The look of the thing helped me. And when at last I began
to flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from the
raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part in play.
As I ascended the mountain-side, I came once more to overlook the
upper surface of the fog; but it wore a different appearance from
what I had beheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on it
from high overhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a
great nor'land moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow.
And next the new level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred
feet higher than the old, so that only five or six points of all
the broken country below me, still stood out. Napa valley was now
one with Sonoma on the west. On the hither side, only a thin
scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the
gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean, into the blue clear
sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for it fell
instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the water-shed;
and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon the
eastern sky.
Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges on the other
side, the deluge was immense. A spray of thin vapour was thrown
high above it, rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes.
The speed of its course was like a mountain torrent.
Pages:
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92