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. For me, over the dreary ice-plains of the Poles, over the
profound bosom of Africa, the far-stretching steppes of Asia, and the
rocky wilds of America, a great silence brooded, and in the unexplored
void faint footfalls could be heard here and there, threading their way
in the darkness. But while the longing to plunge, myself, into these
dim regions of expectation grew more intense each day, the
prison-chains that had always bound me still kept their habitual hold
upon me, even after my recovery. I dreamt not of making even the
vaguest plans for undertaking explorations myself. So I read and
dreamt, filling my room with wild African or monotonous Egyptian
scenery, until I was almost weaned from ordinary Occidental life.

I passed four blissful years In this happy dream-life, and then it was
abruptly brought to an end by the death of my father and mother almost
simultaneously by an epidemic fever prevailing in the neighborhood. I
was away from home at a bachelor uncle's at the time, and so was
unexpectedly thrown on his hands, an orphan, penniless, except in the