Chapter 8 THE HEAVENS

The remote glacier region gives us a sense of purity, and gives us, too, a vision of colour in its finest delicacy. But for depth, extent, and brilliancy of colour we must look to sunsets-and sunsets in those high desert regions where the outlook is widest and the atmosphere clearest.

In deserts everywhere marvellous sunsets may be seen, for the comparative absence of moisture in the atmosphere and the presence of invisible particles of dust gives these sunsets an especial brilliancy. In the middle of the day a desert in its uniform brownness is dreary and monotonous to a degree. But at dawn and sunset when the sun's rays slant across the scene the desert glows with colour of every shade and hue and in ever-changing combination. In the Gobi Desert of Central Asia, in the Egyptian Desert, in the Arabian Desert, in Arizona, I have seen sunsets that thrill one with delight. But nowhere have I seen more glorious sunsets than in the highlands of Tibet. And what makes them there so remarkable is that the plains themselves are 15,000 feet above sea-level, so that the atmosphere is exceptionally clear. Great distances are therefore combined with unusual clearness. The country is open enough and the air clear enough for us to see far distances. And extent is a prime essential in the glory of a sunset.

It is difficult to make those who have never been outside Europe understand what sunsets can be. In England, as Turner has shown, there are sunsets to be seen containing in abundance many such elements of beauty as varied and varying and great extent of colour. But the atmosphere here is so thick that the colours appear as if thrown on to a solid background. So the sunsets look opaque. On the continent of Europe the atmosphere is clearer and the opaqueness less pronounced. The colouring is in consequence more vivid. But-except in high Alpine regions-the clearness does not approach the clearness of Tibet. And neither in England nor on the Continent do we get the great distances of desert sunsets. And great distances increase immeasurably that feeling of infinity which is the chief glory in a sunset.

The clearness of the atmosphere is important in this respect also, that it produces the effect upon the colours of the sunset that they seem more like the colours we see in precious stones than the colours a painter throws on a canvas. There is no milkiness or murkiness in them. The sky is so clear that we see a colour as we see the red in a ruby. We see deep into the colour. The colour comes right out of the sky and has not the appearance of being merely plastered on the surface.

And the variety of the colours and the rapidity with which they change and merge and mingle into one another is another wonder of these desert sunsets. It would be wholly impossible to paint a picture of them which would adequately express the impression they give, for the main impression is derived from light, and the colours are therefore far more glowing than they could ever be reproduced on canvas. Nor can the changing effects be reproduced on a stationary medium. The nearest approach to the glory of a Tibet sunset which I have seen is a picture in pastel by Simon de Bussy a sunset in the Alps. But all pictures-even Turner's;-can only draw attention to the glory and show us what to look for. They cannot reproduce the impression in full. The medium through which the artist has to work-the paints and the canvas-are inadequate for his needs.

If we try to describe the impression in words we are no better off. We can, indeed, compare the sunset colours with the colours of flowers and precious stones. But here also we miss the light which is the very foundation of the sunset beauties. And we have neither the changefulness nor the vast extent of the sunset colouring.

To get the least idea of the variety of colours mixing, merging, and intermingling with one another we must go to the opal, though even there there is not the intensity of colour, and of course not the change nor extent. From an orange-especially a blood orange-we get a notion of the combined reds and yellows of the sunsets, though the reds may range deeper than orange into the reds of the ruby or the cardinal flower, and lighter into the pinks of the rose or the carnation; and the yellows range from the gold of the eseholtzia to the delicate hue of the primrose. And for the translucency of their yellower effects we must bring in the amber. Often there is a green which can only be matched by jade or emerald. And sometimes there is an effect with which only the amethyst can be compared. Then there are mauves and purples for which the precious stones have no parallel, and of which heliotrope, the harebell, and the violet give us the best idea. And the blues range from the deep blue of the sapphire and the gentian to the light blue of the turquoise and the forget-me-not.

In these stones and flowers we get something near the actual colour, but the depth, the clearness, the luminosity, and the vast extent are all wanting, and these are all essential features of the sunset's glories. So we must imagine all these colours glowing with light and never still-perpetually changing from one to the other and shading off from one into the other, one colour emerging, rising to the dominant position, and then disappearing to give place to another, and effecting these changes imperceptibly yet rapidly also, for if we take our eyes away for even a few minutes we find that the aspect has altogether altered.

From my camp in Tibet for weeks together I could be sure of witnessing every evening one of these glorious sunsets. For while the mighty monsoon clouds used to roll up on to the line of Himalayan peaks and pile themselves up there, billow upon billow, in magnificent array, dark and fearful in the general mass, but clear-edged and silver-tipped along the summits, yet beyond that line, in Tibet, the sky was nearly always clear and blue of the bluest. With nothing whatever to impede my view-no trees, nor houses, nor fences, nor obstacles of any kind-I could look out far over these open plains to distant hills; beyond them, again, to Mount Everest a hundred miles away; beyond it, again, to still more distant mountains; and, finally, behind them into the setting sun. And these far hills and snowy mountains, seen as they were across an absolutely open plain, seemed not to impede the view but only to heighten the impression of great distance. The eye would be led on from feature to feature, each receding farther into the distance till it seemed only a step from the farthest snowy mountain into the glowing sun itself.

Every evening, whenever I could, I used to walk out alone into the open plain to feast my soul on the splendid scene. In the stern glacier region round K2 had had to brace myself up and to summon up all that was toughest within me in order to cope with the terribly exacting conditions in which I found myself. In the presence of these calm but fervent sunsets there was a different feeling. I had a sense of expansion, a longing to let myself go. And I would feel myself craving to let myself go out all I could into these glowing depths of light and colour, and trying to open myself out to their beauty, that as much as possible of it should flow into me and glorify my whole being. I had the feeling that in those sunsets there was any length for my soul to go out to-that there was infinite room there for the soul's expansion. There was inexhaustible glory for the soul to absorb, and the soul was thirsting for it and could never have enough.

Evening after evening came to me, too-quite unconsciously, and as it were inevitably-Shelley's words (slightly altered):

"Be thou, spirit bright,

My spirit! Be thou me, most glorious one!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy."

It was not that there was any particular message that I had to give. But there was aroused in me just this simple, insistent longing to let others know what glory there was in the world, and to be able to communicate to them something of the joy I was then feeling in beholding it. I was highly privileged in having this opportunity of witnessing a Tibetan sunset's splendours. I was yearning for others to share my enjoyment with me.

The white radiance of the glacier region instils into us a sense of purity, and without the purity of heart which that stern region exacts we cannot see the sunset's glory in all its fulness. But now in these Tibetan sunsets we have not purity alone, but warmth and richness as well. They give an impression of infinity of glory. We catch alight from their consuming glory, and our hearts flame up in correspondence with them. The fervent glow in the Heart of Nature kindles a like glow in our own hearts; and we are enraptured by the Beauty.

On our misty island we are apt to connect sunsets with coming darkness and a black end of things. And in gazing on them we are prone to have a sense of sadness mingled with our joy. They seem to mean for us a passage from light to darkness, and from life to death.

But in the deserts we have no such feeling. As day imperceptibly fades away it is not black darkness that succeeds, but a light that enables us to see farther, a mellower light that enables us to see the Universe at large. From this earthly life we are transported to a higher, intenser, ampler life among the stars.

And it is in the desert that we best live among the stars. In Europe we look up into the sky between trees and houses; and among the clouds and through a murky atmosphere we see a few stars. Even when we have a clear sky we seldom get a chance of seeing the whole expanse of the heavens all the way round. And even if we get this rare chance of a clear sky and a wide horizon we do not live with the stars in the open the night through and night after night.

In the Gobi Desert I had this precious opportunity. And I had it when my whole being was tuned up to highest pitch. I was not in the limp state of one who steps out into his garden and looks up casually to the stars. I was tense with high enterprise. I was passing through unknown country on a journey across the Chinese Empire from Peking to India. I was keen and alive in every faculty, in a state of high exhilaration, and both observant and receptive. It was a rare chance, and much I wish now I had made more of it.

My party in crossing the Gobi Desert consisted only of a Chinese guide, a Chinese servant, and a Mongol camel-man. As I had no European companion I was driven in upon myself. I had to explore a route never before traversed by Europeans, and the distance to be covered across the open steppes of Mongolia and over the Gobi Desert to the first town in Turkestan was twelve hundred miles. Beyond that was the whole length of Turkestan and the six-hundred-mile breadth of the Himalaya to be crossed before I should reach India. So I had a big task before me, and was stirring with the sense of high adventure and vast distances to overcome.

To enable my eight camels to feed by daylight, I used to start at five o'clock in the afternoon and march till one or two in the morning. Sometimes in order to reach water we had to march all through the night and well into the following day. Frequently there were terrific sandstorms, but there were seldom any clouds. So the atmosphere was clear. In the distance were sometimes hills. But for the most part all round the desert was absolutely open. I could see for what seemed an indefinite distance in any direction. The conditions were ideal for observing the stars.

Seated on my camel, or trudging along apart from my little caravan, I would watch the sun set in always varying splendour. No two sunsets were anything like the same. Each through the ascendancy of some one shade of colour, or through an unusual combination of colour, had a special beauty of its own. I would watch each ripening to the climax and then shade away into the beauty of the night. And when the day was over the night would reveal that higher, wider life which daylight only served to hide.

The sunset glow would fade away. Star after star would spring into sight till the whole vault of heaven was glistening with diamond points of light. Above me and all round me stars were shining out of the deep sapphire sky with a brilliance only surpassed by the stars in the high Himalayan solitudes I have already described. And a great stillness would be over all-a silence even completer than the silence among the mountains, for there it was often broken by creaking of the ice, whereas here in the desert it was so profound that, when at the end of many weeks I arrived at a patch of grass and trees, the twittering of the birds and the whirr of insects sounded like the roar of a London street.

In this unbroken stillness and with the eye free to rove all round with nothing in any direction to stay its vision, and being as I was many weeks' distance from any settled human habitation, I often had the feeling of being more connected with the starry firmament than with this Earth. In a curious way the bodily and the material seemed to exist no longer, and I would be in spirit among the stars. They served to guide us over the desert and I gradually became familiar with them. And I used to feel as much a part of the Stellar World as of this Earth. I lost all sense of being confined to Earth and took my place in the Universe at large. My home was the whole great Cosmos before me. The Cosmos, and not the Earth, was the whole to which I belonged.

And in that unbroken quiet and amid this bright company of heaven my spirit seemed to become intenser and more daring. Right high up in the zenith, to infinite height, it would soar unfettered. And right round to any distance in any direction it would pierce its way. The height and distance of the highest and farthest stars I knew had been measured. I knew that the resulting number of miles is something so immense as to be altogether beyond human conception. I knew also that the number of stars, besides those few thousands which I saw, had to be numbered in hundreds of millions. All this was astonishing, and the knowledge of it filled me with wonder at the immensity of the Starry Universe. But it was not the mere magnitude of this world that impressed me. What stirred me was the Presence, subtly felt, of some mighty all-pervading Influence which ordered the courses of the heavenly hosts and permeated every particle.

We cannot watch the sun go down day after day, and after it has set see the stars appear, rise to the meridian and disappear below the opposite horizon in regular procession, without being impressed by the order which prevails. We feel that the whole is kept together in punctual fashion, and is not mere chaos and chance. The presence of some Power upholding, sustaining, and directing the whole is deeply impressed upon us. And in this Presence so steadfast, so calm, so constant, we feel soothed and steadied. The frets and pains of ordinary life are stilled. Deep peace and satisfaction fill our souls.

Sandstorms so terrific that we cannot stand before them or see a thing a foot or two distant come whirling across the desert, and all for the time seems turmoil and confusion and nothing is visible. But behind all we know the stars still pursue their mighty way. At the back of everything we realise there is a Power constant and dependable in whom we can absolutely put our trust.

This is the impression-the impression of steadfastness, constancy, and reliability-which a nightly contemplation of the stars makes upon us. At the foundation of things is something dependable, something in which we can repose our faith. And so the sense of calm and confidence we feel.

And in the desert we have no feeling that the stars pursue their course in cold indifference to us-that the Power which sustains them works its soulless way unregardful of the frettings of us little men. Not thus are we who watch the desert stars impressed. Quite otherwise. For nowhere do we feel the Influence nearer, more intimate or more beneficent. We seem in the very midst of the great Presence. We are immersed in it. It is pervading us on every side. We do not expect it to alter the whole course of Nature for our private good. But we feel confident that the course of Nature is for good-that Nature is a beneficent and no callous Power, and has good at heart. Because the foundations are so sure and good we can each pursue our way in confidence. This is the impression we get.

And the Power which guides the stars upon their heavenly way, and which, in guiding them, guides us across the desert, does not reside, we feel, in lonely grandeur in the empty places of the heavens, but in the stars themselves-in their very constitution-in each individually and in all in their togetherness. It burns in each star and shines forth from it, and yet holds the whole together as we see it every night in that circling vault around us. The Activity does not appear to us to emanate from some Invisible Being dwelling wholly apart and isolated from the stars and this Earth, and sending forth invisible spiritual rays, as the Sun stands apart from the Earth but sends out rays of sunlight to it. It seems rather to dwell in the very heart and centre of each star, and the stars seem spiritual rather than material beings. So this Power, as we experience it in the desert, does not impress us as being awful and remote, gloomy and inexorable, enforcing unbending law and exacting terrible penalties. Our impression of it is that, though it preserves order with unfailing regularity, it is yet near and kindly, radiating with light and warmth. We not only feel it to be something steadfast, something on which we can rely and in which we may have confidence; we also feel warmed and kindled by it.

So what we get from a nightly contemplation of the stars is a sense of happy companionship with Nature. The Heart of Nature as here revealed is both dependable and kindly. Nature is our friend. And in her certain friendship the balm of peace falls softly on us. Our hearts blend tenderly with the Heart of Nature; and in their union we see Beauty of the gentlest and most reassuring kind.