482 RETROSPECT, b HAI-. xxi. 



music, the person who understands every note will, if he also 

 possesses a proper taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole, so he 

 who examines each part of a fine view, may also thoroughly com- 

 prehend the full and combined effect. Hence, a traveller should 

 be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. 

 Group masses of naked rock even in the wildest forms, and they 

 may for a time afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow 

 monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colours, as in 

 Northern Chile, they will become fantastic; clothe them with 

 vegetation, they must form a decent, if not a beautiful picture. 



When I say that the scenery of parts of Europe is probably supe- 

 rior to anything which we beheld, I except, as a class by itself, that 

 of the intertropical zones. The two classes cannot be compared 

 together; but I have already often enlarged on the grandeur of 

 those regions. As the force of impressions generally depends on 

 preconceived ideas, I may add, that mine were taken from the 

 vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative of Humboldt, which 

 far exceed in merit anything else which I have read. Yet with 

 these high-wrought ideas, my feelings were far from partaking of 

 a tinge of disappointment on my first and final landing on the 

 shores of Brazil. 



Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none 

 exceed in sublimity the primeval forests uiidefaced by the hand of 

 man ; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are pre- 

 dominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay 

 prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the 

 God of 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 arc 

 serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can 

 scarcely analyze 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 : 



