FIRST VIEW OP THE PACIFIC. 435 



rise like islands above the waving sea of mist, and again disappear, 

 as had been the case in our view from the Peak of Teneriffe. We 

 were exposed to almost the same disappointment in our subsequent 

 transit over the Pass of G-uangamarca, at the time of which I am 

 now speaking. As we toiled up the mighty mountain side, with our 

 expectations continually on the stretch, our guides, who were not 

 perfectly acquainted with the road, repeatedly promised us that at 

 the end of the hour's march which was nearly concluded, our hopes 

 would be realized. The stratum of mist which enveloped us ap- 

 peared occasionally to be about to disperse, but at such moments 

 our field of view was again restricted by intervening heights. 



The desire which we feel to behold certain objects does not depend 

 solely on their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance ; it is 

 interwoven in each individual with many accidental impressions of 

 his youth, with early predilection for particular occupations, with an 

 attachment to the remote and distant, and with the love of an active 

 and varied life. The previous improbability of the fulfilment of a 

 wish gives besides to its realization a peculiar kind of charm. The 

 traveller enjoys by anticipation the first sight of the constellation of 

 the Cross, and of the Magellanic clouds circling round the Southern 

 Pole of the snow of the Chimborazo, and the column of smoke 

 ascending from the volcano of Quito -of the first grove of tree-ferns, 

 and of the Pacific Ocean. The days on which such wishes are 

 realized form epochs in life, and produce ineffaceable impressions ; 

 exciting feelings of which the vividness seeks not justification by pro- 

 cesses of reasoning. With the longing which I felt for the first 

 view of the Pacific from the crests of the Andes, there mingled the 

 interest with which I had listened as a boy to the narrative of the 

 adventurous expedition of Yasco Nunez de Balboa, (**) the fortunate 

 man who (followed by Francisco Pizarro) first among Europeans 

 beheld from the heights of Quarequa, on the Isthmus of Panama, the 

 eastern part of the Pacific Ocean the " South Sea." The reedy 

 shores of the Caspian at the place where I first saw them, i. e. from 

 the Delta formed by the mouths of the Volga, cannot certainly be 

 called picturesque; yet I viewed them with a gratification heightened 

 almost into delight by the particular interest and pleasure with 

 which, in early childhood, I had looked at the shape of this Asiatic 



