32 MOUNTAINEERS. 



sword will not slay them, neither will the fire 

 burn. Every where it is the same. If we turn our 

 observation to the West : the plains of Guiana, 

 and Brazil, and Mexico, and Peru, and Chili, and 

 Paraguay, have been rendered up to the grasping 

 hand of conquest ; and, because of the gold and the 

 silver they contain, the thickly-serried Andes have 

 been held by the skirts; but the Red Indian is 

 still in his mountain dwelling; and in spite of all 

 that fanaticism, and avarice yet more fell, have 

 been able to accomplish, in the very passion and 

 intoxication of their daring, (and they have been 

 dreadful in those sunny lands), Chimberac.o looks 

 down, from his lofty dwelling among the earth- 

 quakes, on the huts of his primeval inhabitants ; 

 and Orizaba yet mingles his smoke with that of 

 fires kindled by the descendants of those whose 

 ancestors tenanted his sides before Mexico was a 

 city, or the Atzec race had journeyed into central 

 America. 



Now, whenever the globe speaks in unison from 

 every point of its surface, and history brings testi- 

 mony from its every page, we may rest assured 

 that there is more than common instruction in the 

 tale ; and, therefore, we should read and meditate 

 upon it with more than ordinary attention. And 

 why is it, that man not only clings with the 

 greatest pertinacity to those places of the earth, 

 to which, as we would say, nature has been the 

 least bountiful, but also loves them with the most 

 heartfelt affection, and acquires an elevation of 

 mind, a determinedness of purpose, and a joyance 

 of spirit in them, more than in places which 

 abound far more in the good things of this world? 

 The facts are certain and absolute ; for there is 



