COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

DELINEATIONS OF NATUKAL SCENEKY. 451
remarkably large oil pictures preserved in Denmark, in a gallery
of the beautiful palace of Frederiksborg, which were
painted by Eckhout, who, in 1641, was also on the Brazilian
coast with Prince Maurice of Nassau. In these compositions,
palms, papaws, bananas, and heliconias, are most characteristically
delineated, as are also brightly plumaged birds, and
small quadrupeds, and the form and appearance of the natives.
These examples of a delineation of the physiognomy of
natural scenery were not followed by many artists of merit
before Cook's second voyage of circumnavigation. What
Hodges did for the western islands of the Pacific, and
my distinguished countryman, Ferdinand Bauer, for New
Holland and Van Diemen's Land, has been since done, in
more recent times, on a far grander scale, and in a masterly
manner, by Moritz Rugendas, Count Clarac, Ferdinand Bellermann,
and Edward Hildebrandt; and for the tropical vegetation
of America, and for many other parts of the earth, by
Heinrich von Kittlitz, the companion of the Russian Admiral
Liitke, on his voyage of circumnavigation.*
He who, with a keen appreciation of the beauties of
nature manifested in mountains, rivers, and forest glades,
has himself travelled over the torrid zone, and seen the
luxuriance and diversity of vegetation, not only on the
cultivated sea coasts, but on the declivities of the snowcrowned
Andes, the Himalaya, or the Nilgherry mountains
of Mysore, or in the primitive forests, amid the network of
rivers, lying between the Orinoco and the Amazon, can alone
feel what an inexhaustible treasure remains still unopened by
the landscape painter, between the tropics in both continents,
or in the island-world of Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines ;
*
These views of tropical vegetation, which designate the " physiognomy
of plants," constitute, in the Royal Museum at Berlin, (in the department
of miniatures, drawings, and engravings,) a treasure of art
which, owing to its peculiarity and picturesque variety, is incomparably
superior to any other collection. The title of the papers edited by Von
Kittlitz is Vegetations-Ansichten der Kustenlander und Inseln dea
stillen Oceans, aufgenommen 1827-1829, auf der Entdeckungs-reise,
der kais. russ. Corvette Senjawin (Siegen, 1844). There is also great
fidelity to nature in the drawings of Carl Bodmer, which are engraved
in a masterly manner, and which greatly embellish the large work of
the travels of Prince Maximilian of Wied in the interior of North
America.
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