ch 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 sever