The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

"If I might be allowed to abandon myself to recollections of my own distant travels, I would instance, among the most striking scenes of nature, the calm sublimity of a tropical night, when the stars, not sparking, as in northern skies, shed their soft and planetary light over the gently-heaving ocean; or I would recall that deep valleys of the Cordilleras, where the tall and slender palms pierce the leafy veil around them, and waving on their feathery and arrow like branches, form as it were, "a forest above a forest;" * or I would describe at the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe, when a horizontal layer of clouds, dazzling in whiteness, has separated the cone of cinders from the plain below, and suddenly the ascending current pierces the cloudy veil, so that the eye of the traveller may range from the brink of the crater, along the vine-clad slopes of Orotava, the orange-gardens and banana groves that skirt the shore. In scenes like these, it is not the peaceful charm uniformly spread over the face of nature that moves the heart, but the peculiar physiognomy and conformation of the land, the features of the landscape, the ever varying outline of the clouds, and their blending with the horizon of the sea, whether it lies spread before us like a smooth and shining mirror, or is dimly seen through the morning mist." 

Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt [source]