Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an outside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains and the vacant lot the sea, and you will have a fit idea of the general aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles- a group rather of extinct volcanoes, looking much as the world at large might after a penal conflagration.
It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy enough; but like all else which has but once been associated with humanity, they still awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy, however sad. Hence, even the Dead Seas, along with whatever other emotions it may at times inspire, does not fail to touch in the pilgrim some of his less unpleasurable feelings.
As for solitariness, the great forests of the north, the expanses of unnavigated waters, the Greenland icefields, are the profoundest of solitudes to a human observer; still the magic of their changeable tides and seasons mitigates their terror because, though unvisited by men, those forests are visited by May. The remotest seas reflect familiar stars, and in the clear air of a fine Polar day, the irradiated, azure ice shows beautifully as malachite.
The special curse of the Encantadas, which exalts them in desolation, is that to them change never comes-neither the change of seasons nor of sorrows. Cut by the Equator, they know not autumn, and they know not spring; while already reduced to the dregs of fire, ruin itself can work little more upon them. The showers refresh the deserts, but in these isles, rain never falls. Like split gourds left withering in the sun, they are cracked by an everlasting drought beneath a torrid sky.
Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness, for the Encantadas refuse to harbor even the outcasts of the beasts.
Little but reptile life is here found. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is hiss.

How does the setting fulfill a purpose in the narrative?
A. It shows that some things cannot be altered.
B. It reveals that some places are not fit for people.
C. It functions as if it were the central character.
D. It illustrates the unwelcoming aspects of nature.