If you seek to ascend Rock Rodondo, take the following prescription. Gothree voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest frigatethat floats; then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the guides whoconduct strangers up the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many morerespectively to a rope-dancer, an Indian juggler, and a chamois. Thisdone, come and be rewarded by the view from our tower. How we get there,we alone know. If we sought to tell others, what the wiser were they?Suffice it, that here at the summit you and I stand. Does anyballoonist, does the outlooking man in the moon, take a broader view ofspace? Much thus, one fancies, looks the universe from Milton'scelestial battlements. A boundless watery Kentucky. Here Daniel Boonewould have dwelt content.
Never heed for the present yonder Burnt District of the Enchanted Isles.Look edgeways, as it were, past them, to the south. You see nothing; butpermit me to point out the direction, if not the place, of certaininteresting objects in the vast sea, which, kissing this tower's base,we behold unscrolling itself towards the Antarctic Pole.
We stand now ten miles from the Equator. Yonder, to the East, some sixhundred miles, lies the continent; this Rock being just about on theparallel of Quito.
