AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



TO THE 



FIRST EDITION. 



IT is not without diffidence that I present to the public a 

 series of papers which took their origin in the presence of 

 natural scenes of grandeur or of beauty, on the Ocean, in 

 the forests of the Orinoco, in the Steppes of Venezuela, 

 and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico. 

 Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at 

 the moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. 

 The view of Nature on an enlarged scale, the display of the 

 concurrent action of various forces or powers, and the 

 renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate prospect of 

 tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the objects 

 which I have proposed to myself. According to the design 

 of my work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists 

 should form a whole complete in itself, one common 

 tendency should pervade them all. Such an artistic and 



VOL. I. I 



