THE CHARM OF CONTRAST. 205 



the other, from the land of plenty to the land of want and famine, 

 from the land of bright lakes, and copious streams, and green pastures, 

 to the land of rocky heights and barren sandy wastes, is as startling 

 as the change which sometimes occurs in human life the change of 

 a moment, from bustling and exuberant happiness to profound sorrow. 

 It is such contrasts, however, that enable us fully to appreciate the 

 beauty and wealth of Nature. 



" The scorching winds' from arid deserts borne," 



teach us to prize the balmy breath of the " sweet south " that 

 wanders " o'er a bank of violets." Fresh from the dreary Sahara 

 plain, burnt and scathed by a Tropic sun, we can feel all the loveli- 

 ness of the woodland and the leafy vale, of each 



" Melodious plot 

 Of beechen green, and shadows numberless." 



Tims, in the material world as in the moral and intellectual, the law 

 of compensation prevails, and the wayfarer in the Desert of Life may 

 cheer himself with the recollection that in due time the silence 

 will be succeeded by music, the desolation by beauty, and the 

 wilderness by 



" Verdurous glooms, and winding mossy ways." 



CHAPTER II 



DESERTS OF THE NEW WORLD : PRAIRIES, PAMPAS, LLANOS. 



THEY who study the philosophy of history, of which men talk so 

 much, and know so little ; they who seek in the general laws of 

 nature and the physical economy of the globe an explanation of its 

 ethnological phenomena, may find, it seems to me, a curious subject 

 for investigation in the singular destiny of the New World. They 

 will have to ascertain by what concurrence of circumstances the two 



