The Heart of Nature; or, The Quest for Natural Beauty — John Shaqi
The Heart of Nature; or, The Quest for Natural BeautyYounghusband, Francis Edward, Sir
Philosophy
The Heart of Nature; or, The Quest for Natural Beauty
Younghusband, Francis Edward, Sir
Himalaya Mountains -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Himalaya Mountains; Nature (Aesthetics)
From its mountain eerie in Upper Sikkim it might have seen the rose
of dawn flushing the snowy summits of Kinchinjunga, and far away
Mount Everest. And soaring aloft, the eagle might have looked out
over the populous plains of India and seen, like silver streaks, the
rivers flowing down from the Himalaya to join in the far distance
the mighty Mother Ganges. Then its eye might have ranged over the
vast forest which clothes in dense green mantle the plain at the foot
of the mountains from Nepal to Bhutan and Assam, and from the
plain spreads up on the mountain-sides themselves and reaches to
the very borders of eternal snow. Over this vast forest with its
treasures of tree and plant, animal and insect life, tropical, temperate,
and alpine, the eagle might have soared; and then, passing over the
Himalayan watershed, have looked down upon the treeless, open,
undulating, almost uninhabited plain of Tibet, and in the distance
seen the great Brahmaputra River, which, circling round Bhutan,
cuts clean through the Himalaya and, turning westward, also joins
the Ganges.
In the whole world no more wonderful natural scenery is to be found.
And the eagle with no unusual effort could see it all in a single day,
and see it with a distinctness of sight no man could equal. But keen
though its eyesight was and wide though its range, the eagle in all
that beautiful region would see not a single beauty. Neither in the
sunrise, nor in the snowy mountains, nor in the luxuriant tropical
forest, nor in the flowers, the birds, the butterflies, nor in the people
and animals, nor in the cataracts and precipices would it see any
beauty whatever. The mountain would be to it a mere outline, the
forests a patch of green, the rivers streaks of white, the animals just
possible items of food. The eagle would see much, but it would see
no beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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