94 KINCHINJUNGA 



the very faintest essence of the rose, the violet^ and 

 the forget-me-not. And we view the distant 

 mountains through an atmospheric veil which has 

 the strange property of reveaUng instead of hiding 

 the real nature of the object before which it stands. 

 It does not conceal the mountains. It reveals 

 them in their real nature — the spiritual. Each 

 country has an atmosphere of its own. There is 

 a blue of the Alps, a blue of Italy, a blue of Greece, 

 and a blue of Kashmir. The blue of the Sikkim 

 Himalaya, perhaps on account of the excessive 

 amount of moisture in the air, has a special quality 

 of its own. It seems to me to have more colour in 

 it — a fuller colour, a bluer blue, a purpler purple 

 than the atmosphere of these other countries. 

 From this cause and from the greater brilliance of 

 the sun there is a more satisfying warmth even in 

 the snows. 



So besides beauty in the form of the mountains 

 there is this exquisite loveliness of colour. In the 

 immediate foreground are greens, fresh and shin- 

 ing and of every tint. And these shade away into 

 deep purples and violets of the supporting ranges, 

 and these again into those most delicate hues of the 

 snows which vary according to the time of day, 

 from decided rose-pink in th!e early morning and 

 evening to, perhaps, faintest blue or violet in the 

 full day. And over aU and as a background is a 

 sky of the intensest blue. What these colours are 

 it is impossible to describe in words, for even the 

 violet, the rose, and the forget-me-not have not 

 the delicacy which these colours in the atmosphere 

 possess. And assuredly no painter could do them 



