102 



THE DESERT 



Cumuli. 



Heap clouds 

 at sunset. 



Strati. 



mountains turn slate-colored, mouldy, unwhole- 

 some looking. A mantle of drab envelops the 

 scene, and the glory of the desert has departed. 



All the other cloud-forms, being more or less 

 transparent, seem to aid rather than to obscure 

 the splendor of the sky. The most common 

 clouds of all are the cumuli. In hot summer 

 afternoons they gather and heap up in huge 

 masses with turrets and domes of light that reach 

 at times forty thousand feet above the earth. 

 At sunset they begin to show color before any 

 of the other clouds. If seen against the sun 

 their edges at first gleam silver-white and then 

 change to gold ; if along the horizon to the 

 north or south, or lying back in the eastern sky, 

 they show dazzling white like a snowy Alp. 

 As the sun disappears below the line they begin 

 to warm in color, turning yellow, pink, and rose. 

 Finally they darken into lilac and purple, then 

 sink and disappear entirely. The smaller forms 

 of cumulus that appear in the west at evening 

 are always splashes of sunset color, sometimes 

 being shot through with yellow or scarlet. They 

 ultimately appear floating against the night sky 

 as spots of purple and gray. 



Above the cumuli and often flung across them 

 like bands of gauze, are the strati clouds of 



