on ft* 



until about one o'clock. While they lasted, my 

 eyes pained, ached, and twitched. There was no 

 tlare, but only by keeping my eyes closed could 

 / stand the half-burning pain. Finally I came to 

 some crags and lay down for a time in the shade. 

 I was up eleven thousand five hundred feet and 

 the time was 1 2.20. As I lay on the snow gazing 

 upward, I became aware that there were several 

 flotillas of clouds of from seven to twenty each, 

 and these were moving toward every point of 

 the compass. Each seemed on a different stra- 

 tum of air, and each moved through space a con- 

 siderable distance above or below the others. 

 The clouds moving eastward were the highest. 

 Most of the lower clouds were those moving 

 westward. The haze and sunlight gave color to 

 every cloud, and this color varied from smoky 

 red to orange. 



At two o'clock the haze came in from the east 

 almost as dense as a fog-bank, crossed the ridge 

 before me, and spread out as dark and foreboding 

 as the smoke of Vesuvius. Behind me the haze 

 rolled upward when it struck the ridge, and I 

 had clear glimpses whenever I looked to the 



85 



