eye of the traveller may range from the brink of the crater, along the vine-clad slopes of Orotava, to the orange gardens and banana groves that skirt the shore. In scenes like these, it is not the peaceful charm uniformly spread over the face of Nature that moves the heart, but rather the peculiar physiognomy and conformation of the land, the features of the landscape, the ever varying outline of the clouds, and their blending with the horizon of the sea, whether it lies spread before us like a smooth and shining mirror, or is dimly seen through the morning mist. All that the senses can but imperfectly comprehend, all that is most awful in such romantic scenes of Nature may become a source of enjoyment to man, by opening a wide field to the creative of his imagination. Impressions change with the varying movements of the and we are led by a happy illusion to believe that we receive from the external world that with which we have ourselves invested it."
Humboldt also singles out for especial praise the following description given of Tahiti by Darwin:[1]—
"The land capable of cultivation is scarcely in any part more than a fringe of low alluvial soil, accumulated round the base of mountains, and protected from the waves of the sea by a coral reef, which encircles at a distance the entire line of coast. The reef is broken in several parts, so that ships can pass through, and the lake of smooth water within thus affords a safe harbour as well as a channel for the native canoes. The low land, which comes down to the beach of coral sand, is covered by the most beautiful productions of the intertropical regions. In the midst of bananas, orange, cocoanut, and bread-fruit trees, spots arc cleared, where yams, sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, and pine-apples are cultivated. Even the brushwood is a fruit-tree, namely, the guava, which from its abundance is as noxious as a weed. In Brazil I have often admired the contrast of varied beauty in the banana, palm, and orange tree; here we have in addition the bread-fruit tree, conspicuous from its large, glossy and deeply-digitated leaf. It is admirable to behold groves of a tree, sending forth its branches with the force of an English oak, loaded with large and most nutritious fruit. However little on most occasions utility explains the delight received from any fine prospect, in this case it cannot fail to enter as an element in the feeling. The little winding paths, cool from the surrounding shade, led to the scattered houses; and the owners of these everywhere gave us a cheerful and most hospitable reception."
Darwin himself has told us, after going round the world, that "In calling up images of the past, I find the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all to be most wretched and useless. They are characterised only by negative possessions; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support only a few dwarf plants. Why then—and the case is not peculiar to myself—have these arid wastes taken so firm possession of my mind? 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 practicable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having thus lasted 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?
Hamerton, whose wide experience and artistic power make his opinion especially important, says:—
"I know nothing in the visible world that combines splendour and purity so perfectly as a great mountain entirely covered with frozen snow, and reflected in the vast mirror of a lake. As the sun declines its thousand shadows lengthen, pure as the cold green-azure in the depth of a glacier's crevasse, and the illuminated snow takes first the tender colour of a white rose, and then the flush of a red one, and the sky turns to a pale malachite green till the rare, strange vision fades into ghastly grey, but leaves with you a permanent recollection of its too transient beauty."[2]
Wallace especially and very justly praises the following description of tropical forest scenery given by Belt in his charming "Naturalist in Nicaragua":—
