As The Day Advances Toward High Noon, The Sun-Flood Streaming Through
The Damp Atmosphere Lights The Water Levels And The Sky To Glowing
Silver.
Brightly play the ripples about the bushy edges of the
islands and on the plume-shaped streaks between them, ruffled by
gentle passing wind-currents.
The warm air throbs and makes itself
felt as a life-giving, energizing ocean, embracing all the landscape,
quickening the imagination, and bringing to mind the life and motion
about us - the tides, the rivers, the flood of light streaming through
the satiny sky; the marvelous abundance of fishes feeding in the
lower ocean; the misty flocks of insects in the air; wild sheep and
goats on a thousand grassy ridges; beaver and mink far back on many a
rushing stream; Indians floating and basking along the shores; leaves
and crystals drinking the sunbeams; and glaciers on the mountains,
making valleys and basins for new rivers and lakes and fertile beds
of soil.
Through the afternoon, all the way down to the sunset, the day grows
in beauty. The light seems to thicken and become yet more generously
fruitful without losing its soft mellow brightness. Everything seems
to settle into conscious repose. The winds breathe gently or are
wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy and luminous and
combed out fine on the edges. Gulls here and there, winnowing the
air on easy wing, are brought into striking relief; and every stroke
of the paddles of Indian hunters in their canoes is told by a quick,
glancing flash. Bird choirs in the grove are scarce heard as they
sweeten the brooding stillness; and the sky, land, and water meet and
blend in one inseparable scene of enchantment. Then comes the sunset
with its purple and gold, not a narrow arch on the horizon, but
oftentimes filling all the sky. The level cloud-bars usually present
are fired on the edges, and the spaces of clear sky between them are
greenish-yellow or pale amber, while the orderly flocks of small
overlapping clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly touched with
crimson like the out-leaning sprays of maple-groves in the beginning
of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes the sky to
the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and transfiguring the
islands and making all the water look like wine. After the sun goes
down, the glowing gold vanishes, but because it descends on a curve
nearly in the same plane with the horizon, the glowing portion of the
display lasts much longer than in more southern latitudes, while the
upper colors with gradually lessening intensity of tone sweep around
to the north, gradually increase to the eastward, and unite with
those of the morning.
The most extravagantly colored of all the sunsets I have yet seen in
Alaska was one I enjoyed on the voyage from Portland to Wrangell,
when we were in the midst of one of the most thickly islanded parts
of the Alexander Archipelago.
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