[The Lake of the Sky by George Wharton James]@TWC D-Link book
The Lake of the Sky

CHAPTER XVIII
9/14

This is the only resort on that side of Lake Tahoe.

Once the scene of an active, busy, lumber town, where great mills daily turned out hundreds of thousands of feet of timber for the mines of Virginia City and the building up of the great historic mining-camps of Nevada, the magic of change and of modern improvements has swept away every sign of these earlier activities and left Glenbrook a quiet, delightful, restful resort, nestling in its own wide and expansive meadows at the foot of towering mountains that give a rich and contrasting background for the perennial beauty of the Lake.
Practically all that remains to remind one of the old days are the remnants of the logging piers and cribs, the school-house, the quiet "City of Those who are Gone," and further up the hills, the old railroad grade on which the logs were carried to the mill and the lumber taken through the tunnel, which still remains, to the flume by which it was further conveyed to the railroad at Carson City.
Immediately to the right of Glenbrook, as the steamer heads for the wharf, can be seen the celebrated Shakspeare Rock.

John Vance Cheney, the poet, thus describes it: No sooner had the steamer been made fast than a ledge of rocks was pointed out to us, rising precipitously some distance from the pier.

"Can't you see it ?" again and again asked our guide, renewing his endeavor to dispel our distressing stupidity.
At length "it" appeared to us, and we stood mute with astonishment.

There, on the front of a bold cliff, graven with all the care of the best copies with which we are familiar, looked down upon us the face of Shakspeare! As if in remembrance of her favorite son, here in this far wild region, nature had caused his features, cut in everlasting rock, to be hung on high, a fitting symbol of his intellectual sovereignty over the world.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books