8 . 
and the world be shut out. The clouds would go scurrying past in 
streaks and patches, hurried along by the Wind. At one time the fog 
settled down into the basin completely filling it while above it was 
clear and beautiful. Standing on the brink of this cavity I gazed 
pf 
down on the smoky mass impeatable to the eye and realized for once 
I was above the clouds. Thoreau had an experience so nearly like my 
own that I quote his account of it. 
“At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which 
seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone, 
but was generated out of thatpure air as fast as it flowed away; and 
when,a quarter of a mile farther I reached the summit of the ridge, 
which those who have seen in clearer weather/say is about five miles 
long, and contains a thousand acres of table-land, I was deep within 
the hostile ranks of the clouds, and all objects were obscured by them 
Now the wind would blow me out a yard of clear sunlight, wherein I 
stood; then a gray, dawning light was all it could accomplish, the 
cloud line.ever rising and falling ifrith the winds intensity. Some 
times it seemed as if the summit would be cleared in a few moments, 
and smile in sunshine $ but what was gained on one side was lost on .an¬ 
other. It was like sitting in a chimney and waiting for the shake 
to blow away. It was, in fact a cloud factory; these were the cloud 
works, and the wind turned them off done^ from the cool, bare rocks/' 
