plants do we find anything flabby or dropsical.

In September clear days were rare, more than three fourths of them
were either decidedly cloudy or rainy, and the rains of this month
were, with one wild exception, only moderately heavy, and the clouds
between showers drooped and crawled in a ragged, unsettled way
without betraying hints of violence such as one often sees in the
gestures of mountain storm-clouds.

July was the brightest month of the summer, with fourteen days of
sunshine, six of them in uninterrupted succession, with a temperature
at 7 A.M. of about 60 degrees, at 12 M., 70 degrees. The average 7 A.M.
temperature for June was 54.3 degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature
for July was 55.3 degrees; at 12 M. the average temperature was 61.45
degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature for August was 54.12 degrees;
12 M., 61.48 degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature for September was
52.14 degrees; and 12 M., 56.12 degrees.

The highest temperature observed here during the summer was
seventy-six degrees. The most remarkable characteristic of this
summer weather, even the brightest of it, is the velvet softness
of the atmosphere. On the mountains of California, throughout the
greater part of the year, the presence of an atmosphere is hardly
recognized, and the thin, white, bodiless light of the morning comes
to the peaks and glaciers as a pure spiritual essence, the most
impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. The clearest
of Alaskan air is always appreciably substantial, so much so that it
would seem as if one might test its quality by rubbing it between the
thumb and finger. I never before saw summer days so white and so full
of subdued lustre.