midnight
I looked down on modern New York , then upon Chicago , upon San Francisco , and upon New Orleans , finding each of these cities quite unrecognizable but for the natural features which constituted their setting . I visited London . I heard the Parisians talk French and the Berlinese talk German , and from St. Petersburg went to Cairo by way of Delhi . One city would be bathed in the noonday sun ; over the next I visited , the moon , perhaps , was rising and the stars coming out ; while over the third the silence of midnight brooded . In Paris , I remember , it was raining hard , and in London fog reigned supreme . In St. Petersburg there was a snow squall . Turning from the contemplation of the changing world of men to the changeless face of Nature , I renewed my old-time acquaintance with the natural wonders of the earth -- the thundering cataracts , the stormy ocean shores , the lonely mountain tops , the great rivers , the glittering splendors of the polar regions , and the desolate places of the deserts .