green promontories, wooded with stately pines, stood out one
beyond another in a medium of dark rich blue, while grey bleached
summits, peaked, turreted, and snow slashed, were piled above
them, gleaming with amber light. Darker grew the blue gloom, the
dew fell heavily, aromatic odors floated on the air, and still
the lofty peaks glowed with living light, till in one second it
died off from them, leaving them with the ashy paleness of a dead
face. It was dark and cold under the mountain shadows, the
frosty chill of the high altitude wrapped me round, the solitude
was overwhelming, and I reluctantly turned my horse's head
towards Truckee, often looking back to the ashy summits in their
unearthly fascination. Eastwards the look of the scenery was
changing every moment, while the lake for long remained "one
burnished sheet of living gold," and Truckee lay utterly out of
sight in a hollow filled with lake and cobalt. Before long a
carnival of color began which I can only describe as delirious,
intoxicating, a hardly bearable joy, a tender anguish, an
indescribable yearning, an unearthly music, rich in love and
worship. It lasted considerably more than an hour, and though
the road was growing very dark, and the train which was to take
me thence was fast climbing the Sierras, I could not ride faster
than a walk.

The eastward mountains, which had been grey, blushed pale pink,
the pink deepened into rose, and the rose into crimson, and then
all solidity etherealized away and became clear and pure as an
amethyst, while all the waving ranges and the broken pine-clothed
ridges below etherealized too, but into a dark rich blue, and a
strange effect of atmosphere blended the whole into one perfect
picture. It changed, deepened, reddened, melted, growing more