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.