Before We Could Turn,
There Was The Gorge Of Caribou Pass, Savage And Dark, Visible To The
Bottom.
The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking over the
clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable Valley,
and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinel
mountains about the grave of John Brown.
These glimpses were as
fleeting as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the sea
of mist. The expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity kept
us exultingly on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise when
the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge of
Colvin, seemingly within a stone's throw, heaved up like an island
out of the ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longer
for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening sides of rock
gashed by avalanches. The fantastic clouds, torn and streaming,
hurried up from the south in haste as if to a witch's rendezvous,
hiding and disclosing the great summit in their flight. The mist
boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit where we stood,
and plunged again into the depths. Objects were forming and
disappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog,
and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in an
original process of creation. The sun strove, and his very striving
called up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought new
masses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, above
and below, changed with incredible swiftness.
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