418 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



greater pleasure. The traveller enjoys, in anticipation, the 

 happy moment when he shall first behold the constellation of 

 the Cross, and the Magellanic clouds circling over the South 

 Pole ; when he shall come in sight of the snow of the Chim- 

 borazo, and of the column of smoke ascending from the vol- 

 cano of Quito ; when, for the first time, he shall gaze on a 

 grove of tree-ferns, or on the wide expanse of the Pacific 

 Ocean. The days on which such wishes are fulfilled mark 

 epochs in life, and create indelible impressions ; exciting feel- 

 ings which require not to be accounted for by any process of 

 reasoning. The longing wish I felt to behold the Pacific from 

 the lofty ridges of the Andes was mingled with recollections 

 of the interest with which, as a boy, I had dwelt on the narra- 

 tive of the adventurous expedition of Vasco Nunez de Bal- 

 boa (18). That happy man, whose track Pizarro followed, 

 was the first to behold, from the heights of Quarequa, on 

 the isthmus of Panama, the eastern part of the great " South 

 Sea." The reedy shores of the Caspian, viewed from the 

 point whence I first beheld them, viz., from the Delta formed 

 by the mouths of the Volga, cannot certainly be called pic- 

 turesque, yet the delight I felt on first beholding them, was 

 enhanced by the recollection that, in my very earliest child- 

 hood, I had been taught to observe, on the map, the form of 

 the Asiatic inland sea. The impressions aroused within us in 

 early childhood, or excited by the accidental circumstances 

 of life (19), frequently, in after years, take a graver direc- 

 tion, and become stimulants to scientific labours and great 

 enterprises. 



After passing over many undulations of ground, on the 

 rugged mountain ridges, we at length reached the highest 

 point of the xSlto de Guangamarca. The sky, which had so 

 long been obscured, now suddenly brightened. A sharp south- 

 west breeze dispersed the veil of mist; and the dark, blue 

 canopy of heaven was seen between the narrow lines of the 

 highest feathery clouds. The whole western declivity of the 



