Dr. Ricardo Duchesne (@DrRicardoDuchesne)

America was the nation with the greatest landscape -- only to waste it with growth and diversity without limit. Washington Irving (1783-1859), "the first American to achieve an international literary reputation", wrote: "I visited various parts of my own country, and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere for its gratification: for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial hints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine -- no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful natural scenery."