Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1896 — A Blood-Red Lake. [ARTICLE]

A Blood-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 p<c-uliar freak is attributed to a disposition to celebrate the slaughter of the Burgundians under Charles the Bold on June 21, 1476. But the French say 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! silures. 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. Asa 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 Burgundian soldiers of the victorious armies of the Republic in 1798 so much that they destroyed the monuments 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 the naturalists oscillatoria rubescens. The most 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.—Boston Transcript