People say that Tahoe means "silver lake"--"limpid water"--"falling leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger tribe,--and of the Paiutes as well. It isn't worthwhile, in these practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have camped with the Indians;I have been on the warpath with them, taken part in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance.
But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the lakes.
Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the center, by the state geologist's measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand feet high, but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is--a good honest lie.