"In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains
of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these
plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be
described only by negative characters; without habitations,
without water, without trees, without mountains, they support
merely a few dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar
to myself, have those arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my
memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile
Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal
impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings; but it must
be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination.
The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely
passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted,
as they are now, for ages, and there appears to be no limit to
their duration during future time. If, as the ancients supposed,
the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of water,
or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look
at these last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but
ill-defined feelings?"
Charles Darwin.