Ritter von Karl Scherzer

“ Our people is as much the friend of order and justice as of liberty and independence. To obey willingly it only desires from its governors honesty, activity, loyalty to institutions, patriotism, and respect for the ever moderate wishes of the country. The nation hates civil war, not alone from reason, but from instinct; it has not spontaneously sought the sad experience it has had of this terrible calamity; our strifes have not come from below; the incendiary torch fell from the seat of the chief Government. ”

“ Close to the palatial residence of the wealthiest resident of Australia, and clad in a filthy woollen coat, with an old hat on his head, crouches Rickety Dick, a wretched crippled native, the sole survivor of his tribe, once the lord of all this country, who now stretches out his horny hand to receive charity. Rickety Dick, who can only talk Australian, lives under a bark thatch, and leads a mendicant life, and this not owing to downright destitution, but because such a lazy mode of existence suits him better than a residence within the walls of a Poor's House. ”

“ All the splendid territories from Peru to Mexico have, after three centuries of Spanish rule, sunk into a state of demoralization and degeneracy, owing to the listless, labour-hating, sluggish mestizo races that inhabit it, such as only the immigration of one of the hardy northern races can ever adequately remedy. In a previous visit to Central America, I have wandered through its rich scenery, clad in the hues of perpetual summer, and smiling in exuberance of fertility, and everywhere the same impression was made upon me. ”

“ England has comprehended better than Germany how to utilize the energies of such of her children as emigrate to distant quarters of the globe, and to make them subservient to her own advancement as well; she evinced the most anxious solicitude for these pioneers of progress, extended her protection to them, flung the aegis of her own power over their adopted home, regarding each new settlement as but an extension of the limit of her empire, as an enlargement of the sources whence she drew the materials for her industrial handicrafts, as a new market for her manufactures! ”

“ The houses are usually one storey, very plain and unpretending but scrupulously clean. The stranger who wanders though Guillota, and becomes sensible of the filth and dust in the streets, and the entire absence of comfort within-doors, is apt to puzzle himself how the place came to be selected for a summer resort of the fashionable world, as indeed he may marvel how the Spanish navigators, to whom Valparaiso is indebted for its name, contrived to associate the idea of the Vale of Paradise with its sandy hills and glades bare of vegetation. ”

“ Although evening surprised us ere we returned to Santiago from Maipú, and a dense mist hung over the landscape quite precluding all views for the greatest part of the road, we were so fortunate, shortly before our arrival at the city, as to be favoured with a glimpse of the majestic range of the Cordillera, lit up by the declining rays of the sun, a spectacle resembling the sunset splendours of the Alps in Switzerland ”

“ The state of affairs in Bolivia affords a marked example of how closely the development of a country is connected with the fact of its possessing more or less of sea-coast. How great is the commerce, the. prosperity, and the civilization of Chile, a proportionally small strip of not over-fertile soil, but the entire extent of which is sea-coast, compared with the poverty and barbarism of the interior state of Bolivia, so admirably fitted by nature for raising all manner of valuable produce, but whose sole means of communication with the rest of the world is through one insignificant harbour! ”

“ The town of Panama (many fish) , built on low green hills amid the most magnificent forms of tropical vegetation, presents when viewed from seaward a most lovely, enchanting aspect, especially to the traveller coming from the sterile sandy shores of the west coast of South America. As soon, however, as he sets foot on the shore, and has entered the precincts of the city, his first pleasing impressions are rudely dispelled. The streets are everywhere narrow and filthy, the houses low and poverty-stricken in appearance; even upon their roofs the luxuriance of tropical vegetation bursts forth! ”

“ The villas and farms on either side of the road, or at the foot of the hills, buried in their splendid flower-gardens, formed a charming contrast with the ancient lava currents, stretching in every direction and over-grown with tree-ferns and dense coppice. Now and then horses were rolling about upon the velvet-like meadows, or herds of cattle and flocks of sheep were passed feeding and ruminating, and bearing ample testimony to the advanced stage of material progress so quickly attained by one of the youngest of English colonies. ”

“ Yet though we were rewarded with such poor sport, our stay among the splendid woods of the Keira range sufficiently repaid us. The most varied and luxuriant forms of vegetation, changing at every step, almost transcend the wanderer's power of description by their marvellous and enrapturing beauty. Some portions of the forest landscape, where splendid 38tree-ferns and gigantic gum trees, enveloped in the folds of the Liana, from which in its turn depended exquisite parasitic plants, reminded us of the brilliant profusion of the tropics. ”

“ The warm and active interest he took in their expedition contributed in no small degree to advance its scientific efficiency, and if it be the privilege of the Novara to live in the memory of the scientific world, it will, as the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian himself expressed it in a letter to the venerable philosopher, "redound in its honour to the latest ages, that it was permitted to associate its name with that of Humboldt, who for three generations of men has been associated with every triumph that has been achieved in the domain of science." ”

“ A Scotchman named Campbell, who was settled as a merchant at Tacna in Bolivia, and with whom I travelled to Europe from Lima, informed me that a few years before, being engaged upon matters of urgent business, he had performed in one day a distance of 90 English miles on mule-back, and throughout that long distance had been accompanied by an Aymara Indian, who kept up easily with the mule, without other refreshment than a few grains of roasted maize and coca leaves, which, mingled with undissolved chalk, he chewed incessantly. ”

“ For it is the chief merit of European civilization, that every political measure threatening to impede the march of ideas by any process of fettering men's minds, only serves to evoke a more restless activity, as in our actual state of human culture enlightenment and science form far too formidable a bulwark for reaction to obtain any permanent success, or even to succeed in overleaping. ”

“ Many lost their entire means of support, having even sacrificed the most favourable prospects in the eager thirst for gold and sudden prosperity. The streets of Melbourne and Sydney were filled with gold-seekers, who, laden with blankets, household utensils, axes, and spades, were laying down their last farthing for passage tickets, and rushed breathlessly to the ships which were to convey them to the newly-discovered gold-field. The voyage began under the most rose-coloured anticipations of brilliant success. But scarcely a month later came most depressing intelligence from Port Curtis. ”

“ About 11 P.M. the same night we were off the insignificant little harbour of Huasco, and about nine next morning ran into Caldera, a dreary-looking little place of some 2000 inhabitants, built upon one of a succession of sand-slopes. There is not a trace of vegetation; no foliage, no shrubs, no patches of grass,—all around as far as the eye could reach was a cheerless waste of sand. Only extraordinary opportunities for money-making could have induced the inhabitants to settle in this desolate wilderness, deficient in the very first necessity of life—fresh water. ”

“ Among the excursions in the immediate neighbourhood of Sydney we at once selected a visit to the well-known naturalist Mr. Macleay, who resides at a beautiful estate near Elizabeth Bay. In his beautiful garden one sees the most interesting plants of Australia side by side with splendid specimens from all other parts of the world. A stroll through the extensive grounds derives a double interest when in company with its highly-cultivated proprietor, and we are the more grateful for this good fortune, as the venerable old gentleman lives in strict seclusion. ”

“ They have no other prospect than that of becoming either an integral portion of the immense North American Federation, or of once more being consolidated into a monarchy under the sceptre of some scion of a European royal family. In all probability, whether they be North Americans, or English, or Germans, they will always be children of some of a more powerful race, who must ultimately subvert the races of the Southern type, awaken a new spirit of energy, and so carry out that which the lazy mixed races of the present time have neither the power nor the inclination to effect. ”

“ If, however, our knowledge of Australia and its black aboriginal tribes is as yet very scanty, it has not assuredly been due to any cold indifference on the part of the new settlers for the history of a country and a race of men who are rapidly disappearing from the face of the country. It is rather to be found in the physical conditions of the continent, and especially in the great scarcity of perennial springs. In fact, there is hardly any country, with the exception of Africa, the exploration of which has cost the lives of so many scientific travellers as this fifth quarter of the world. ”

“ The incarcerated criminal is a burden to himself and to society, to which he is only in the most exceptional cases restored improved by confinement. The charge of maintaining him increases year by year, without any return being made by utilizing the labour of the prisoner. In penal colonies, on the other hand, the convict works as much for his own benefit as for that of society. He throws open new immeasurable tracts of land to civilization, trade, and industry. ”

“ In Australia there are birds that sing, and odoriferous trees and flowers in great profusion, and the forests, at those places whither the axe of the busy settler has not yet penetrated or imparted to it a park-like aspect, are as dense, as thickly clothed with underwood, and as difficult to make one's way through, as in any other quarter of the globe under a similar latitude. ”

“ Even more agreeable than the evenings we spent among the patrician circles of Santiago, were those which we passed with an Austrian gentleman, Dr. Herzl, settled here some ten years, and with some German-Spanish families. Here everlasting politics, or rather party squabbles, had not, as in the native salons, banished music and song, the latter being cherished as a means of rising out of the hurly-burly, and keeping the annoyances of public life, for the moment at least, at arm's length. ”

“ From this fact it necessarily results that Australia has been a continent since the end of the primary epoch, that it never has been covered by the sea, but remained ever since the beginning of the secondary formations, through all those countless ages during which Europe was being convulsed by the most tremendous geological revolutions, a habitable soil, on which plants and beasts, undisturbed by change in the inorganic world, might have continued to flourish down to our own times. Viewed in this light the fauna and flora of Australia would be the most ancient and primitive in the world. ”

“ Even the traveller fresh from the voluptuous loveliness of the tropics, finds ever new beauties in the manifold variety of nature. The more the student of Nature walks with her and finds in her his chief pleasures, the more receptive does his soul become for all that is marvellous and beautiful, as from day to day they present themselves in new and unexpected phases. ”

“ This was the most interesting portion of our conversation. "It is not Catholicism that has made the majority of Catholic nations lag so woefully in the career of progress," exclaimed the venerable priest, "but that which Catholicism has suffered to be mixed up with it,—the Inquisition and Monasticism. It is marriage and labour that make individuals moral and useful, and nations great and powerful. Human society can get on very well without monks or nuns, but not without morals, not without matrimony and labour." ”

“ Trees of the most varied description and of colossal dimensions flourish in the foreign garment of a borrowed adornment. Between each solitary giant of a forest tree, parasites and Lianæ spread their delicate green coils, while many a gigantic stem, enveloped in thousands of beautiful shoots, or dead trunk choked in the embrace of a parasitic creeper, attracts the eye as the train speeds past. So quick and so strong is the process of vegetation here, that every section of this line has twice in each year to be freed from the encroachments of the forest-children ”

“ On the conclusion of your Geological Examination of a large and most interesting portion of this province of New Zealand, we—the assembled inhabitants of Auckland, representing every section of the community, and for the most part intimately connected with the Agriculture and Commerce of the province—desire to express our admiration of the eminently scientific manner and unwearied activity with which you have conducted your researches into the Geological Formations and Mineral Resources of Auckland. ”

“ The war in Europe had so raised anew the pride of country in each Italian, and filled him with such sanguine patriotic aspirations and hopes of a united Italy, that his heated fancy beheld in every incident of the war the most righteous struggle that ever was engaged in, and in the opposite party the most detestable and inhuman of opponents. ”

“ The scenery of the island is everywhere lovely, and the peculiarity of its vegetation, especially when seen from seaward, exercises a kind of fascination over the beholder; but the ground, which is the most important consideration for the settler, who is bound to the soil, not by the sublime and beautiful, but by the useful, is very far from being fertile, and the sole descriptions of produce extensively raised are maize and sweet potato. ”

“ During their nine months' stay in Vienna, they were made acquainted with all the "lions" of the metropolis, and all the manners and customs of European civilized life. Of all the numerous sights that must have astonished their unaccustomed senses, there was none that seemed to have made a more powerful impression than the Railway, "the most splendid evidence of the powers of the foreigners, compared with which all others are unimportant, and which they earnestly trust will soon be introduced into New Zealand." ”