Excerpt: 'It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of grandeur or of beauty,on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco, in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at the moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various forces or powers, and the renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate prospect of tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the objects which I have proposed to myself. According to the design of my work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists should form a whole complete in itself, one common tendency should pervade them all. Such an artistic and[viii] literary treatment of subjects of natural history is liable to difficulties of composition, notwithstanding the aid which it derives from the power and flexibility of our noble language. The unbounded riches of Nature occasion an accumulation of separate images; and accumulation disturbs the repose and the unity of impression which should belong to the picture. Moreover, when addressing the feelings and imagination, a firm hand is needed to guard the style from degenerating into an undesirable species of poetic prose. But I need not here describe more fully dangers which I fear the following pages will shew I have not always succeeded in avoiding.'