Story about the 16 lakes

...Water is synonym for life, for prosperity, and here in the stony reality of Plitvice it is a miracle and a builder. Water gives health, it renews and changes, it is the first mother of the grass, the flowers and the forest, of everything that burgeons and grows, everything that multiplies, of everything that lives in these, as they were called, "devils gardens" on the border between what once were inaccessible forests and impassable chams, for "where water is, no tears are needed", as the first inhabitants of the area consoled themselves.

The well-known legend of the Black Queen, a folk tale about the coming of the water in the Plitvice region, was given literary shape back in 1888. The story originated as part of oral tradition among the hard-used people of this "bulwark of Christianity", in the time of the batles with the might of the Ottomans, after famine, drought, misfortune and the sufferings of war. The Black Queen, goes the legend, begged rain for them , started off the water courses and gathered all that might of water up in the lakes. The Black River, the Black Peak, the Black Queen - reality and myth. The water from the Prošćansko Lake flowed because of a "prayer" (phonetically related to the name of the lake), for the salvation of life over all the falls and lakes to the course of the River Korana. The Queen's Palace and Gavan's Treasure vanished, and up sprouted little wooden mills, and villages, and the hotel palaces above the water and the falls. And people came, to wonder at the Lakes, to praise them, revel in them, live from them...