6. Mountains.

In those countries which consist of plains, the smallest elevations are apt to excite wonder. In Holland, which is entirely flat, there is shown, near the sea-side, a little ridge of hills, which, Boerhaave used to tell his pupils, were mountains of no small consideration. What would have been the sensations of such an auditory, could they have been at once transported to the heights and precipices of the Alps or the Andes? People have no adequate idea, even in England, of a mountainous prospect. Their hills are generally sloping from the plain, and clothed to the very top with verdure. They can scarcely, therefore, lift their imaginations to those immense piles, whose tops, sharp and precipitate, rise above the clouds, and reach to heights that human curiosity has never been able to attain.

The traveler, as he ascends a mountain, finds that the air becomes colder, and the earth more barren. In the midst of his otherwise dreary ascent, he is often entertained with a little valley of surprising verdure, caused by the reflected heat of the sun, collected by the surrounding heights into a narrow spot. But it more frequently happens, that he sees only frightful precipices beneath, and lakes of amazing depths, whence rivers and springs derive their origin. Near the summit, vegetation can scarcely be observed: here and there, a few plants of the hardiest kind appear. The air is here intolerably cold; the ground wears an

eternal covering of ice; and snow seems constantly accumulating. On emerging from this scene, he ascends into a purer and serener region, where vegetation has entirely ceased; where the precipices, composed entirely of rocks, rise perpendicularly above him; while he views, beneath him, all the combat of the elements,-clouds at his feet, and lightning darting upward from their bosoms below. A thousand meteors which are never seen on the plains, now present themselves to his view: circular rainbows, mock suns, the shadow of the mountain, projected upon the body of the air, and the traveler's own image reflected, as in a looking-glass, upon the opposite clouds.

7. Ascent of the Andes.

AFTER having traveled upward for nine days, we began to find the whole country covered with frost. At length, after a journey of fifteen days, we arrived at a plain, on the extremity of which stands the city of Quito, the capitol of one of the most charming regions on earth. Here, in the middle of the torrid zone, the heat is not only very tolerable, but, in some places, the cold is painful. The inhabitants enjoy all the advantages of temperate weather and perpetual spring; their fields being always covered with verdure, and enameled with flowers of the most brilliant colors. But although this beautiful region is higher than any other country in the world; and although it teek so many days of painful journey in the ascent;

it is still overlooked by tremendous mountains, their sides covered with snow, and their tops flaming with volcanoes. These mountains seem piled one upon the other, and rise to a most astonishing height. The most remarkable mountains are the Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, and Pachincha. The first is more than three geographical miles above the surface of the sea: the rest are not much inferior. On the top of the lastmentioned, I suffered particular hardships, from the intenseness of the cold, and the violence of the storms. The sky around was, in general, involved in thick fogs, which, when they cleared away, and the clouds, by their gravity, moved nearer to the surface of the earth, appeared at a vast distance below, surrounding the lower part of the mountain, like a sea encompassing an island. When this appearance was seen, the tempests beneath were heard discharging themselves, with a horrid noise, on Quito and the surrounding country. Lightnings issued from the clouds; and the thunders rolled far below. Whilst the tempest was thus raging beneath me, the mountain-top, where I was placed, enjoyed a delightful serenity: the wind was abated; the sky was clear, and the rays of the sun moderated the severity of the cold.

8. The Ocean.

WHEN We look upon a map of the world, we find that the waters occupy more space than the land. Although the ocean is but one extensive sheet of

water, continued, without interruption, over every part of the globe; yet geographers have distinguished it by different names, as the Atlantic, the Northern, Southern, Pacific, and Indian oceans.

diminished by their What, indeed, is the

In this vast receptacle, almost all the rivers of the earth ultimately terminate; nor do so great supplies seem to increase its stores. It is neither apparently swollen by their tribute, nor failure: it continues the same. quantity of water contained in all the lakes and rivers on the globe, when compared to this prodigious mass? We find, on attempting a rude estimate, that all the rivers in the world, flowing into the bed of the sea, with a continuance of their present stores, would take up, at least, 800 years in filling it to its present height.

In temperate climates, the sea is never frozen; but the polar regions are embarrassed with mountains of ice, which render them impassable: the tremendous floats of different magnitudes, sometimes rising more than a thousand feet above the surface of the water; sometimes diffused into plains of some hundred miles in extent. They are usually divided by fissures, one piece following another so closely, that a person may step from one to the other. Sometimes mountains are seen rising amidst these plains and presenting the appearance of a variegated landscape, with hills and valleys, houses, churches, and towers.

The mountain ice is often incorporated with earth, stones, and brushwood, washed from the shore. On the icy mass are sometimes found not only earth, but

nests with bird's eggs, even when the mountain has floated to the distance of several hundred miles from land. These mountains are usually seen in spring, or after a violent storm, when they drift out to sea, soon to be dashed in pieces by the violent and continual washing of the waves, or driven into the warmer regions of the south, to be melted away.

9. Magnificence of the universe.

THE universe may be considered as the palace in which the Deity resides, and this earth as one of its apartments. Those great outlines of nature, to which art cannot reach, and where our greatest efforts must have been ineffectual, God himself has finished with amazing grandeur and beauty. Our beneficent Father, considers these parts of nature as peculiarly his own, as parts which no creature could have skill or strength to amend, and has, therefore, made them incapable of alteration or improvement.

When, therefore, we survey nature under this impression, nothing can be more strikingly correct, more splendid, or more amazing. We then behold the Deity residing in the midst of a universe, which is animated and cheered by his presence. We behold an immense and shapeless mass of matter, formed by his power into worlds, and dispersed at intervals, to which even the imagination cannot travel. In this great theatre of his glory, a thousand suns like our own, appearing and vanishing at the divine command, animate their respective systems. Our own