_July 10._ A gorgeous sunset after rain, with horizontal bars of clouds, red sashes to the western window, barry clouds hanging like a curtain over the window of the west, damask. First there is a low arch of the storm clouds in the west, under which is seen the clearer, fairer, serener sky and more distant sunset clouds, and under all, on the horizon’s edge, heavier, massive dark clouds, not to be distinguished from the mountains. How many times I have seen this kind of sunset,—the most gorgeous sight in nature! From the hill behind Minott’s I see the birds flying against this red sky, the sun having set; one looks like a bat. Now between two stupendous mountains of the low stratum under the evening red, clothed in slightly rosaceous amber light, through a magnificent gorge, far, far away, as perchance may occur in pictures of the Spanish coast viewed from the Mediterranean, I see a city, the eternal city of the west, the phantom city, in whose streets no traveller has trod, over whose pavements the horses of the sun have already hurried, some Salamanca of the imagination. But it lasts only for a moment, for now the changing light has wrought such changes in it that I see the resemblance no longer. A softer amber sky than in any picture. The swallows are improving this short day, twittering as they fly, and the huckleberry-bird[224] repeats his jingling strain, and the song sparrow, more honest than most. I am always struck by the centrality of the observer’s position. He always stands fronting the middle of the arch, and does not suspect at first that a thousand observers on a thousand hills behold the sunset sky from equally favorable positions. And now I turn and observe the dark masses of the trees in the east, not green but black. While the sun was setting in the west, the trees were rising in the east. I perceive that the low stratum of dark clouds under the red sky all dips one way, and to a remarkable degree presents the appearance of the butt ends of cannons slanted toward the sky, thus:— [Illustration] Such uniformity on a large scale is unexpected and pleasant to detect, evincing the simplicity of the laws of their formation. Uniformity in the shapes of clouds of a single stratum is always to be detected, the same wind shaping clouds of the like consistency and in like positions. No doubt an experienced observer could discover the states of the upper atmosphere by studying the forms and characters of the clouds. I traced the distinct form of the cannon in seven instances, stretching over the whole length of the cloud, many a mile in the horizon. And the nighthawk dashes past in the twilight with mottled (?) wing, within a rod of me.