Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/1025

HUM great voyage of discovery. With this view he sold his property in Prussia, and made a tour in Switzerland and Italy to examine the mountainous regions and volcanoes of those interesting countries. Shortly after his return to Berlin he set off for Paris, in order to purchase the instruments which were necessary for the execution of his plans, to study its valuable collections of natural history, and profit by the society of the illustrious men who then adorned the academies of the Institute. Working with Arago, Cuvier, and Gay Lussac, he acquired in their laboratories and observatories the practical knowledge which he needed; and on their recommendation the directory authorized him to join the expedition under Captain Baudin, which was about to circumnavigate the globe, with permission to disembark wherever he chose. Owing to the war in Germany and Italy the government withdrew the funds which had been granted for the expedition; and having become acquainted with Aimé Bonpland, who was to have accompanied Baudin as naturalist, it was arranged that Humboldt and he should visit the north of Africa and explore the chain of the Atlas mountains. When at Marseilles, the ship which was to convey them had not arrived after two months' delay. They set off, however, for Tunis; but being prevented from landing by the hostility of that state to France, they resolved to spend the winter in Spain, previous to a journey to Egypt. On their arrival at Madrid, the naturalists were received with the highest distinction. The king gave them permission to travel through all the colonies of Spanish America, and to visit the Marianne and Philippine islands on their return to Europe; and having eagerly accepted of this liberal offer, they quitted Madrid in May, 1799. On the 5th of June they set sail from Corunna in the ship Pizarro, and after visiting the peak of Teneriffe, they reached Cumana, the capital of New Andalusia, on the 16th of July. After verifying his instruments, and making other preparations for his journey, Humboldt and Bonpland travelled through New Andalusia and Spanish Guiana, determining the geographical position of the most important stations, studying their natural history, observing atmospheric phenomena, and examining the antiquities of the country, and the manners and customs of the inhabitants. This exploration of South America was continued for five years, and whether we estimate it by the romance of personal adventure, or the value of scientific research, it is without a parallel in the annals of civilization. After having for seventy-five days navigated, in an Indian canoe, the Orinoco, the Apure, the Atrabapo, the Rio Negro, and the Cassiquiari, they rested at Angostura in June, 1800; and after being detained for two months by the English blockade, they went at the end of the year to Havannah in Cuba, where they remained for above ten weeks. Quitting Cuba in March, 1801, with the view of joining Captain Baudin's expedition to the Philippine isles, and learning that this plan was impracticable, they went to Carthagena, ascended the Amazons in a voyage of fifty-four days, and after visiting various interesting regions, arrived on the 6th January, 1802, at Quito, where they spent five months. On the 23rd June, accompanied by Carlos Montufar, they ascended Chimborazo, nineteen thousand three hundred feet above the sea, and the highest point of the Andes ever reached by man. After visiting Lima in Peru, they embarked about the end of December, 1802, for Guayaquil, descended to Acapulco, and passing by Fasco and Cuernavaca, they arrived in April at Mexico. In this interesting kingdom they spent more than a year, visiting the mines of Moran, the singular waterfall of Regla, and on the 17th September, 1803, the mud volcano of Jorullo, one of the wonders of the New World. From Mexico our travellers went to Havannah, and from thence to the United States, visiting Philadelphia and Washington. Laden with large and valuable collections, they quitted America on the 9th July, 1804, landed at Bordeaux on the 3rd August of the same year, and repaired to Paris to prepare for the publication of their travels. Here Humboldt remained till March, 1805, when he visited Italy and Berlin in succession, and returned to Paris in 1807, where he remained for twenty years, refusing the most liberal offers from the Prussian government. During his short visit to Berlin we find him occupied in observing the solstices and equinoxes, and in recording the variations in the horizontal magnetic needle every half hour during several days and nights. His object in these observations was to study the nocturnal portion of the diurnal oscillation, but he unexpectedly detected the most capricious changes in the needle, which occasionally exhibited sudden and rapid movements, to which he gave the name of magnetic storms (accompanying the aurora borealis), a subject which has been prosecuted with great succcess by M. Arago and our distinguished countryman General Sabine. About the end of 1807 appeared the first parts of his great work, entitled "Voyage aux Regions Equinoctiales des nouveau continent pendant les années 1799-1804, par A. De Humboldt et A. Bonpland." A translation of the personal narrative, by Helen Maria Williams, was published in five volumes in 1814-21; and between that year and 1817 the other parts were published in French and Latin, and drawn up by several distinguished individuals—Olmans for astronomy, Arago and Gay Lussac for chemistry and meteorology, Cuvier and Latreille for zoology, Vauquelin and Klaproth for mineralogy, and Kunth for botany. The work consists of six parts—the "Relation Historique," with two atlases, one picturesque and the other geographical; the "Recueil d'observations de Zoologie et d'anatomie comparée;" the "Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne;" the "Recueil d'observations Astronomiques;" the "Physique general et Geologie;" and the "Botanique," which consists of no less than twenty volumes, with about one thousand two hundred plates, the price of which alone, according to the fineness of the edition, amounts to between £400 and £500. In the year 1818, when the allied sovereigns visited England, Humboldt accompanied the king of Prussia to London, and in the November of that year his majesty gave him a pension of twelve thousand dollars, in order to forward a plan which our traveller had conceived of visiting Thibet and the Himalaya mountains. Difficulties, however, of a political kind led to the abandonment of this scheme. In 1822 Humboldt accompanied the king of Prussia to the congress at Verona, and, along with Gay Lussac, he made a scientific tour in Italy, visiting Venice, Rome, and Naples. On his return he spent some time in England, and in 1823 he published his "Essai Geognostique sur le gisement des roches dans les deux hemispheres."

In obedience to the urgent solicitations of the king our author took up his residence in Berlin in 1826, and was welcomed in the warmest manner by all classes of the community. In the winters of 1827-28 he delivered his celebrated course of lectures on the physical phenomena of the universe, which was afterwards expanded into his "Cosmos." In 1828 he was elected president of the congress of the German naturalists and philosophers, who assembled at Berlin on the 18th September. The eloquent address with which he opened its proceedings was remarkable for its high appreciation of intellectual labour, and of the eminent men who devoted themselves to the pursuit of science. At the grand soirée which he gave on the evening of the 18th, in the concert rooms attached to the theatre, the king of Prussia honoured by his presence the fete of his illustrious chamberlain, and the prince royal (the late king), the foreign princes, foreign ambassadors, and Prussian nobility, mingled in conversation with the twelve hundred amateurs and cultivators of science who constituted that celebrated congress. In the spring of 1829, when Humboldt was about to enter his sixty-third year, he was invited by the emperor of Russia to undertake at his expense, and principally for the benefit of science, a journey to the eastern provinces of his kingdom, and to Central Asia, having for its main object the advancement of geology and terrestrial magnetism. Having eagerly accepted of this liberal offer, he associated with himself the celebrated naturalist, M. Ehrenberg, for the department of zoology and botany, and Gustavus Rose for chemistry and mineralogy (see and ), while he himself was to conduct the astronomical and magnetical observations. With M. Menschenin, a Russian engineer, as their guide and interpreter, the travellers left St. Petersburg on the 20th May, 1829, and embarking at Novogorod on the Volga they passed by Casan to the Kirghese Steppe, visited Bolgari, the Tartar capital, and went by Persia to Ekatherineberg on the Asiatic side of the great Uralian chain. Advancing along the Southern Ural they arrived at Astrakan and the Caspian, and returning through the country of the Don Cossacks to Moscow, they reached St. Petersburg in November, 1829, having accomplished in six months a journey of two thousand three hundred and twenty geographical miles. The results of this great expedition have been given in two works—the one by Gustavus Rose and the other by Humboldt. The work of M. Rose, published at Berlin in 1837-42 in two volumes, is entitled Mineralogisch-Geognostiche, Reise nach dem Ural dem altai und dem Kaspischen mer; and that of Humboldt, published in Paris in three volumes in 1843, is entitled "Asie Centrale,