Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s7.t5.36

v2.c27.s7.t5.36

When we witnessed this phenomenon at first, the eye was attracted by a lofty opaque wall of lurid smoke, which seemed to be bounded by, or to rise from, the very verge of the horizon. By slow degrees the dense mass became more transparent, and assumed a reflecting or refracting power : shrubs were magnified into trees; the dwarf khair appeared ten times larger than the gigantic amli of the forest. A ray of light suddenly broke the line of continuity of this yet smoky barrier; and, as if touched by the enchanter’s wand, castles, towers, and trees were seen in an aggregated cluster, partly obscured by magnificent foliage. Every accession of light produced a change in the *chitram*, which from the dense wall that it first exhibited had now faded into a thin transparent film, broken into a thousand masses, each mass being a huge lens; until at length the [768] too vivid power of the sun dissolved the vision: castles, towers, and foliage melted, like the enchantment of Prospero, into “thin air.”