Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in
sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether
those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of
Tierra del Fuego, where Death and decay prevail. Both are temples
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 calling up images of the
past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my
eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They
can be described only by negative characters; 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 a hold on my 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 passable, and hence unknown: they bear the stamp of
having lasted, as they are now, 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, through
certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memorable. When looking
down from the highest crest of the Cordillera, the mind, undisturbed by
minute details, was filled with the stupendous dimensions of the
surrounding masses.
Of individual objects, perhaps nothing is more certain to create
astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a
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 men like 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 human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason. I
do not believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference
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