86 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



ever doing justice to the heavenly colouring with the 

 poor and limited pigments of earth ? I do not wish 

 to dogmatize upon so much vexed a question, but I 

 sincerely put this suggestion forward as a possible 

 solution. Since their day artists, greatly daring, have 

 endeavoured to fix upon canvas their impressions of 

 the amazing beauty of the sky, and some of their 

 pictures are marvellously beautiful ; but even the best 

 of them, while filling us with admiration for the power 

 of the artist, leave us always, as they leave their 

 creator, with a sense of something impossible of attain* 

 ment, a great falling short of the true portrayal of 

 Nature's loveliness. Then after the beautiful con- 

 sider the terrible the storm-cloud, the appearance 

 of the sky before a hurricane, with its lurid glow 

 as of a mixture of molten metals, and the infinite 

 network of vari-coloured lightnings threading the 

 swart masses. Many artists have drawn upon their 

 imaginations for the reproduction of what they con- 

 sider the infernal regions to be like ; but all of them 

 fall very short of the reality of the hurricane sky, 

 which, only to witness, fills the stoutest soul with an 

 indefinite dread. 



But while I cannot deem it necessary to apologize 

 for thus dwelling at first upon the picturesque and 

 aesthetic side of Cloudland, I think it is time to turn 

 to the natural use and development of these beautiful 

 adjuncts and auxiliaries to the mighty work of the 

 ocean. First of all, let us consider the most common, 

 as well as the most beautiful, form of cloud, the 

 cumulus. Like a vast and continually changing 

 mass of wool of the whiteness of snow, this lovely form 

 of cloud goes sailing placidly across the deep blue 



