I cannot tell you how I enjoyed some of these views [in the Cordilliera].—it is worth coming from England once to feel such intense delight. At an elevation from 10–12000 ft. there is a transparency in the air & a confusion of distances & a sort of stillness which gives the sensation of being in another world, & when to this is joined, the picture so plainly drawn of the great epochs of violence, it causes in the mind a most strange assemblage of ideas.
Darwin to J. S. Henslow,
18 April 1835, DCP 274
While sailing in these latitudes on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright, and the sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so utterly obscure, as over the rest of the heavens.
Journal of Researches 1839, 190–91
At first, from the waterfalls and number of dead trees [in Tierra del Fuego], I could hardly crawl along; but the bed of the stream soon became a little more open, from the floods having swept the sides. I continued slowly to advance for an hour along the broken and rocky banks; and was amply repaid by the grandeur of the scene. The gloomy depth of the ravine well accorded with the universal signs of violence. On every side were lying irregular masses of rock and up-torn trees; other trees, though still erect, were decayed to the heart and ready to fall. The entangled mass of the thriving and the fallen reminded me of the forests within the tropics;—yet there was a difference; for in these still solitudes, Death, instead of Life, seemed the predominant spirit.
Journal of Researches 1839, 231
Magnificent glaciers extended from the mountain side to the water’s edge. It is scarcely possible to imagine any thing more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of the glacier, and especially when contrasted with the dead white of an expanse of snow. As fragments fell from the glacier into the water, they floated away, and the channel with its icebergs represented in miniature the polar sea.
Journal of Researches 1839, 243–44
When we reached the crest [of the Portillo pass] and looked backwards, a glorious view was presented. The atmosphere resplendently clear; the sky an intense blue; the profound valleys; the wild broken forms; the heaps of ruins, piled up during the lapse of ages; the bright-coloured rocks, contrasted with the quiet mountains of snow; all these together produced a scene I never could have figured to my imagination. Neither plant nor bird, excepting a few condors wheeling around the higher pinnacles, distracted the attention from the inanimate mass. I felt glad I was alone: it was like watching a thunderstorm, or hearing a chorus of the Messiah in full orchestra.
Journal of Researches 1839, 394
The weather is quite delicious. Yesterday after writing to you I strolled a little beyond the glade for an hour & half & enjoyed myself—the fresh yet dark green of the grand Scotch Firs, the brown of the catkins of the old Birches with their white stems & a fringe of distant green from the larches, made an excessively pretty view.—At last I fell fast asleep on the grass & awoke with a chorus of birds singing around me, & squirrels running up the trees & some Woodpeckers laughing, & it was as pleasant a rural scene as ever I saw, & I did not care one penny how any of the beasts or birds had been formed.—
Darwin to Emma Darwin,
[28 April 1858], DCP 2261
I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is; but everyone has his own pet horror, & this slow progress, or even personal annihilation sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea, or rather I presume certainty, of the sun some day cooling & we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years, with every continent swarming with good & enlightened men all ending in this; & with probably no fresh start until this our own planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas.—Sic transit gloria mundi, with a vengeance.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
9 February [1865], DCP 4769