Aspects of the ]\illcy. 55 



festival and rejoicing — tlie day when peace was 

 made, wlien our love was returned, wlien a child 

 was born to us. Such sights are like certain 

 sounds, that not only delight us with their pure and 

 beautiful quality, but wake in us feelings that we 

 cannot fathom nor analyze. They are familiar, 

 yet stranger than the strangest things, with a beauty 

 that is not of the earth, as if a loved friend, long 

 dead, had unexpectedly looked back to us from 

 heaven, transfigured. It strikes me as strange 

 that, so far as we know, the Incas were the only 

 worshippers of the rainbow. 



One evening in the autumn of the year, near tlie 

 town, I was witness of an extraordinary and very 

 magnificent sunset effect. The sky was clear 

 except for a few masses of cloud low down in 

 the west ; and these, some time after the sun had 

 disappeared, assumed more vivid and glowing- 

 colours, while the pale yellow sky beyond became 

 more luminous and flame-like. All at once, as I 

 stood not far from the bank, looking westward 

 across the river, the water changed from green to 

 an intense crimson hue, this extending on both 

 hands as far as I could see. The tide was running- 

 out, and in the middle of the river, where the sur- 

 face was roughened into waves by the current, it 

 quivered and sparkled like crimson flame, while 

 near the opposite shore, where rows of tall Lombardy 

 poplars threw their shadow on the surface, it was 

 violet-coloured. This appearance lasted for five or 

 six minutes, then the crimson colour grew darker 



