NATURE MOST DESOLATE. 
217 
one would naturally expect to find, and it soon became 
dreary work wandering in their awful presence. Great 
boulder-stones alone gave some relief to the tameness 
of the melancholy and solitary plains, but these 
inequalities of the surface left a sad and unsatisfied 
impression on the mind. 
None of these sympathies which are roused by 
the sight of familiar objects, which in some way 
contribute towards satisfying our wants, and so 
become associated with our existence, and serve to 
celebrate in some way our supremacy in creation, 
existed here. 
It was in these vast solitudes, surrounded by the 
sea, laden with so many unconquerable difficulties, 
that we began to inquire with ourselves into the 
enigma of human existence. Nothing here helped 
to sustain the ideas gained by education or naturally 
implanted by human vanity. Man never existed 
here, and the puny attempts he had made in his 
endeavour to settle for a season looked as if they were 
only preserved to illustrate how unchangeable are the 
laws which control his actions. Here the imperfec¬ 
tions of his nature are constantly displayed in his 
want of power to cope with the creatures which roam 
at will over the almost barren land, or haunt the 
ice-covered ocean surrounding us, only proving the 
