setting.  The very first glance lifts one’s soul above the petty cares of the lower valleys, and one feels the significance of the Indian title—­’Big Water’—­not referring to size alone, but to the greatness of influence, just as the all-pervading Power is the ‘Big Spirit.’”

One would naturally think that there had been changes enough.  But no!  In spite of the fact that the Federal government had accepted the change to Tahoe, and that the popular usage had signified the general approval of the name, the Hon. W.A.  King, of Nevada County, during the Governorship of Haight, in California, introduced into the assembly a bill declaring that Lake Bigler should be “the official name of the said lake and the only name to be regarded as legal in official documents, deeds, conveyances, leases and other instruments of writing to be placed on state or county records, or used in reports made by state, county or municipal officers.”

Historian Hittell thus comments on this:  “The bill, which appears to have been well modulated to the taste and feelings of the legislature, went through with great success.  It passed the Assembly on February 1, the Senate on February 7; and on February 10 it was approved by the Governor.  It remains a monument, if not to Bigler, at least to the legislature that passed it; while the name of the Lake will doubtless continue to be Tahoe and its sometime former designation of Bigler be forgotten.”

Now if Mark Twain really objected to the name Tahoe why did he not join the Biglerites and insist upon the preservation of that name?

On the Centennial Map of 1876 it was named “Lake Bigler or Lake Tahoe,” showing that some one evidently was aware that, officially, it was still Lake Bigler.

And so, in fact, it is to this date, as far as official action can make it so, and it is interesting to conjecture what the results might be were some malicious person, or some “legal-minded stickler for rigid adherence to the law,” to bring suit against those whose deeds, titles, leases, or other documents declare it to be Lake Tahoe.

CHAPTER VI

JOHN LE CONTE’S PHYSICAL STUDIES OF LAKE TAHOE

In certain numbers (November and December 1883 and January 1884) of the Overland Monthly, Professor John Le Conte, of the State University, Berkeley, California, presented the results of his physical studies of Lake Tahoe in three elaborate chapters.  From these the following quotations of general interest are taken: 

Hundreds of Alpine lakes of various sizes, with their clear, deep, cold, emerald or azure waters, are embosomed among the crags of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  The most extensive, as well as the most celebrated, of these bodies of fresh water is Lake Tahoe.

This Lake, ... occupies an elevated valley at a point where the Sierra Nevada divides