496 
EUROPE AND AFRICA CONTRASTED. 
25—28 Dec. 
long, chilling wintry nights, and numbing cold, drive the inhabitant 
into his well-warmed cot, to seek the comforts and the pleasures of 
a fire-side. Here the task of sweeping the snow from the door, or 
the icicles from the eaves, of breaking the ice from the pond, laying 
in a store of winter fuel, and providing against the inclement season, 
or of preparing fodder for the cattle, is never known. Here, at 
Christmas, if we take shelter in a hut, it is to fly from the rays of a 
burning sun, and there, for coolness, throw aside our clothing. Here 
the bright source of light and warmth revolves in ever-shining splen- 
* dor, rarely unseen while above the horizon. Here our wifiter is excess 
of heat; this it is which puts a stop to vegetation, and causes ver- 
dure to disappear ; this locks up the soil, and renders it not less hard 
than the power of frost ; this deprives the flocks and herds of their 
pasture, and, in the valley, scorches every tuft of grass. It is at the 
cooler season of the year only, that these wide-extended plains look 
like a habitable country. Here, instead of chilblains, the swarthy 
native, who ventures to walk barefoot on the burning sands, is ren- 
dered lame with blisters. While the inhabitant of Northern Europe, 
freezing and shivering, draws nearer and nearer to his fire, here, at 
that same hour, languid and oppressed with the sultry heat, we lie 
reclining in the shade, longing for some breath of cooling air. 
There the thermometer has sunk to 20°, to 10°, or even to 0; while 
with us it is 88°. 
And these surprising contrasts have but one single cause : it is 
alone the difference of obliquity with which the sun's rays fall upon 
the different parts of our globe ; or, in other words, the greater or 
less noon-day height of the sun, which occasions all the diversity of 
heat and cold, from the burning sands under the equator, to the 
eternal, never-thawing ice of the poles. How transcendant and 
ever-wonderful is the Great Wisdom which planned the universe ! 
How stupendous and noble the scheme; how simple, yet efficient, 
the laws which govern it! That nothing more complicated than the 
direction of the sun's beams, should produce all the various climates 
of the world, and that merely the parallelism and inclination of the 
