He was drawing down the white drapery
about his throat and letting it fall over his shoulders. Sun and wind
struggled mightily with his sulky fit; sunshine rifted off bits of the
veil, and wind seized, whirled them away, and, dragging them over the
spruces below, tore them to rags. Evidently, if we wished to see the
world, we must stop here and survey, before the growing vapor covered
all. We climbed to the edge of Cloudland, and stood fronting the
semicircle of southward view.
Katahdin's self is finer than what Katahdin sees. Katahdin is distinct,
and its view is indistinct. It is a vague panorama, a mappy, unmethodic
maze of water and woods, very roomy, very vast, very simple,--and these
are capital qualities, but also quite monotonous. A lover of largeness
and scope has the proper emotions stirred, but a lover of variety very
soon finds himself counting the lakes. It is a wide view, and it is a
proud thing for a man six feet or less high, to feel that he himself,
standing on something he himself has climbed, and having Katahdin under
his feet a mere convenience, can see all Maine.
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