That square peninsula under our feet is the arid country of the Arabs; the great continent on its left, almost as naked in its interior, with a little verdure only towards its borders, is the parched soil inhabited by black-men.* To the north, 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 Sidon, of Ascalon, of Gaza, and of Berytus.  That thread of water with no outlet, is the river Jordan; and those naked rocks were once the theatre of events that have resounded throughout the world.  Behold that desert of Horeb, and that Mount Sinai; where, by means beyond