530 CHARLES DARWIN 



my feelings were far from partaking of a tinge of disappoint- 

 ment 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 undefaced by 

 the hand of man ; whether those of Brazil, where the powers 

 of Life are predominant, 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 pro- 

 nounced 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? 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: 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 sur- 

 rounded 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, 

 through certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memo- 

 rable. 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 savage state. 

 One's mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks. 



