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 have beheld,
may be ranked the Southern Cross, the cloud of Magellan, and the
other constellations of the southern hemisphere--the
waterspout--the glacier leading its blue stream of ice, overhanging
the sea in a bold precipice--a lagoon-island raised by the
reef-building corals--an active volcano--and the overwhelming
effects of a violent earthquake.
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