THE SPLENDOURS OF CLOUDLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2578, 12 August 1903, Page 63

THE SPLENDOURS OF CLOUDLAND.

By a Banker.

Those who 'have gone through the experience of passing through a great storm, and have been in the midst of the booming thunder, and have realised that the surcharged electricity stored in the dark vapoious clouds was permeating them through and through, must look back upon the weird 1 experience with sensations of relief that they escape! unscathed from the adventure.

After ascending about half way up a fairly lofty mountain it is seen that a -thunderstorm is rapidly approaching, and vi a short time the precipitous .path, is completely enveloped in dense inUt. StaitUng peals of rolling thunder mow crash v/itk reverberating roar against the mountain side which we are climbing, appearing to explode -with over louder and more deafening detonations, as though they would rend the very carlli itself, S2al the doom of all life within range, and engulf everything in annihilation and overwhelming Tuin. The nucleus of lhe storm, whence the forks and tongues of lightniug r.-ere launched forth, was probably at the edge of the cloud: heie the supeicharged electricity wrs inoie diffused. (Some travellers relnte that they wore surrounded with an aureo'ra of glory under similar circumstances ; the electric fluid, however, failed to invest the writer in this saint'y effulgence.) Continuing the ascent as'rapidly as possible in the semi-darkness, after a short time, emerging horn the gloom and obscurity of the sombrous pall, a glorious suuht prospect suddenly bursts upon the view. Almost as far as the eye can leach a vast outspread ocean of lolhug billov,-s, white ai.d dazzling as snow, and appealing solid, as if can ed out of purest alabaster, gleams beneath us. Here and there the peaks and pyramids of the surrounding mountains pierce the ehiaing, irradiate sea; while ever-widening gaps leveal glimpses of the landscape beneath. The prospect- now is of surpassing beauty. The azure of the skies above, unflecked by any trace of cloud ; the lustrous rolling ocean of snowy, ever advancing, curling breakers, now heaved up in solid masses which break against the mountain peak, now sinking down in apparently rippling wavelets ; -the summits of the distant snow-clad Alpine range closing in the. gorgeous cloud-scape , and the occasional glimpses of the green fields — a purling river which shines like a slenc!i2r thread of silver, and some scattered chalets dotted about like tiny toys far beneath ; — all combine in creating a ] ageant of surpassing loveliness, so sublime and magnificent that a thrill of bewildering fascination courses through the veins of the cpell-boiuid spectator. But coon the mountain winds have carried before .them every vestige of that resplendent sea of cloud, Which has disappeared into space, and left not a wrack behind.

And if the ever-varying changes of «arth bo so beautiful, -what must be 'ilio supernal glories of Ike Paradise of God. How fatuous to risk the loss of that celestial enchantment by forgetting Him end by neglecting £o claim and accept the merits of the Redeemer's.atonement as an all-sxifncient passport to the glory

• — A novel pla:i for benefiting Hie funds of the Railway Benevolent- Institution has I been devised by the Irinh railway managers. It has been leeided to lol'.eofc from railway men a sufficient number of ptorke and incidents — "humorou3 and thrilling" — appertaining to railway life to make, up a book, which will bo publ'sho." and told for a shilling, for the benefit of tha funds of the institution.

— Every bee carries .h market basket round ite lrind logs. Anyone examining the- body of a bee through a microscope will observe that on the hind legs of the creature there is a fringe of ptiff hairs on the. surface, the hairs approaching each other at the tips, oas to form a sort of nage. This is the bee's basket, and into it, after a suo ce-isful jourasy. it will cram enough p^'len *■" '"-I, it for Iwo or three days.