Rugged, massive, inhospitable, and bare, how sternly those wild and mountainous landscapes contrasted with the quiet beauty that I had surveyed from the same decks as the ship had dropped down Channel! I shaded my eyes with my hands and swept the strange horizon at every point, but nowhere could I see a sign of habitation—no man; no beast; no sheltering roof; no winding road; no welcoming column of smoke! And when, in the twilight of that still autumn evening, I at length descended the gangway, and set foot for the first time on the land of my adoption, I found myself—twelve thousand miles from home—in a country in which not a soul knew me, and in which I knew no single soul. It was not an exhilarating sensation.