LETTER III - To the Same

Summary

I threw aside my pen abruptly, dear Baron, in order to catch a first view of America. There is something so imposing in the sound of the word–continent, that I believe it had served to lead me into a delusion, at which a little reflection has induced me to be the first to smile. My ideas of this remote and little known moiety of the world, have ever been so vague and general, that I confess the folly of having expected to see the land make its appearance en masse, and with a dignity worthy of its imposing name. The mind has been so long accustomed to divide the rest of the globe into parts, and to think of them in their several divisions of countries and provinces, that one expects to see no more of each, at a coup d'œil, than what the sight can embrace. Now, ridiculous as it may seem, I had, unaccountably, imbibed the impression that America was to appear, at the first glance, larger to the senses than the little island I had left behind me. You are at perfect liberty to make yourself just as merry as you please at this acknowledgment; but, if the truth could be fairly sifted, I have no doubt it would be found that most European adventurers, who seek these western regions, have formed expectations of its physical or moral attributes, quite as extravagant as was my own unfortunate image of its presence.