And while I was yet
doubting, a promontory of the some four or five miles away,
conspicuous by a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant
overtaken and swallowed up. It reappeared in a little, with its
pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be swallowed up once
more and then for good. This set me looking nearer, and I saw that
in every cove along the line of mountains the fog was being piled
in higher and higher, as though by some wind that was inaudible to
me. I could trace its progress, one pine tree first growing hazy
and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there was
none of this fore-running haze, but the whole opaque white ocean
gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was
to flee these poisonous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and
climbed so high among the mountains. And now, behold, here came
the fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came so
beautifully that my first thought was of welcome.
The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the
hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle,
or some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over
the nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as
if to look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with
terror, for the eyries of her comrades.
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