Presently, vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea
and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing
squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves
solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and _totally shut out land
and ocean_—not a vestige of _anything_ was left in view, but just a
little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon
we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts
without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round
and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was
stored to the brim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and
silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor
stretched without a break—not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow
creases between, and here and there stately piles of vapory architecture
lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain—some near at hand, some
in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote
solitudes. There was little conversation, for the impressive scene
overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment,
and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.
_FROM_ “THE GILDED AGE” (1873)