. In front of me, right over the top of the
forest into which I was descending, was a vast cloud. The front of it
accurately represented the somewhat rugged, long-nosed, and
beetle-browed profile of a man, crowned by a huge Kalmuck cap; the flesh
part was of a heavenly pink, the cap, the moustache, the eyebrows were
of a bluish grey; to see this with its childish exactitude of design and
colour, and hugeness of scale--it covered at least 25 deg.--held me
spell-bound. As I continued to gaze, the expression began to change; he
had the exact air of closing one eye, dropping his jaw, and drawing down
his nose; had the thing not been so imposing, I could have smiled; and
then almost in a moment, a shoulder of leaden-coloured bank drove in
front and blotted it. My attention spread to the rest of the cloud, and
it was a thing to worship. It rose from the horizon, and its top was
within thirty degrees of the zenith; the lower parts were like a glacier
in shadow, varying from dark indigo to a clouded white in exquisite
gradations. The sky behind, so far as I could see, was all of a blue
already enriched and darkened by the night, for the hill had what
lingered of the sunset. But the top of my Titanic cloud flamed in broad
sunlight, with the most excellent softness and brightness of fire and
jewels, enlightening all the world. It must have been far higher than
Mount Everest, and its glory, as I gazed up at it out of the night, was
beyond wonder. Close by rode the little crescent moon; and right over
its western horn, a great planet of about equal lustre with itself. The
dark woods below were shrill with that noisy business of the birds'
evening worship. When I returned, after eight, the moon was near down;
she seemed little brighter than before, but now that the cloud no longer
played its part of a nocturnal sun, we could see that sight, so rare
with us at home that it was counted a portent, so customary in the
tropics, of the dark sphere with its little gilt band upon the belly.
The planet had been setting faster, and was now below the crescent. They
were still of an equal brightness.

I could not resist trying to reproduce this in words, as a specimen of
these incredibly beautiful and imposing meteors of the tropic sky that
make so much of my pleasure here; though a ship's deck is the place to
enjoy them. O what _awful_ scenery, from a ship's deck, in the tropics!
People talk about the Alps, but the clouds of the trade wind are