quietly round the lake side, and asked of your own brains and of
Nature the question, "How did this lake come here? What does it
mean?"

It is a hole in the earth. True, but how was the hole made? There
must have been huge forces at work to form such a chasm. Probably
the mountain was actually opened from within by an earthquake; and
when the strata fell together again, the portion at either end of
the chasm, being perhaps crushed together with greater force,
remained higher than the centre, and so the water lodged between
them. Perhaps it was formed thus. You will at least agree that
its formation must have been a grand sight enough, and one during
which a spectator would have had some difficulty in keeping his
footing.

And when you learn that this convulsion probably took plus at the
bottom of an ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago, you have at
least a few thoughts over which to ruminate, which will make you at
once too busy to grumble, and ashamed to grumble.

Yet, after all, I hardly think the lake was formed in this way, and
suspect that it may have been dry for ages after it emerged from
the primeval waves, and Snowdonia was a palm-fringed island in a
tropic sea. Let us look the place over more fully.

You see the lake is nearly circular; on the side where we stand the
pebbly beach is not six feet above the water, and slopes away
steeply into the valley behind us, while before us it shelves
gradually into the lake; forty yards out, as you know, there is not
ten feet water; and then a steep bank, the edge whereof we and the