beyond a long, narrow and irregular sea,**
are the countries of Europe, rich in meadows and cultivated fields. On
its right, from the Caspian Sea, extend the snowy and naked plains of
Tartary. Returning in this direction that white space is the vast and
barren desert of Cobi, which separates China from the rest of the world.
You see that empire in the furrowed plain which obliquely rounds itself
off from our sight. On yonder coasts, those ragged tongues of land
and scattered points are the peninsulas and islands of the Malays, the
wretched possessors of the spices and perfumes. That triangle which
advances so far into the sea, is the too famous peninsula of India.***
You see the winding course of the Ganges, the rough mountains of Thibet,
the lovely valley of Cachemere, the briny deserts of Persia, the banks
of the Euphrates and Tygris, the deep bed of the Jordan and the canals
of the solitary Nile.

* Africa.

** The Mediterranean.

*** Of what real good has been the commerce of India to the
mass of the people? On the contrary, how great the evil
occasioned by the superstition of this country having been
added the general superstition!

O Genius, said I, interrupting him, the sight of a mortal reaches not
to objects at such a distance. He touched my eyes, and immediately they
became piercing as those of an eagle; nevertheless the rivers still
appeared like waving lines, the mountains winding furrows, and the
cities little compartments like the squares of a chess-board.

And the Genius proceeded to enumerate and point out the objects to
me: Those piles of ruins, said he, which you see in that narrow valley
watered by the Nile, are the remains of opulent cities, the pride of the
ancient kingdom of Ethiopia.* Behold the wrecks of her metropolis, of
Thebes with her hundred palaces,** the parent of cities, and monument of
the caprice of destiny. There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while
others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences. A
race of men now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled
hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and
religious systems which still govern the universe. Lower down, those
dusky points are the pyramids whose masses have astonished you. Beyond
that, the coast, hemmed in between the sea and a narrow ridge of
mountains, was the habitation of the Phoenicians. These were the famous
cities of Tyre, of