146 



ASPECT. 



the exhilaration of pure desert air, and the exalt- 

 ation produced by the stern aspect of mountain 

 regions or by a boundless expanse of Pampa and 

 Sahara. Without a single element of sublimity, 

 soft and smiling, its sensuous and sequestered 

 scenery has no power to spur the thought, to 

 breed an idea within the brain. The oppressive 

 luxuriance of its growth combined with the ex- 

 cess of damp heat, and possibly the abnormal 

 proportion of ozone, are the most unfavourable 

 conditions for the masculine. The same is the 

 case in Mazanderan, Malabar, Egypt, Phoenicia, 

 California, and other Phre-kah — lands of the sun. 

 And the aspect of that everlasting, beginning- 

 less, endless verdure tends, as on the sea-board 

 of the Brazil, to produce sensations of melancholy 

 and depression. We learn at last to loathe thee, 



' gay green, 

 Thou smiling Nature's universal robe ! ' 



Landing upon the island, you find a thin 

 strip of bright yellow sand separating the sea 

 from a curtain of vegetation, which forms a con- 

 tinuous wall. In some parts madrepore rock, 

 looped and caverned by the tide, and covered 

 with weeds and testacese, whose congeners are 

 fossilized in the stone, rises abruptly a few feet 

 above the wave. At other places a dense growth 



