第19章 ANOCH(3)

It will very readily occur,that this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller;that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath,and waterfalls;and that these journeys are useless labours,which neither impregnate the imagination,nor enlarge the understanding.It is true that of far the greater part of things,we must content ourselves with such knowledge as description may exhibit,or analogy supply;but it is true likewise,that these ideas are always incomplete,and that at least,till we have compared them with realities,we do not know them to be just.As we see more,we become possessed of more certainties,and consequently gain more principles of reasoning,and found a wider basis of analogy.

Regions mountainous and wild,thinly inhabited,and little cultivated,make a great part of the earth,and he that has never seen them,must live unacquainted with much of the face of nature,and with one of the great scenes of human existence.

As the day advanced towards noon,we entered a narrow valley not very flowery,but sufficiently verdant.Our guides told us,that the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat,and intreated us to stop here,because no grass would be found in any other place.The request was reasonable and the argument cogent.

We therefore willingly dismounted and diverted ourselves as the place gave us opportunity.

I sat down on a bank,such as a writer of Romance might have delighted to feign.I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head,but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet.The day was calm,the air soft,and all was rudeness,silence,and solitude.Before me,and on either side,were high hills,which by hindering the eye from ranging,forced the mind to find entertainment for itself.Whether I spent the hour well I know not;for here I first conceived the thought of this narration.

We were in this place at ease and by choice,and had no evils to suffer or to fear;yet the imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens,a flattering notion of self-sufficiency,a placid indulgence of voluntary delusions,a secure expansion of the fancy,or a cool concentration of the mental powers.The phantoms which haunt a desert are want,and misery,and danger;the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts;man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness,and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain,and how little he can perform.There were no traces of inhabitants,except perhaps a rude pile of clods called a summer hut,in which a herdsman had rested in the favourable seasons.Whoever had been in the place where I then sat,unprovided with provisions and ignorant of the country,might,at least before the roads were made,have wandered among the rocks,till he had perished with hardship,before he could have found either food or shelter.Yet what are these hillocks to the ridges of Taurus,or these spots of wildness to the desarts of America?

It was not long before we were invited to mount,and continued our journey along the side of a lough,kept full by many streams,which with more or less rapidity and noise,crossed the road from the hills on the other hand.These currents,in their diminished state,after several dry months,afford,to one who has always lived in level countries,an unusual and delightful spectacle;but in the rainy season,such as every winter may be expected to bring,must precipitate an impetuous and tremendous flood.I suppose the way by which we went,is at that time impassable.