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- SKETCH FOURTH.
A PISGAH VIEW FROM THE ROCK.
—“That done, he leads him to the highest mount,
From whence, far off he unto him did show:”—
If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Go
three voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest
frigate that floats; then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the
guides who conduct strangers up the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many more
respectively to a rope-dancer, an Indian juggler, and a chamois. This
done, come and be rewarded by the view from our tower. How we get
there, we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what the wiser were
they? Suffice it, that here at the summit you and I stand. Does any
balloonist, does the outlooking man in the moon, take a broader view of
space? Much thus, one fancies, looks the universe from Milton’s
celestial battlements. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boone
would have dwelt content.
Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the Enchanted
Isles. Look edgeways, as it were, past them, to the south. You see
nothing; but permit me to point out the direction, if not the place, of
certain interesting objects in the vast sea, which, kissing this
tower’s base, we behold unscrolling itself towards the Antarctic Pole.
We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to the East, some six
hundred miles, lies the continent; this Rock being just about on the
parallel of Quito.
Observe another thing here. We are at one of three uninhabited
clusters, which, at pretty nearly uniform distances from the main,
sentinel, at long intervals from each other, the entire coast of South
America. In a peculiar manner, also, they terminate the South American
character of country. Of the unnumbered Polynesian chains to the
westward, not one partakes of the qualities of the Encantadas or
Gallipagos, the isles of St. Felix and St. Ambrose, the isles
Juan-Fernandez and Massafuero. Of the first, it needs not here to
speak. The second lie a little above the Southern Tropic; lofty,
inhospitable, and uninhabitable rocks, one of which, presenting two
round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly resembles a huge
double-headed shot. The last lie in the latitude of 33°; high, wild and
cloven. Juan Fernandez is sufficiently famous without further
description. Massafuero is a Spanish name, expressive of the fact, that
the isle so called lies _more without_, that is, further off the main
than its neighbor Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very imposing aspect
at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one direction, in
cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and rugged contour, and
more especially a peculiar slope of its broad summits, give it much the
air of a vast iceberg drifting in tremendous poise. Its sides are split
with dark cavernous recesses, as an old cathedral with its gloomy
lateral chapels. Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea, after a
long voyage, and beholding some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff in hand,
descending its steep rocks toward you, conveys a very queer emotion to
a lover of the picturesque.
On fishing parties from ships, at various times, I have chanced to
visit each of these groups. The impression they give to the stranger
pulling close up in his boat under their grim cliffs is, that surely he
must be their first discoverer, such, for the most part, is the
unimpaired ... silence and solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in
which these isles were really first lighted upon by Europeans is not
unworthy of mention, especially as what is about to be said, likewise
applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.
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