We ran the machine to the same station, and found unoccupied the same rooms we had left four weeks and two days before. It seemed an age since that Wednesday, August 24, when we started out, so much had transpired, every hour had been so eventful. Measured by the new things we had seen and the strange things that had happened, the interval was months not weeks.
A man need not go beyond his doorstep to find a new world; his own country, however small, is a universe that can never be fully explored. And yet such is the perversity of human nature that we know all countries better than our own; we travel everywhere except at home. The denizens of the earth in their wanderings cross each other en route like letters; all Europe longs to see Niagara, all America to see Mont Blanc, and yet whoever sees the one sees the other, for the grandeur of both is the same. It does not matter whether a vast volume of water is pouring over the sharp edge of a cliff, or a huge pile of scarred and serrated rock rises to the heavens, the grandeur is the same; it is not the outward form we stand breathless before, but the forces of nature which produce every visible and invisible effect. The child of nature worships the god within the mountains and the spirit behind the waters; whereas we in our great haste observe only the outward form, see only the falling waters and the towering peaks.
It is good for every man to come at least once in his life in contact with some overpowering work of nature; it is better for most men to never see but one; let the memory linger, let not the impression be too soon effaced, rather let it sink deep into the heart until it becomes a part of life.
Steam has impaired the imagination. Such is the facility of modern transportation that we ride on the ocean to-day and sit at the feet of the mountains to-morrow.
Nowadays we see just so much of nature as the camera sees and no more; our vision is but surface deep, our eyes are but two clear, bright lenses with nothing behind, not even a dry plate to record the impressions. It is a physiological fact that the cells of the brain which first receive impressions from the outward organs of sense may be reduced to a condition of comparative inactivity by too rapid succession of sights, sounds, and other sensations. We see so much that we see nothing. To really see is to fully comprehend, therefore our capacity for seeing is limited. No man has really seen Niagara, no man has ever really seen Mont Blanc; for that matter, no man has even fully comprehended so much as a grain of sand; therefore the universe is at one's doorstep.
Nature is a unit; it is not a whole made up of many diverse parts, but is a whole which is inherent in every part. No two persons see the same things in a blossoming flower; to the botanist it is one thing, to the poet another, to the painter another, to the child a bit of bright color, to the maiden an emblem of love, to the heart-broken woman a cluster of memories; to no two is it precisely the same.
The longer we look at anything, however simple, the deeper it penetrates into our being until it becomes a part of us. In time we learn to know the tree that shades our porch, but years elapse before we are on friendly terms, and a lifetime is spent before the gnarled giant admits us to intimate companionship. Trees are filled with reserve; when denuded of their neighbors, they stand in melancholy solitude until the leaves fall for the last time, until their branches wither, and their trunks ring hollow with decay.
And if we never really see or know or understand the nature which is about us, how is it possible that we should ever comprehend the people we meet? What is the use of trying to know an Englishman or a Frenchman when we do not know an American? What is the use of struggling with the obstacle of a foreign tongue, when our own will not suffice for the communication of thoughts? The only light that we have is at home; travellers are men groping in the dark; they fancy they see much, but for the most part they see nothing. No great teacher has ever been a great traveller. Buddha, Confucius, and Mahomet never left the confines of their respective countries. Plato lived in Athens; Shakespeare travelled between London and Stratford; these great souls found it quite sufficient to know themselves and the vast universe as reflected from the eyes of those about them. But then they are the exceptions.
For most men—including geniuses—travel and deliberate observation are good, since most men will not observe at home. Such is the singularity of our nature that we ignore the interesting at home to study the commonplace abroad. We never notice a narrow and crooked street in Boston or lower New York, whereas a narrow and crooked street in London fills us with an ecstasy of delight. We never visit the Metropolitan Art Museum, but we cross Europe to visit galleries of lesser interest. We choose a night boat down the majestic Hudson, and we suffer untold discomforts by day on crowded little boats paddling down the comparatively insignificant Rhine.
Every country possesses its own peculiar advantages and beauties. There is no desert so barren, no mountains so bleak, no woods so wild that to those who dwell therein their home is not beautiful. The Esquimau would not exchange his blinding waste of snow and dark fields of water for the luxuriance of tropic vegetation. Why should we exchange the glories of the land we live in for the footworn and sight-worn, the thumbed and fingered beauties of other lands? If we desire novelty and adventure, seek it in the unexplored regions of the great Northwest; if we crave grandeur, visit the Yellowstone and the fastnesses of the Rockies; if we wish the sublime, gaze in the mighty chasm of the Cañon of the Colorado, where strong men weep as they look down; if we seek desolation, traverse the alkali plains of Arizona where the trails are marked by bones of men and beasts; but if the heart yearns for beauty more serene, go forth among the habitations of men where fields are green and sheltering woods offer refuge from the noonday sun, where rivers ripple with laughter, and the great lakes smile in soft content.