ful world we are about to sketch, would be obscured by the imperfect descriptions of our pen, if it had not been illustrated by the divinest poet of the age, to whose sublime genius the task was reserved.
Felices nimium populi, queis prodiga tellus
Fundit opes ad vota suas, queis contigit Æstas<
Æmula veris, Hyems sine fiigore, nubibus aer
Usque carens, nulloque solum fcecundius imbre[1].
Certain philosophers have undertaken to erect to Nature a temple worthy of her immensity—a temple in which, her productions being deposited, the skeletons of all organized beings should be collected in the centre; and that over this tomb of corpses death should hover, to give life and vigour to art. Peru is her august temple, in which, without the necessity of
- ↑ Vanier, Praed. page 117.
These lines may be thus freely translated:
"O happy people, to whom the earth pours forth her stores at will; on whom providence has bestowed summers, the coolness of which emulate the spring; winters without cold; a cloudless firmament; and a soil highly fertile without showers."
trary. The above-mentioned directions having been examined with the nicest attention, it appears that neither the particular serieses proceed precisely from east to west, nor the junction of them north and south. The latter declines to the south-east, and the particular serieses decline in the same proportion, to the westward from west to south-west, and to the eastward from east to north-east. The reason of this is, that South America does not completely intersect the Equator. Thus, if a line were to be drawn through its middle, longitudinally, it would form with the Equinoctial Line an angle of sixty degrees only, instead of ninety. To restore the directions of our cordileras in such a way as that they should look precisely towards the cardinal points, it would be necessary that a comet, such as the one of which Whiston dreamed, should make its appearance, should suddenly attach this continent to Cape Horn, and push it thirty degrees to the westward.
