. Graceful vines and creepers festoon
themselves from bough to bough. The air is fragrant with the scent
of flowers. Bright butterflies flutter noiselessly about. The soft purr
of forest life drones around. Rays from the setting sun slant across
the scene. The leaves in their freshest green and of every shade
glitter like emeralds in the brilliant light.

Through the trunks of the stately trees and under their overarching
boughs we look out towards the snowy mountains. We look over the
brink of the spur, down into the deeps of the valleys richly filled
with tropical vegetation, their eastward-facing sides now of purplest
purple, their westward-facing slopes radiant in the evening sunshine,
with the full richness of their foliage shown up by the dazzling light.
Far below we see the silver streak of some foaming river, and then
as we raise our eyes we mark ridge rising behind ridge, higher and
higher and each of a deeper shade of purple than the one in front.
The lower are still clothed in forest, but the green has been merged
in the deep purple of the atmosphere. The higher are bare rock till
the snow appears. But just across them floats a long level wisp of
fleecy cloud, and apparently the limits of earth have been reached
and sky has begun. We would rest content with that. But our eyes
are drawn higher still. And high above the cloud, and rendered
inconceivably higher by its presence, emerges the snowy summit of
Kinchinjunga, serene and calm and flushed with the rose of the
setting sun. As a background is a sky of the clearest, bluest blue.

These are the chief elements of the scene, but all is in process of
incessant yet imperceptible change. The sunshine slowly softens, the
purples deepen, the flush on the mountains reddens. The air
becomes as soft as velvet. Not a leaf now stirs. A holy peace steals
over the mountains and settles in the valleys. The snow mountains
no longer look cold, hard, and austere. Their purity remains as true
as ever. And they still possess their uplifting power. But they now
speak of serenity and calm--not, indeed, of the unsatisfying ease of
the slothful, but of the earned repose of high attainment. Great peace
is about them--deep, strong, satisfying peace.

The sun finally sets. Night has settled in the valleys. The lights of
Darjiling sparkle in the darkness. But long afterwards a glow still
remains on Kinchinjunga. Lastly that also fades away. And now
night spreads her veil on every pa