assed many rivers and rivulets, which commonly ran with a clear
shallow stream over a hard pebbly bottom. These channels, which seem so
much wider than the water that they convey would naturally require, are
formed by the violence of wintry floods, produced by the accumulation of
innumerable streams that fall in rainy weather from the hills, and
bursting away with resistless impetuosity, make themselves a passage
proportionate to their mass.

Such capricious and temporary waters cannot be expected to produce many
fish. The rapidity of the wintry deluge sweeps them away, and the
scantiness of the summer stream would hardly sustain them above the
ground. This is the reason why in fording the northern rivers, no fishes
are seen, as in England, wandering in the water.

Of the hills many may be called with Homer's Ida 'abundant in springs',
but few can deserve the epithet which he bestows upon Pelion by 'waving
their leaves.' They exhibit very little variety; being almost wholly
covered with dark heath, and even that seems to be checked in its growth.
What is not heath is nakedness, a little diversified by now and then a
stream rushing down the steep. An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and
waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of
hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of form
or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care and disinherited of her
favours, left in its original elemental state, or quickened only with one
sullen power of useless vegetation.

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 mu