Robert Sterling Yard expanded upon this theme in his The National Parks Portfolio published in 1917. Describing the “Lake of Mystery,” he noted:
Crater Lake is the deepest and the bluest fresh-water lake in the world. It measures two thousand feet of solid water, and the intensity of its color is unbelievable even while you look at it. Its cliffs from sky line to surface average over a thousand feet high. It has no visible inlet or outlet, for it occupies the hole left when, in the dim ages before man, a volcano collapsed and disappeared within itself.
It is a gem of wonderful color in a setting of pearly lavas relieved by patches of pine green and snow white–a gem which changes hue with every atmospheric change and every shift of light.
There are crater lakes in other lands; in Italy, for instance, in Germany, India, and Hawaii. The one lake of its kind in the United States is by far the finest of its kind in the world. It is one of the most distinguished spots in a land notable for the nobility and distinction of its scenery. [4]
Two years later Yard used even more glowing descriptive imagery to describe the beauty and serenity of Crater Lake. In his The Book of the National Parks published in 1919, he stated:
Lured by his eloquence the traveller goes to Crater Lake and finds it all as promised–in fact, far better than promised, for the best intended adjectives, even when winged by the energetic pen of the most talented ad writer, cannot begin to convey the glowing, changing, mysterious loveliness of this lake of unbelievable beauty. In fact, the tourist, with expectation at fever-heat by the time he steps from the auto-stage upon the crater rim, is silenced as much by astonishment as by admiration.
Before him lies a crater of pale pearly lava several miles in diameter. A thousand feet below its rim is a rake whose farthest blues vie in delicacy with the horizon lavas, and deepen as they approach till at his feet they turn to almost black. There is nothing with which to compare the near-by blue looked sharply down upon from Crater’s rim. The deepest indigo is nearest its intensity, but at certain angles falls far short.
Nor is it only the color which affects him so strongly; its kind is something new, startling, and altogether lovely. Its surface, so magically framed and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streaks here and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness which we associate with the Grand Canyon and the sky at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar off,
graying and daubed with many colors nearer by. Pinks, purples, brick-reds, sulphurs, orange-yellows and many intermediates streak and splash the foreground gray. And often pine-green forests fringe the rim, and funnel down sharply tilted canyons to the water’s edge; and sometimes shrubs of livelier green find foothold on the gentler slopes, and, spreading, paint bright patches. Over all, shutting down and around it like a giant bowl, is a sky of California blue overhead softening to the pearl of the horizon. A wonder spectacle indeed! [5]
Writing in a similar vein Henry O. Reik, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Reserve Corps, described the beauty of Crater Lake in his A Tour of America’s National Parks (1920). Concluding his chapter on the park, he stated:
Remember that there is no lake its equal in depth; no other lake of such size occupying the crater of an extinct volcano; no other lake surrounded by such artistically colored, rugged mountain walls; and no other body of water of such a wonderful, indescribable blue. This coloring, varying from a faint turquoise to the deepest indigo blue, makes Crater Lake one of the most beautiful spots in America. [6]
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