressed with impending disaster.
As the moonlight flows in misty streams, sealing ravine and lake-deep
in shadow the more intense for the contrast of white, discriminating
light that runs quicksilver-like upon the ripples of the water and the
quivering needles of the pine, the silence is broken by dismal howls. It
is the lean, gray timber wolves. Their mournful cry is flung back again
by the ghostly pack that no eye sees and no foot can track. Mountain
lions yell shrilly and are answered by distant ones of their kind and
inevitably that other lesser cry comes back again and again as though
the phantom chorus could never forget nor leave off the burden of that
lament. Out of the pregnant darkness into the spectral moonlight shadowy
creatures come to the shore to drink. The deer, the bear, sometimes the
mountain lion and the elk stalk forth and quench their thirst. These
things are strange enough, savage enough to inspire fear, but it is
not they, nor the grisly mountains that create the terror which is a
phantasm, the dread which is not of flesh nor earth.
No Indian, however brave, pitches his tipi by this lake nor crosses its
waters, for among the tangle of weeds in its black, mysterious bosom,
water sirens are believed to dwell. Ever watchful of human prey they
gaze upward from their mossy couches and if a boatman venture out in
his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their strangling, white arms
about him, pressing him with kisses poisonous as the serpent's sting,
breathing upon him their blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls his
senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep.
II
The Jocko or Spotted Lakes are enchanted waters also. They lie high up
in the crown of the continent--the main range of the Rocky Mountains.
To reach them the traveller needs patience and strength of body and
soul, for the trail is long and tortuous, winding along the rim of
sickening-steep ravines, across treacherous swamps, amid mighty forests
to great altitudes. There are three lakes in this group, one above the
other, the last being sometimes called the Clearwater Lake because it is
within the borders of that terrible wilderness whose savage fastnesses
have claimed their prey of lost wanderers.
The first lake is inexpressibly ghostly. The flanks of the mountains
rise sheer and frown down on murky waters, leaving scarcely any shore,
and around their margin, gray-white drift-wood lies scattered like
unburied bones. It is a spectral spot, unearthly, colourless as a
moth, preyed upon by a lamentable sadness which broods unbroken in the
solitude. There the fox-fire kindles in the darkness, the owl wheels in
his midnight flight and pale shades of mist unwind their shroud-like
scarfs. It is a pool of the dead, a region of lost hopes and throttling
despair.
From this lake the trail bears upward through dense jungles and
morasses, venomously beautiful with huge, brilliantly coloured flowers
growing to the height of a man. Their scarlet and yellow disks exhale
an overpowering fragrance, insidious, almost narcotic in its strength.
Beneath rank stalk and leaf, rearing blossom and entangling vine,
creeping things with mortal sting dwell in the dank, sultry-sweet
shadow. One is dazzled with the colour and the scent; charmed and
repelled; tempted on into treacherous sinkholes by a wild extravagance
of beauty too wanton to be good.
At length the second lake unfolds itself from the living screen of tree
and wooded steep. A point of land, stained blood-red, juts out into the
water and over it tumbles and cascades a foam-whitened fall. This stain
of crimson is a thick-spun carpet of Indian Paint Brush interwoven with
lush grass. The mountains show traces of orange and green, apparently a
mineral wash hinting of undiscovered treasure.
Looking into the depths of the lake one is impressed with its freckled
appearance. A blotch of milky white, then one of dull yellow mottles
the water and even as one watches, a shadow darkens the surface,
concentrating, scattering in kaleidoscopic variety, then disappearing as
mysteriously as it came. There is no cloud in the sky, nor overhanging
tree, nor passing bird to cause that shade without substance. At first
it seems inexplicable and the Indians, finding no natural reason for its
being, believe it to be the forms of water sirens gliding to and fro.
On this account, here as at the Waters of the Forgiven no Indian dares
to come alone and even with human company he fears the sirens' spell.
For as the victim sleeps they come, drawing closer and breathing his
breath until he dies. If one watches patiently he may see that the dark
shadows are made by shoals of fish, gathering and dispersing, and in so
doing, accentuating and lessening the sable spots. The lake is as uneven
in temperature as it is in colour. It has hot pools and icy shallows,
so it is probably fed by springs as well as by the torrent which falls
from the peaks. A strong, sulphurous odour taints the air; the water is
unpleasant to the taste and the sedgy weeds which grow about the shores
are stained. And as the waters recede during the summer heat, along
the banks, in uneven streaks a mineral deposit traces their retreat.
Towards the end of July or August a curious thing may be seen in this
Lake of the Jocko. A current eddies around and around in a gigantic
whirlpool, transforming it into a mighty funnel with an underground
vent. At a considerable distance below a stream bursts forth from the
mountain side with terrific energy of pressure and plunges downward in a
foaming torrent. It is the Jocko River,--the gentle, merry-voiced Jocko
of the prairie which winds its course among lines of friendly trees and
blossoms. Who would guess that it drew its nurture from the Lake of the
Jocko, siren-haunted, poison-breathed, which careful Indians avoid as a
region of the accursed? Still it is so and the menace of that mysterious
lake becomes the blessing of the plains.
* * * * *
Such are the Waters of the Forgiven and the Jocko, secure in their
solitude, guarded more potently by their spell of evil than by wall of
stone or armed hosts, holding within their deep, dark bosoms the charm
of the water sirens whose sad, sweet song quavers in the music of fall
and stream, whose pallid, white faces flash lily-like from the depths,
whose entangling tresses spread in flowing masses of sedgy green.
And of the strange things which have happened on those shores, of the
braves lured to the death-sleep on couches of moss and pillows of lily
pad, scarcely an echo shrills down from the white-shrouded peaks to give
warning to the adventurers who would seek out the awful beauty of those
Enchanted Waters.
_LAKE ANGUS McDONALD_