_Effects of vast Levels as compared with Mountain Scenery.—Sketches of Sardinian Geology.—The primitive Chains and other Formations.—Traces of extensive Volcanic action.—The “Campidani,” or Plains.—Mineral Products._
Vast open plains, such as that described in the preceding chapter, form a singular feature in the physical aspect of the island of Sardinia. There are few travellers, I think, of much experience who, in traversing such tracts of country, have not been struck at one time by the desolation of their depths of solitude, or been pleased, at another, by the glimpses of nomade life, their occasional accompaniments; and who would not be willing to admit that, in their general impressions on the imagination, they sometimes rival even mountain scenery. For if grandeur be one main ingredient in the sublime, when an object such as a seemingly boundless level, or rolling plain, the extent of which the eye is unable to scan, lies before you, when, after long marches, it still appears interminable, the mind is perhaps more impressed with the idea of magnitude than by large masses, however enormous, with defined outlines presented to the view. In the former instance, the imagination is called into play and fills out the picture on a scale corresponding with the actual features, as far as they are subject to observation; but the imagination proverbially adopts an extravagant measure.
One of my friend's sketches of Campidano scenery, introduced here, cleverly represents the effects produced by great distances on one of these rolling plains.
Perhaps the idea of illimitable extent is better conveyed by the lithographic sketch, No. 8, in which the level, not being interrupted by the intersection of a mountain ridge, as in the former, vanishes in distance. But the termination of the plain in the woodcut is only apparent as, winding round the base of the mountains, the level is still continued though lost to sight. It is not however intended to intimate that these Sardinian plains can at all vie with the great continental levels in various quarters of the globe, the immensity of which occurred to my mind, and some of them to my recollection, when remarking on the impressions such scenes produce on the traveller's sensations. The most extensive of the Sardinian Campidani is only fifty miles in length, and they are all of far less breadth. Their effect is therefore only comparative, but being proportioned to the scale of other surrounding objects, to the area of the insular surface, and the limited height and extent of the mountain ranges, they produce a proportionate effect; but that, as it has been already remarked, is sufficiently striking.