nd
gazing toward the south and east, wept, as at the fast closed bars
of my prison, that I had so soon discovered my limits. New Holland so
extraordinary and so essentially necessary to the comprehension of the
earth and its sun-woven garment, the vegetable and the animal world,
with the South Sea and its Zoophyte islands, was interdicted to me,
and thus, at the very outset, all that I should gather and build up
was destined to remain a mere fragment! Oh, my Adelbert, what, after
all, are the endeavors of men!

Often did I in the severest winter of the southern hemisphere,
endeavor, passing the polar glaciers westward, to leave behind me
those two hundred strides out from Cape Horn, which sundered me
probably from Van Diemen's Land and New Holland, regardless of my
return or whether this dismal region should close upon me as my
coffin-lid--making desperate leaps from ice-drift to ice-drift, and
bidding defiance to the cold and the sea. In vain! I never reached New
Holland, but, every time, I came back to Lamboc, seated myself on its
farthest peak, and wept again, with my face turned toward the south
and east, as at the fast closed bars of my prison.

I tore myself at length from this spot, and returned with a sorrowful
heart into inner Asia. I traversed that farther, pursuing the morning
dawn westward, and came, yet in the night, to my proposed home in the
Thebais, which I had touched upon in the afternoon of the day before.

As soon as I was somewhat rested, and when it was day again in Europe,
I made it my first care to procure everything which I wanted. First of
all, stop-shoes; for I had experienced how inconvenient it was when
I wished to examine near objects, not to be able to slacken my stride
except by pulling off my boots. A pair of slippers drawn over them had
completely the effect which I anticipated, and later I always carried
two pairs, since I sometimes threw them from my feet, without having
time to pick them up again, when lions, men, or hyenas startled
me from my botanizing. My very excellent watch was, for the short
duration of my passage, a capital chronometer. Besides this I needed a
sextant, some scientific instruments, and books.

To procure all this, I made several anxious journeys to London and
Paris, which, auspiciously for me, a mist just then overshadowed.
As the remains of my enchanted gold was now exhausted, I easily
accomplished the payment by gathering African ivory, in which,
however