Such Are The
General Ideas Of Travellers And Voyagers Long Exhausted By Distresses;
And With Such Warmth Of Imagination They Have Viewed The Rude Cliffs
Of Juan Fernandez, And The Impenetrable Forests Of Tinian!" So Much,
By The Bye, As A Hint For Understanding The Works Of Some Other
Painters!
But all was not mere semblance of good.
Several substantial
advantages were enjoyed, abundance of excellent fish and water-fowl,
plenty of wood and water, &c. To a naturalist besides, there was much
to occupy attention and excite curiosity, as a store of animal and
vegetable bodies was perceived, bearing little or no resemblance to
known species. But the dream of pleasure, and the hopes of much
additional science, were not of very long duration. The necessary
occupations of the different artificers, soon involved the people in
very embarrassing intricacies and much bodily labour, occasioned by
the prodigious variety and numbers of climbers, briars, shrubs, and
ferns, interwoven through the forests, and almost totally precluding
access to the interior of the country. From the appearance of these
impediments, and the quantity of rotten trees which had been either
felled by the winds, or brought low from age, it is conjectured, and
plausibly enough, that the forests in the southern parts of New
Zealand had escaped the hand of human industry since the origin of
their existence. But nature, we may often see, is prodigal of life,
and in the very act of dissolving one generation, seems to rejoice in
providing for another that is to succeed it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 223 of 885
Words from 59959 to 60215
of 239428
