A NOTABLE SUNSET. 373 



hue, that for the moment so thoroughly obliterated every trace of 

 their native ruggedness, that our companion prettily observed, 

 " Haven't you the idea, sir, as I have, that if one were only near 

 enough these beautiful mountains to pat them lovingly with the 

 hand, they would feel to the touch soft and warm as a roll of 

 velvet 1" a thought, unconsciously perhaps, tinged with poetry, 

 though the woman pure and simple comes out very unmistakeably 

 in the reference to the " roll of velvet." In the far background, 

 thirty miles away, rose the glory and pride of Mull (Blackie's 

 favourite island of all the Hebrides), the huge mountains of Benmore 

 and Ben-na-Bairnich, their base and middle zones ink-black, their 

 shoulders dark orange, here and there curiously streaked with 

 threads of pearly light, their summits and sloping ridges fringed 

 with living fire. Above, the whole western heavens was full of 

 vast continents, peninsulas, isthmuses, and islands of cloud, all afire 

 at their edges, with firths, ferries, and Mediterraneans of liquid 

 gold between. As the full-orbed sun, fiery and red, slowly sank to 

 the horizon, the clouds were rent asunder as if by the very 

 excellency of the glory that beat upon them ; some of them 

 assuming fantastic shapes, in which a lively imagination had no 

 difficulty in tracing striking resemblances to the hugest animals of 

 our own and past ages, a monster saurian in sharply defined 

 silhouette, being so marvellously outlined that our fair companion 

 sketched it on the spot, as a memento of a sunset that neither of us 

 is likely ever to forget. As the sun's lower limb seemed just to 

 touch and rest an instant on the highest peak of the Kingerloch 

 range, a large mass of cloud immediately above him rapidly assumed 

 a columnar shape, perpendicular to the plane of the horizon, and, as 

 the splendid orb dipped and disappeared, this huge "pillar of 

 cloud" became a perfect Ionic column, sharply outlined, and 

 admirably correct in all its proportions from base to entablature, 

 and all aglow with living fire; shaft and pediment with richest 



