They are the fruit of the streams that flow from the glacial fountains.

They lie on rude and unexpected granite shelves,--as Le Conte Lake; under the shadow of towering peaks,--as Gilmore Lake; on bald glacier-gouged and polished tables,--as those of Desolation Valley; embosomed in deep woods,--as Fallen Leaf, Heather and Cascade; in the rocky recesses of sloping canyons,--as Susie, Lucile and the Angoras; hidden in secret recesses of giant granite walls,--as Eagle; or sprawling in the open,--as Loon, Spider, etc.
What a variety of sizes, shapes and characteristics they present.
There are no two alike, yet they are nearly all one in their attractive beauty, in the purity of their waters, and in the glory, majesty, sublimity and beauty mirrored on their placid faces.
In poetic fashion, yet with scientific accuracy, John Muir thus describes their origin in his _Mountains of California_, a book every Tahoe lover should possess: When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it first opens to the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper.

In this condition it remains for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin.

The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its glassy surface, and the sun thrills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,--sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors.

Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil.