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Show 436 FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC. inland sea on maps. That which is thus excited in us ('9) by childish impressions, or by accidental circumstances in life, takes a later period a graver direction, and often becomes a motive for scientific labors and distant enterprises. When after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep mountain ridge, we finally reached the highest point, the Alto de Guangamarca, the heavens, which had long been veiled, became suddenly clear : a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the highest cirrous clouds. The whole of the western .declivity of the Cordillera by Chorillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz 13 to 15 English feet long, and the plains of Ohala and Molinos, as far as the sea-shore near Truxillo, lay beneath our eyes in astonishing apparent proximity. We now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean itself; and we saw it clearly: forming along the line of the shore a large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its immensity to the well-defined no longer merely conjectured horizon. The joy it inspired, and which was vividly shared by my companions Bonpland and Carlos Montufar, made us forget to open the barometer until we had quitted the Alto de Guangamarca. From our measurement taken soon after, but somewhat lower down, at an isolated cattle-farm called the Hato de Guangamarca, the point from which we first saw the sea would be only somewhere between 9380 and 9600 English feet above the level of the sea. The view of the Pacific was peculiarly impressive to one who like myself owed a part of the formation of his mind and character, and many of the directions which his wishes had assumed, to intercourse with one of the companions of Cook. My schemes of travel were early made known, in their leading outlines at least, to George Forster, when I enjoyed the advantage of making my first visit to England under his guidance, more than half a century ago. Forster's charming descriptions of Otaheite had awakened throughout Northern Europe a general interest (mixed, I might almost say, with romantic longings) for the Islands of the Pacific, which had at that time been seen by very few Europeans. I too cherished, at the time of which I am speaking, the hope of soon landing on them j |