rimeval forest to its very
summit, and now suffused with rosy light from the sun, already hidden
from us by a low ridge in the west, was reproduced in the void below us.
The shadow of the western ridge began to climb the opposite bluffs of
the lake shore. We pulled well out into the lake and lay on our oars. If
anything was said, I do not remember it. I was as one who had just heard
words from the dead, and hears as prattle all the sounds of common life.
My eyes, my ears, were opened anew to Nature, and it seemed even as if
some new sense had been given me. I felt, as I never felt before, the
cool gloom of the shadow creep up, ridge after ridge, towards the
solitary peak, irresistibly and triumphantly encroaching on the light,
which fought back towards the summit, where it must yield at last. It
drew back over ravines and gorges, over the wildernesses of unbroken
firs which covered all the upper portion of the mountain, deepening its
rose-tint and gaining in intensity what it lost in expanse,--diminished
to a handbreadth, to a point, and, flickering an instant, went out,
leaving in the whole range of vision no speck of sunlight to relieve the
wilderness of shadowy gloom. I had come under a spell,--for, often as I
had seen the sun set in the mountains and over the lakes, I had never
before felt as I now felt, that I was a part in the landscape, and that
it was something more to me than rocks and trees. The sunlight had died
on it. J. took up the oars and our silently-moving boat broke the glassy
surface again. All around us no distinction was visible between the
landscape above and that below, no water-line could be found; and to the
west, where the sky was still glowing and golden, with faint bands of
crimson cirrus swept across the deep and tremulous blue, growing purple
as the sun sank lower, we could distinguish nothing in the landscape.
Neither sound nor motion of animate or inanimate thing disturbed the
scene, save that of the oars, with the long lines of blue which ran off
from the wake of the boat into the mystery closing behind us. A
rifle-shot rang out from the landing and rolled in multitudinous echoes
around the lake, dying away in faintest thunders and murmurings from the
ravines on the side of the mountain. It was the call to supper, and we
pulled back to the light of the fire, which was now glimmering through
the trees from the front of the camp.

Supper over, the smokers lighted their pipes and a rambling