Cut
off for so long a time from actual contact with the outside world, I
could better imagine the brooding stillness of the Great Desert, I
could more easily picture the weird ice-palaces of the Pole, waiting,
waiting forever in awful state, like the deserted halls of the Walhalla
for their slain gods to return, than many of the common street-scenes
in my own city, which I had only vaguely heard mentioned.
I followed the footsteps of the Great Seekers over the wastes, the
untrodden paths of the world; I tracked Columbus across the pathless
Atlantic,--heard, with Balboa, the "wave of the loud-roaring ocean
break upon the long shore, and the vast sea of the Pacific forever
crash on the beach,"--gazed with Cortes on the temples of the Sun in
the startling Mexican empire,--or wandered with Pizarro through the
silver-lined palaces of Peru. But a secret affection drew me to the
mysterious regions of the East and South,--towards Arabia, the wild
Ishmael bequeathing sworded Korans and subtile Aristotles as legacies
to the sons of the freed-woman,--to solemn Egypt, riddle of nations,
the vast, silent, impenetrable mystery of the world. By continual
pondering over the footsteps of the Seekers, the Sought-for seemed to
grow to vast proportions, and the Found to shrink to inappreciable
littleness.
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