SNOW, AND QUALITY OF WHITENESS 111 



purples, and reds of other kinds. In the same 

 way the whiteness of the largest masses of white 

 clouds has no more of supernaturalness to the 

 mind than the blueness of the sky and the green- 

 ness of vegetation. Again, on still hot days on the 

 pampas the level earth is often seen glittering 

 with the silver whiteness of the mirage ; and this 

 is also a common natural appearance to the mind, 

 like the whiteness of summer clouds, of sea foam, 

 and of flowers. 



From all these examples, and many others 

 might be added, it seems evident that the "illusive 

 something," which Melville found in the inner- 

 most idea of this hue a something that strikes 

 more of panic to the soul than the redness which 

 affrights in blood does not reside in the quality 

 of whiteness itself. 



After making this initial mistake, he proceeds 

 to name all those natural objects which, being 

 white, produce in us the various sensations he 

 mentions, mysterious and ghostly, and in various 

 ways unpleasant and painful. What is it, he asks, 

 that in the albino so peculiarly repels and shocks 

 the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his 

 own kith and kin? He has a great deal to say of 

 the polar bear, and the white shark of the tropical 

 seas, and concludes that it is their whiteness that 

 makes them so much more terrible to us than 

 other savage rapacious creatures that are dan- 

 gerous to man. He speaks of the muffled rolling 

 of a milky sea; the rustlings of the festooned 



