504 RETROSPECT. [cuap. XxI, 
limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients 
. supposed, the flat earth was surrounded 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, 
though certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memorable. 
When looking down from the highest crest of the Cordillera, 
the mind, undisturbed by minute details, was filled with the stu- 
pendous 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 barba- 
rian,—of man in his lowest and most savage state. One’s mind 
hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, could our pro- 
genitors have been men like these ?—men, whose very signs and 
expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesti- 
cated animals; men, who do not possess the instinct of those 
animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of 
arts consequent on that reason. I do not believe it is possible 
to describe or paint the difference between savage and civilized 
man. It is the difference between a wild and tame animal: and 
part of the interest in beholding a savage, is the same which 
would leal every one to desire to see the lion in his desert, the 
tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, or the rhinoceros wandering 
over the wild plains of Africa. 
Among the other most remarkable spectacles which we have 
beheld, may be ranked the Southern Cross, the cloud of Magellan, 
and the*other constellations of the southern hemisphere—the 
water-spout—the glacier leading its blue stream of ice, over- 
hanging the sea in a bold precipice—a lagoon-island raised by 
the reef-building corals—an active voleano—and the overwhelm- 
ing effects of a violent earthquake. These latter phenomena, 
perhaps, possess for me a peculiar interest, from their intimate 
connexion with the geological structure of the world. The 
earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive 
event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the 
type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet ; 
and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment over- 
thrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power. 
