XXI 
RETROSPECT 
535 
frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pro¬ 
nounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described 
only by negative characters ; without habitations, without water, 
without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few 
dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar to my¬ 
self, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? 
Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile 
Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal 
impression ? I can scarcely analyse these feelings : but it 
must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. 
The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely 
passable, and hence unknown ; they bear the stamp of having 
lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit 
to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients 
supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable 
breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, 
who would not look at these last boundaries to man’s know¬ 
ledge with deep but ill-defined sensations ? 
Lastly, of natural scenery, the views from lofty mountains, 
though certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very memorable. 
When looking down from the highest crest of the Cordillera, 
the mind, undisturbed by minute details, was filled with the 
stupendous dimensions of the surrounding masses. 
Of individual objects, perhaps nothing is more certain to 
create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of 
a barbarian, — of man in his lowest and most savage state. 
One’s mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks, 
Could our progenitors have been men like these?—men, whose 
very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those 
of the domesticated animals ; men, who do not possess the 
instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human 
reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason. I do not 
believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference between 
savage and civilised man. It is the difference between a wild 
and tame animal: and part of the interest in beholding a 
savage is the same which would lead every one to desire to 
see the lion in his desert, the tiger tearing his prey in the 
jungle, or the rhinoceros wandering over the wild plains of 
Africa. 
Among the other most remarkable spectacles which we 
