ops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about
the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of these rough
mountains. The colour of that fog ocean was a thing never to be
forgotten. For an instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I
have seen something like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so
opaline; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, that
breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the
salt sea travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the sand; but
that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of
the morning tremble with a sound.

As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to observe that this sea
was not so level as at first sight it appeared to be. Away in the
extreme south, a little hill of fog arose against the sky above the
general surface, and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the
horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There were huge waves,
stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a frozen sea; and yet, as I
looked again, I was not sure but they were moving after all, with a slow
and august advance. And while I was yet doubting, a promontory of the
hills some four or five miles away, conspicuous by a bouquet of tall
pines, was in a single instant overtaken and swallowed up. It appeared
in a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be
swallowed up once more and then for good. This set me looking nearer,
and I saw that in every cove along the line of mountains the fog was
being piled in higher and higher, as though by some wind that was
inaudible to me. I could trace its progress, one pine-tree first growing
hazy and then disappearing after another; although sometimes there was
none of this fore-running haze, but the whole opaque white ocean gave a
start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee these
poisonous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high among
the mountains. And now, behold, here came the fog to besiege me in my
chosen altitudes, and yet came so beautifully that my first thought was
of welcome.

The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the
hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle, or
some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over the
nearer pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to look
abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, per