278 Professor S. P. Langley [April 17, 



The air was wonclerfuUy clear, so that the sun set in a yellow 

 rather than an orange sky, which was reflected in the little ice- 

 rimmed lakes and from occasional snow-fields on the distant waste of 

 lonely mountain summits on the west. 



The mule train sent off before by another route, had not arrived 

 when we got to the mountain camp, and w^e realised that we were far 

 from the aj^pliances of civilisation by our inability to learn about 

 our chief apparatus, for here, without post or telegraph, we were as 

 completely cut off from all knowledge of what might be going on 

 with it in the next mountain ravine as a ship at sea is of the fate of 

 a vessel that sailed before from the same port. During the enforced 

 idleness we ascended the peak nearly 3000 feet above us, with our 

 lighter aj^paratus, leaving the question of the ultimate use of the 

 heavy ones to be settled later. There seemed little prospect of 

 carrying it uj), as we climbed where the granite walls had been split 

 by the earthquakes, letting a stream of great rocks, like a stone river, 

 flow down through the interstices by which we ascended, and, in 

 fact, the heavier apparatus was not carried above the mountain camp. 



The view from the very summit was over numberless peaks on 

 the west to an horizon fifty miles away, of unknown mountain-tops, 

 for, with the exception of the vast ridge of Mount Tyndall, and 

 one or two less conspicuous ones, these summits are not known to 

 fame, and, wonderful as the view may be, all the charm of association 

 with human interest which we find in the mountain landscape of older 

 lands is here lacking. 



It was impossible not to be impressed with the savage solitude of 



this desert of the upper air, and our remoteness from man and his 



works, but I turned to the study of the special things connected with 



my mission. Down far below the air seemed filled with reddish dust 



that looked like an ocean. This dust is really present everywhere (I 



have found it in the clear air of Etna), and though we do not realise 



its presence in looking up through it, to one who looks down on it, 



the dwellers on the earth seem indeed like creatures at the bottom of 



a troubled ocean. We had certainly risen towards the surface, for 



about us the air was of exquisite purity, and above us the sky was of 



such a deep violet blue, as I have never seen in Egypt or Sicily, and 



yet even this was not absolutely pure, for separately invisible, the 



existence of fine particles could yet be inferred from their action on 



the liglit near the sun's edge, so that even here we had not got 



absolutely above that dust shell which seems to encircle our whole 



planet. But we certainly felt ourselves not only in an upper, but a 



diflcrent region. We were on the ridge of the continent, and the 



winds which tore by had little in common with the air below, and 



were bearing past us (according to the geologists) dust which had 



once formed part of the soil of China, and been carried across the 



Pacific Ocean ; for here we were lifted into the great encircling 



currents of the globe, and, "near to the sun in lonely lands," were 



ill the right conditions to study the differences between his rays at 



