Why should he record excursions by which nothing could be learned, or
wish to make a show of knowledge, which, without some power of intuition
unknown to other mortals, he never could attain?
Of those who crowd the world with their itineraries, some have no other
purpose than to describe the face of the country; those who sit idle at
home, and are curious to know what is done or suffered in distant
countries, may be informed by one of these wanderers, that on a certain
day he set out early with the caravan, and in the first hour's march
saw, towards the south, a hill covered with trees, then passed over a
stream, which ran northward with a swift course, but which is probably
dry in the summer months; that an hour after he saw something to the
right which looked at a distance like a castle with towers, but which he
discovered afterwards to be a craggy rock; that he then entered a
valley, in which he saw several trees tall and flourishing, watered by a
rivulet not marked in the maps, of which he was not able to learn the
name; that the road afterward grew stony, and the country uneven, where
he observed among the hills many hollows worn by torrents, and was told
that the road was passable only part of the year; that going on they
found the remains of a building, once, perhaps, a fortress to secure the
pass, or to restrain the robbers, of which the present inhabitants can
give no other account than that it is haunted by fairies; that they went
to dine at the foot of a rock, and travelled the rest of the day along
the banks of a river, from which the road turned aside towards evening,
and brought them within sight of a village, which was once a
considerable town, but which afforded them neither good victuals nor
commodious lodging.
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