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Show 604 COXCLUSIO:-J. Oct. 1836. decidedly been the most constant and highest source of enjoyment. It is probable that the picturesque beauty of many parts of Europe exceeds any thing we have beheld. But there is a growing pleasure in comparing the character of scenery in different countries, which to a certain degree is distinct from merely admiring its beauty. It depends more on an acquaintance with the individual parts of each view. I am strongly induced to believe that, as in music, the person who understands every note will, if he also possesses a proper taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole, so he who examines each part of a fine view, may also thoroughly comprehend the full and combined effect. Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours they will become fantastic; clothe them with vegetation: they must form at least a decent, if not a most beautiful picture. W~en I said th~t the scenery of Europe was probably supenor to a~y thmg which we have beheld, I excepted, as a class by Itself, that of the intertropical regions. The two classes cannot be compared together; but I have already often enlarged on the grandeur of these climates. A~ the. force of impressions generally depends on preconceiVed Ideas, I may add, that all mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative of Humboldt which far exceed in merit any thing I have read on th: subjec~. Yet with these high-wrought ideas, my feelings were far fro~ partaking of any tinge of disappointment on first landmg on the shores of Brazil. , .Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mmd, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests unclefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Ti~rra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples Oct. 18j6, CONCLUSION. 605 filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature :-no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. In callino- up images of the past, I find the plains of Patagonia b 1 . frequently cross before my eyes : yet these p ams are pro-nounced by all most wretched and useless. They are characterized only by negative possessions; without habitations, . without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm possession of the memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings: but it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely practicable, and hence unknown : they bear the stamp of having thus lasted for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the :flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations ? Lastly, of natural scenery, the views from lofty mountains, though certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memorable. When looking down from the crest of the highest Cordillera, the mind undisturbed by minute details, was filled with the stupendous dimensions of the surrounding masses. Of individual objects, perhaps no one is more certain to create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a real barbarian,-of man in his lowest and most savage state. One's mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, could our progenitors have been such as these ? Men, whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men, who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of |