These phenomena are only the sequel of a series of still more
strange and sad conditions of the air, which have continued among
the Savoy Alps for the last eight days, (themselves the sequel of
others yet more general, prolonged, and harmful). But the weather
was perfectly fine at Dijon, and I doubt not at Chamouni, on the
1st of this month. On the 2d, in the evening, I saw, from the Jura,
heavy thunderclouds in the west; on the 3d, the weather broke at
Morez, in hot thunder-showers, with intervals of scorching sun; on
the 4th, 5th, and 6th there was nearly continuous rain at St.
Cergues, the Alps being totally invisible all the time. The sky
cleared on the night of the 6th, and on the 7th I saw from the top
of the Dole all the western plateaux of Jura quite clearly; but
_the entire range of the Alps_, from the Moleson to the Saleve, and
all beyond,--snow, crag and hill-side,--were wrapped and buried in
one unbroken gray-brown winding-sheet, of such cloud _as I had
never seen till that day touch an Alpine summit_.

The wind, from the east, (so that it blew _up_ over the edge of the
Dole cliff, and admitted of perfect shelter on the slope to the
west,) was bitter cold, and extremely violent: the sun overhead,
bright enough, and remained so during the afternoon; the
plague-cloud reaching from the Alps only about as far as the
southern shore of the lake of Geneva; but we could not see the
Saleve; nor even the north shore, farther than to Morges! I reached
the Col de la Faucille at sunset, when, for a few minutes, the Mont
Blanc and Aiguille Verte showed themselves in dull red light, but
were buried again, before the sun was quite down, in the rising
deluge of cloud-poison. I saw no farther than the Voirons and
Brezon--and scarcely those, during the electric heat of the 9th at
Geneva; and last Saturday and Sunday have been mere whirls and
drifts of indecisive, but always sullen, storm. This morning I saw
the snows clear for the first time, having been, during the whole
past week, on steady watch for them.

I have written that the clouds of the 7th were such as I never
before saw on the Alps. Often, during the past ten years, I have
seen them on my own hills, and in Italy in 1874; but it has always
chanced to be fine weather, or common rain and cold, when I have
been among the snowy chains; and now from the Dole for the first
time I saw the plague-cloud on _them_."

[Footnote A: 'THE LOOK OF THE SKY.

'_To the_ EDITOR