Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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After Having Passed Several Months In The Thick
Forests Of The Orinoco, In Places Where One Is Accustomed, When At Any
Distance From The River, To See The Stars Only In The Zenith, As
Through The Mouth Of A Well, A Journey In The Llanos Is Peculiarly
Agreeable And Attractive.
The traveller experiences new sensations;
and, like the Llanero, he enjoys the happiness of seeing well around
him.
But this enjoyment, as we ourselves experienced, is not of long
duration. There is doubtless something solemn and imposing in the
aspect of a boundless horizon, whether viewed from the summits of the
Andes or the highest Alps, amid the expanse of the ocean or in the
vast plains of Venezuela and Tucuman. Infinity of space, as poets in
every language say, is reflected within ourselves; it is associated
with ideas of a superior order; it elevates the mind which delights in
the calm of solitary meditation. It is true, also, that every view of
unbounded space bears a peculiar character. The prospect surveyed from
a solitary peak varies according as the clouds reposing on the plain
extend in layers, are conglomerated in groups, or present to the
astonished eye, through broad openings, the habitations of man, the
labour of agriculture, or the verdant tint of the aerial ocean. An
immense sheet of water, animated by a thousand various beings even to
its utmost depths, changing perpetually in colour and aspect, moveable
at its surface like the element that agitates it, all charm the
imagination during long voyages by sea; but the dusty and creviced
Llano, throughout a great part of the year, has a depressing influence
on the mind by its unchanging monotony.
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