1836.] PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS. 493 



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. In calling up images of the past, 

 I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before 

 my eyes ; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched 

 and useless. They can be described only by negative 

 characters ; without habitations, without water, without 

 trees, without mountains, they support merely a few 

 dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar 

 to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold 

 on my memory ? Why have not the still more level, the 

 greener and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to 

 mankind, produced an equal impression ? 1 can scarcely 

 anah'se these feelings ; but it must be partly owing to 

 the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of 

 Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and 

 hence unknown ; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as 

 they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their 

 duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, 

 the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth 

 of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, 

 who would not look at these last boundaries to man's 

 knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations? 



Lastly, of natural scenery, the views from lofty mountains, 

 though certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memor- 

 able. When looking down from the highest crest of the 

 Cordillera, the mind, undisturbed by minute details, was filled 

 with the stupendous dimensions of the surrounding masses. 



Of individual objects, perhaps nothing is more certain 

 to create astonishment than the first sight in his native 

 haunt of a barbarian — of man in his lowest and most 

 avage state. One's mind hurries back over past centuries, 

 ind then asks, could our progenitors have been men like 

 these ? — men, whose very signs and expressions are less 

 intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals ; 

 men who do not possess the instinct of those animals, 

 nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts 

 consequent on that reason. I do not believe it is possible 

 to describe or paint the difference between savage and 

 civilised man. It is the difference between a wild and t^me 

 animal ; and part of tiie interest in beholding a savage, 

 is the same which would lead every one to desire to see the 

 lion in his desert, the tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, 

 or {he. rhinoceros, wandering over the wild plains of Africa. 



