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.
The day had been showery, but late in
the afternoon the clouds melted away from the west, all save a few
that settled down in narrow level bars near the horizon.
The evening
was calm and the sunset colors came on gradually, increasing in
extent and richness of tone by slow degrees as if requiring more time
than usual to ripen. At a height of about thirty degrees there was a
heavy cloud-bank, deeply reddened on its lower edge and the
projecting parts of its face. Below this were three horizontal belts
of purple edged with gold, while a vividly defined, spreading fan of
flame streamed upward across the purple bars and faded in a feather
edge of dull red. But beautiful and impressive as was this painting
on the sky, the most novel and exciting effect was in the body of the
atmosphere itself, which, laden with moisture, became one mass of
color - a fine translucent purple haze in which the islands with
softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around
the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks, too, in the
distance, and the snow-fields and glaciers and fleecy rolls of mist
that lay in the hollows, were flushed with a deep, rosy alpenglow of
ineffable loveliness.
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