'Like a blue cloud'

“Monadnock Orchard,’’ by Richard Whitney

“From the eastern brow of the mountain {in western Massachusetts}…we had a view over the tops of a multitude of heights, into the intersecting valleys of which we were to plunge --- and beyond them the blue and indistinctive scene extended, to the east and north, to the distance of at least sixty miles. Beyond the hills, it looked almost as if the blue ocean might be seen. Monadnock was visible, like a blue cloud against the sky.’’

--  Nathaniel Hawthorne in The American Notebooks (1838)