190 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



of the deferts of Arabia : <c a country, he fays, with- 

 " out verdure, and without water j a fun always burn- 

 " ing, an atmofphere always dry, fandy plains, moun- 

 " tains flill more parched, over which the eye roams in 

 " vain to fix upon a fmgle living object ; a land, if we 

 " may fay fo, pale and excoriated with the winds, which 

 " prefents nothing to the fight but bones, fcattered 

 <c ftones, and rocks in pyramids or in ruins ; a defert 

 " entirely bare, in which the adventurous traveller never 

 " bates under the fhade, where there is nothing that 

 " can be made companiable to him, or preferve his re- 

 <c membrance of living nature : a folitude greatly more 

 " frightful than that of the woods ; for the trees are 

 " at leaft animated fubftances, which afford fome con- 

 " folation to man, but here he finds himfelf alone, de- 

 " tached, more naked and more bewildered, in places 

 " that are wafte and without boundary ; all the foil 

 " which he views appears to him like his fepulchre ; 

 <c the light of the day, more melancholy than the fhades 

 " of night, does not return but to make him fee his 

 66 nakednefs and impotence, and fet before him his hor- 

 " ble fituation, lengthening to his fight the limits of the 

 " void, and enlarging around him the abyfs of immen- 

 " fity which feparate him from the habitable world ; 

 M a fpace fo immeafurable, that in vain he would at- 

 " tempt to pafs it ; for hunger, thirft, and burning 

 " heat, ftiorten the moments which remain to him be- 

 " fcween defperation and death (s)." 



DISSERTATION 



(0 Buffon Hift. Nat. torn, xxil 



