Both
are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of
Nature:--no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel
that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. In
calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia
frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced 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 myself, 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
knowledge 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.
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