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, as in Northern Chile, they will become
fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must form a
decent, if not a beautiful picture.
When I say that the scenery of parts of Europe is probably
superior to anything which we beheld, I except, as a class by
itself, that of the intertropical zones. The two classes cannot
be compared together; but I have already often enlarged on
the grandeur of those regions. As the force of impressions
generally depends on preconceived ideas, I may add, that
mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal
Narrative of Humboldt, which far exceed in merit anything
else which I have read. Yet with these high-wrought ideas,
my feelings were far from partaking of a tinge of disappointment
on my first and final landing on the shores of Brazil.
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.
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