by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and gardens
of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to have
been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and
poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the
sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of
all those fables?

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any
before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.
The herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures from afar,

"And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last HE rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent
with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so
rich and varied in its productions, and at the same time so
habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux, who knew but part
of them, says that "the species of large trees are much more
numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States
there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed
thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations.
Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a
tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection
in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic
wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described.
The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes farther--farther