CHAPTER VIII.
Section 51. The Perspective of the Clouds was entirely new; and remarkable both for Beauty and Grandeur.
The lowest Bed of Vapour that _first_ put on the Appearance of Cloud was of _a pure white_; in detached Fleeces; encreasing as they rose. They presently coalesced, and were aggrandized into +a Sea+ _of Cotton_, but more _white_; and _dazling_: tufted here and there by the light Play of Air, and gentle Breezes in every Direction: but where undisturbed, the Whole became an extended Firmament or _white_ Floor of thin Cloud, thro’ whose Intervals the Sun must shine with fiercer Gleam. The upper Surface was quite even: not blended with the Air above, but defined and separated with the utmost Exactness; being condensed by the Coolness, and checked in their Ascent, by the Levity of the superior Regions.
Thro’ this _white_ Floor uprose in splendid Majesty and awful Grandeur, at great and unequal Distances, a vast Assemblage of _Thunder-Clouds_: each Congeries consisting of whole Acres in the densest Form.
[Sidenote: Circular Boundary of the _celestial_ Prospect from the Balloon _above_ the clouds.]
52. Their conglomerate and fringed Tops rising, at different Distances, in circular Order, one above the other, to the Number of _thirty_: till they became imperceptible from their remote Situation: the Eye commanding an Extent of 102 Miles.[18]
Their Form was, as if Pieces of Ordnance were discharged perpendicularly upwards into the Air: and that the Smoke had consolidated, at the Instant of Explosion, into Masses of Snow or Hail: had penetrated thro’ the upper Surface or _white_ Floor of common Clouds, and there remained visible, and at Rest.
Some indeed had not wholly lost their Motion: continuing still to be lifted up. Others ponderous and sleepy, nodded, by mere Weight, their monstrous Heads. It seemed as if they had persisted in mounting upwards, till they coud rise no higher: their lower Parts pressing perpendicularly against the upper, which gradually swelled them out on _all Sides_. By partial and temporary Movements of the Air, some broad _unwieldy_ Caps lost the _vertical_ Direction of their Columns. The Columns likewise underwent a similar and gradual Change: rolling from their Pedestals or spiral Bases; and, at Times, assuming +every organized Shape+ that Fancy coud suggest.
[Sidenote: Opinion of Philosophers.]
53. The imperceptibly slow yet perpetual Changes they underwent, strongly called to Remembrance, the Opinion of the great Berkeley,[19] as well as of the ancient Philosophers, that AIR GIVES FORM TO THINGS: scarcely a Breath of which seemed, however, to disturb their general Order.
The Constitution of these enormous Masses was such as to reflect _some_ of the Sun’s Rays, and to transmit _others_ in a Variety of Colouring.
[Sidenote: The Colours of the Thunder Clouds.]
54. The Parts next the Sun were of a _snowy_ Whiteness. Then of a _bright luminous Yellow_ melting into a _dusky Sulphur_: afterwards of a _Purple_. The Rays being now shorn; a Degree of Opacity and Transmission took Place throu’ half the Substance of the Cloud, which seemed of a _transparent Blue_ like the _Onyx_.
[Sidenote: Delightful Tints visible only from the Balloon.]
55. These _delightful Tints_ must be ever eclipsed to a Spectator on the Surface of the Earth, looking upwards throu’ the gross Atmosphere that surrounds it; but highly _interesting_ to one who is suspended in a ratified and unencumbered Medium of the etherial Regions, where the Eye darts without Resistance above Clouds, and all visible Vapour.
[Illustration: _A VIEW from the_ BALLOON _at its GREATEST elevation see Page IIII.a._
Publish’d May 1ˢᵗ. 1786, by T. Baldwin Chester.]
Note: the Print, representing a circular View from the Balloon at its greatest Elevation, is taken from a Scene described in the above Chapter.