| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy
villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food
enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts,
abundant for each and every kind of work.
I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by the
labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the
most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight
line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this
ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent,
in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial.
Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: colonists of any remote point of land.
Of reptiles I saw only one small lizard. Of insects I took
pains to collect every kind. Exclusive of spiders, which were
numerous, there were thirteen species. [4] Of these, one only
was a beetle. A small ant swarmed by thousands under the
loose dry blocks of coral, and was the only true insect which
was abundant. Although the productions of the land are
thus scanty, if we look to the waters of the surrounding sea,
the number of organic beings is indeed infinite. Chamisso
has described [5] the natural history of a lagoon-island in the
Radack Archipelago; and it is remarkable how closely its
The Voyage of the Beagle |
