Through The Afternoon, All The Way Down To The Sunset, The Day Grows
In Beauty.
The light seems to thicken and become yet more generously
fruitful without losing its soft mellow brightness.
Everything seems
to settle into conscious repose. The winds breathe gently or are
wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy and luminous and
combed out fine on the edges. Gulls here and there, winnowing the
air on easy wing, are brought into striking relief; and every stroke
of the paddles of Indian hunters in their canoes is told by a quick,
glancing flash. Bird choirs in the grove are scarce heard as they
sweeten the brooding stillness; and the sky, land, and water meet and
blend in one inseparable scene of enchantment. Then comes the sunset
with its purple and gold, not a narrow arch on the horizon, but
oftentimes filling all the sky. The level cloud-bars usually present
are fired on the edges, and the spaces of clear sky between them are
greenish-yellow or pale amber, while the orderly flocks of small
overlapping clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly touched with
crimson like the out-leaning sprays of maple-groves in the beginning
of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes the sky to
the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and transfiguring the
islands and making all the water look like wine. After the sun goes
down, the glowing gold vanishes, but because it descends on a curve
nearly in the same plane with the horizon, the glowing portion of the
display lasts much longer than in more southern latitudes, while the
upper colors with gradually lessening intensity of tone sweep around
to the north, gradually increase to the eastward, and unite with
those of the morning.
The most extravagantly colored of all the sunsets I have yet seen in
Alaska was one I enjoyed on the voyage from Portland to Wrangell,
when we were in the midst of one of the most thickly islanded parts
of the Alexander Archipelago. The day had been showery, but late in
the afternoon the clouds melted away from the west, all save a few
that settled down in narrow level bars near the horizon. The evening
was calm and the sunset colors came on gradually, increasing in
extent and richness of tone by slow degrees as if requiring more time
than usual to ripen. At a height of about thirty degrees there was a
heavy cloud-bank, deeply reddened on its lower edge and the
projecting parts of its face. Below this were three horizontal belts
of purple edged with gold, while a vividly defined, spreading fan of
flame streamed upward across the purple bars and faded in a feather
edge of dull red. But beautiful and impressive as was this painting
on the sky, the most novel and exciting effect was in the body of the
atmosphere itself, which, laden with moisture, became one mass of
color - a fine translucent purple haze in which the islands with
softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around
the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks, too, in the
distance, and the snow-fields and glaciers and fleecy rolls of mist
that lay in the hollows, were flushed with a deep, rosy alpenglow of
ineffable loveliness. Everything near and far, even the ship, was
comprehended in the glorious picture and the general color effect.
The mission divines we had aboard seemed then to be truly divine as
they gazed transfigured in the celestial glory. So also seemed our
bluff, storm-fighting old captain, and his tarry sailors and all.
About one third of the summer days I spent in the Wrangell region
were cloudy with very little or no rain, one third decidedly rainy,
and one third clear. According to a record kept here of a hundred
and forty-seven days beginning May 17 of that year, there were
sixty-five on which rain fell, forty-three cloudy with no rain, and
thirty-nine clear. In June rain fell on eighteen days, in July eight
days, in August fifteen days, in September twenty days. But on some
of these days there was only a few minutes' rain, light showers
scarce enough to count, while as a general thing the rain fell so
gently and the temperature was so mild, very few of them could be
called stormy or dismal; even the bleakest, most bedraggled of them
all usually had a flush of late or early color to cheer them, or some
white illumination about the noon hours. I never before saw so much
rain fall with so little noise. None of the summer winds make roaring
storms, and thunder is seldom heard. I heard none at all. This wet,
misty weather seems perfectly healthful. There is no mildew in the
houses, as far as I have seen, or any tendency toward mouldiness in
nooks hidden from the sun; and neither among the people nor the
plants do we find anything flabby or dropsical.
In September clear days were rare, more than three fourths of them
were either decidedly cloudy or rainy, and the rains of this month
were, with one wild exception, only moderately heavy, and the clouds
between showers drooped and crawled in a ragged, unsettled way
without betraying hints of violence such as one often sees in the
gestures of mountain storm-clouds.
July was the brightest month of the summer, with fourteen days of
sunshine, six of them in uninterrupted succession, with a temperature
at 7 A.M. of about 60 degrees, at 12 M., 70 degrees. The average 7 A.M.
temperature for June was 54.3 degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature
for July was 55.3 degrees; at 12 M. the average temperature was 61.45
degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature for August was 54.12 degrees;
12 M., 61.48 degrees; the average 7 A.M. temperature for September was
52.14 degrees; and 12 M., 56.12 degrees.
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