118 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
rated from each other by broad, and wild wastes. Along the 
ocean is a world of vegetable beauty; on the sides of the 
mountains are the mightiest trees of the earth ; on the heights 
are the eternal snows, lighted by volcanic fires ! But this is not 
the place to describe the features of this remarkable country. I 
have said there is a tale of olden times connected with it and 
its people, which must first be given. A strange period in 
the history of man is that, in which the Californias became 
known to Europeans. The latter years of the fifteenth, and 
the first of the sixteenth century, embrace it. It is a barba¬ 
rous era of human energy—not the energy of well-directed 
reason—but of that recuperative force of human nature which 
for centuries bends under ignorance and inaction, and then, 
like some central spark, ignites the mass, and flows forth over 
every opposing obstacle. 
The attempt to take Palestine from the Infidels has called 
out the combating and religious faculties in conjunction. Vene¬ 
ration for the Church and its rites is the ruling idea ; the cross is 
transferred from the cathedral to the field of battle, and with so¬ 
lemn hymns to God the people of Europe march to their graves 
on the desecrated plains of Jerusalem. This religious battling 
has an end ; but its influence on the minds of the people has 
been immense. They have wrapped their faith around their 
lances; turned from commerce, the subjugation of the soil, and 
general industry, to war upon opinions—to an unsettled state 
of fanatical vagabondism, which turns the world loose upon 
itself in a religious phrenzy that is forced to seek an outlet 
among the waves of the western seas. 
Half the solid land of the globe with its boundless forests, 
its Amazon and Mississippi Rivers, its mountain ranges, its 
unnumbered forms of animal life, its savage infidels—all its 
vastness, beauty and gold, catches the restless fancy of the age,- 
and Columbus is among its sea-weed—sees the light of the 
Indian’s evening fire, and invites the enthusiasm of the Old 
World to the New. It comes. It is love of wealth, power, 
and faith! 
