This rambling propensity strengthened with years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents I neglected the regular exercises of the schools. How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climes—with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth !
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt litter desire to seek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts (大瀑布), thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, roiling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine—no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.