C 84 ] 



SUNSET ON THE RIVER 



September 6, 1854. There are many clouds about 

 and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish (dunnish?) 

 golden sky, between them in the horizon, looking 

 up the river. The beauty of the sunset is doubled 

 by the reflection. Being on the water we have double 

 the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and 

 beneath. The reflected sky is more dun and richer 

 than the real one. Take a glorious sunset sky and 

 double it, so that it shall extend downward beneath 

 the horizon as much as above it, blotting out the 

 earth, and let the lowest half be of the deepest tint, 

 and every beauty more than before insisted on, and 

 you seem withal to be floating directly into it. It 

 was in harmony with this fair evening that we were 

 not walking or riding with dust and noise through 

 it, but moved by a paddle without a jar over the 

 liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly 

 toward those islands of the blessed which we call 

 clouds in the sunset sky. 



Journal, vii, 19. 



