Aspects of the Valley. 55 
festival and rejoicing—the day when peace was 
made, when our love was returned, when 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 the 
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 
