Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1896 — A Blooded-Red Lake. [ARTICLE]

A Blooded-Red Lake.

Lake Morat, in Switzerland, has a queer habit of turning red about two or three times every ten years. It is a pretty lake, like most of the sheets of water in that picturesque country, and its peculiar freak is attributed to a disposition to celebrate the slaughter of Burgundians under Charles the Bold on June 21, 1476. But the French say that it blushes for the conduct of the Swiss, who In that battle gave the Burgundians no quarter. This year it was redder than ever, and had a sinister appearance when the setting sun illuminated its waves. This phenomenon, of course, has its legend. The old .fishermen of the lake, who catch enormous fish called sllures that weigh between twenty-five and forty kilograms, say when they see the waters of the lake reddening that It is the blood of the Burgundians. As a matter of fact, some of the bodies of the Burgundians killed in the battle were thrown Into the lake, while others were tossed into a grave filled with quicklime. This historical recollection

angered the Burgundians soldiers of the victorious armies of the republic in 1798 so much that they destroyed the monument raised in- honor of their compatriots who fell heroically in that battle, and Henri Martin very justly reproached them for that piece of vandalism. It would hardly do to attribute the reddening of the waters of the lake to the blood of the soldiers of Charles the Bold. The coloring is due simply to the presence In large quantities of little aquatic plants called by nafara,lists oscillatoria rubescens. The curious thing about it is that Lake Morat Is the only lake in which this curious growth Is developed, and this peculiarity is beginning to Interest scientific men.—New York Sun.