RANGE OF SIGHT. l8l 



objects at a point where they are confused to other persons, 

 although within the reach of their vision. 



A ship appears on the horizon, a man unacquainted with 

 the sea can hardly distinguish the sails of this white cloud 

 springing from the waters; but a sailor will tell you that is a 

 brig or a three-master, a war vessel or a merchant ship, and 

 often he will even come at its tonnage, its lading, its nation- 

 ality, and its name. The Arab and the European in the 

 midst of the sands of Sahara see on the horizon an object, 

 which to the European is only a black point without appre- 

 ciable form ; the Arab sees a camel distinctly, and declares 

 that it is at such or such a distance, without ever being de- 

 ceived. 



The inexperienced mountain traveller sees before him a 

 chaos of slopes and abrupt walls, of elevations and windings, 

 among whicn he can distinguish neither route nor practicable 

 passage; but the mountaineer sees at once the accessible 

 points, and the turns which he must take to reach the summit 

 of the apparently impassable barrier. This proves not that 

 the sailor, the mountaineer, or the Arab have sharper sight 

 than the stranger to their country; but that they have learned 

 to know the signification of such and such details of form, 

 such a particularity of colour and the like, which are for them 

 distinguishing marks, which seem to trace before their eyes 

 the description which they give to their fellow-voyager of 

 objects that are either confused or imperceptible to him. It 

 is therefore to acquired notions, and skill in seeing objects, 

 rather than to extent of vision, that they owe the faculty of 

 distinguishing objects at great distances. 



We find also in all countries, and in all climates, men who 

 have extraordinary powers of vision. Wrangel speaks in his 

 voyage to the Polar seas, of a Yakoute who related having 

 seen a great star swallow little ones, and then vomit them up 

 again. That man, says Wrangel, had seen the eclipses of 

 the satellites of Jupiter. Humboldt tells, in his Cosmos, of a 

 tailor in Breslau, named Schcen, who also had seen the 

 satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye. No examples of a 

 greater range of vision are known. 



