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first land we had touched under a zone, toward 

 which my wishes had been turned from my 

 earliest youth. There is something so great, 

 so powerful, in the impression made by nature 

 in the climate of the Indies, that after an abode 

 of a few months we seemed to have lived there 

 during a long succession of years. In Europe, 

 the inhabitant of the north and of the plains 

 feels an almost similar emotion, when he quits 

 even after a short abode the shores of the Bay 

 of Naples, the delicious country between Tivoli 

 and the Lake of Nemi, or the wild and solemn 

 scenery of the Higher Alps and the Pyrenees. 

 Yet every where under the temperate zone, the 

 effects of the physiognomy of the vegetables 

 afford little contrast. The firs and the oaks, 

 that crown the mountains of Sweden, have a 

 certain family air with those, which vegetate in 

 the fine climates of G reece and Italy. Between 

 the tropics on the contrary, in the lower regions 

 of both Indies, every thing in nature appears 

 new and marvellous. In the open plains, and 

 amid the gloom of forests, almost all the re- 

 membrances of Europe are effaced ; for it is the 

 vegetation that determines the character of a 

 landscape, and acts upon our imagination by 

 it's mass, the contrast of it's forms, and the glow 

 of it's colours. In proportion as impressions are 

 powerful and new, they weaken antecedent im- 

 pressions, and their strength gives them the ap- 



