THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 191 



its valleys and hills in dreamy enjoyment. We are 

 not, then, surprised that the imaginative Greeks 

 should have sung of their Fortunate Islands, the 

 habitations of the blessed, placed far away in the 

 ocean of the west, and invested with more than 

 earthly loveliness ; nor that the existence of isles 

 of similar character, in the same mysterious, be- 

 cause unknown, regions, should have found a place 

 in the mythology of even so remote a nation as the 

 Hindoos. 



The beauteous scenes before us, however, are as 

 transitory as they are lovely : night comes on with 

 a rapidity, startling to us accustomed to the long 

 twilight of the north ; the rich hues with which the 

 western sky is suffused, the crimson and ruddy gold, 

 speedily change to a warm and swarthy brown, and 

 one by one the stars come out, and light up the sky 

 with a strange and unwonted effulgence. Humboldt 

 describes in the following terms his own emotions 

 on first seeing the brilliant stars of these regions : — 



"From the time we entered the torrid zone, we 

 were never wearied with admiring, every night, the 

 beauty of the southern sky, which, as we advanced 

 towards the south, opened new constellations to our 

 view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, 

 on" approaching the equator, and particularly on 

 passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see 

 those stars which we have contemplated from our 

 infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. 

 Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remem- 

 brance of the immense distance by which he is 

 separated from his country, than the aspect of an 



