RETROSPECT 535 



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 my- 

 self, 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 analyse 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 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 know- 

 ledge 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 

 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, 

 Could our progenitors have been men like these? — men, whose 

 very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those 

 of the domesticated 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 civilised 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 lead 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 



