DELINEATIONS OF NATURAL SCENERY. 451 



remarkably large oil pictures preserved in Denmark, in a gal- 

 lery of the beautiful palace of Frederiksborg, which were 

 painted by Eckhout, who, in 1641, was also on the Brazilian 

 coast with Prince Maurice of Nassau. In these compositions, 

 palms, papaws, bananas, and heliconias, are most characteris- 

 tically delineated, as are also brightly plumaged birds, and 

 small quadrupeds, and the form and appearance of the natives. 



These examples of a delineation of the physiognomy of 

 natural scenery were not followed by many artists of merit 

 before Cook's second voyage of circumnavigation. What 

 Hodges did for the western islands of the Pacific, and 

 my distinguished countryman, Ferdinand Bauer, for New 

 Holland and Van Dieinen's Land, has been since done, in 

 more recent times, on a far grander scale, and in a masterly 

 manner, by Moritz Rugendas, Count Clarac, Ferdinand Bel- 

 lermann, and Edward Hildebrandt; and for the tropical vege- 

 tation of America, and for many other parts of the earth, by 

 Heinrich von Kittlitz, the companion of the Russian Admiral 

 Lutke, on his voyage of circumnavigation.* 



He who, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of 

 nature manifested in mountains, rivers, and forest glades, 

 has himself travelled over the torrid zone, and seen the 

 luxuriance and diversity of vegetation, not only on the 

 cultivated sea coasts, but on the declivities of the snow- 

 crowned Andes, the Himalaya, or the Nilgherry mountains 

 of Mysore, or in the primitive forests, amid the network of 

 rivers, lying between the Orinoco and the Amazon, can alone 

 feel what an inexhaustible treasure remains still unopened by 

 the landscape painter, between the tropics in both continents, 

 or in the island- world of Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines; 



* These views of tropical vegetation, which designate the " physiog- 

 nomy of plants," constitute, in the Royal Museum at Berlin, (in the de- 

 partment of miniatures, drawings, and engravings,) a treasure of art 

 which, owing to its peculiarity and picturesque variety, is incomparably 

 superior to any other collection. The title of the papers edited by Yon 

 Kittlitz is Vegetations- Ansicliten der Kiistenldnder und Inseln des 

 stillen Oceans, aufgenommen 1827-1829, auf der EntdecTcungs-reise 

 der kais. russ. Corvette Senjdwin (Siegen, 1844). There is also great 

 fidelity to nature in the drawings of Carl Bodmer, which are engraved 

 in a masterly manner, and which greatly embellish the large work of 

 the travels of Prince Maximilian of Wied in the interior of North 

 America. 



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