, that of having seen not only littoral districts, such as
are alone visited by the majority of those who take part in voyages of
circumnavigation, but also those portions of the interior of two vast
continents which present the most striking contrasts manifested in the
Alpine tropical landscapes of South America, and the dreary wastes of the
steppes in Northern Asia. Travels, undertaken in districts such as these,
could not fail to encourage the natural tendency of my mind toward a
generalization of views, and to encourage me to attempt, in a special work,
to treat of the knowledge which we at present possess, regarding the
sidereal and terrestrial phenomena of the Cosmos in their empirical
relations. The hitherto undefined idea of a physical geography has thus, by
an extended and perhaps too boldly imagined a plan, been comprehended under
the idea of a physical description of the universe, embracing all created
things in the regions of space and in the earth.
The very abundance of the materials which are presented to the mind for
arrangement and definition, necessarily impart no inconsiderable
difficulties in the choice of the form under
p 9
which such a work must be presented, if it would aspire to the honor of
being regarded as a literary composition.
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