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 HUMBOLDT 43 of the country from sea to sea, the first that was ever given of any entire country. On Marcli 7, 1804, Humboldt sailed from the coast of Mexico for Havana, where during a two months' residence he completed the materials for his Eftai politiq-ue eur Vile de Cula (Paris, 1820). He embarked thence with Bonpland and Montufar for Philadelphia, enjoyed a friendly reception at Washington from Presi- dent Jefferson, and leaving the new world landed at Bordeaux, Aug. 3, 1804, having spent five years in America, and gained a larger store of observations and collections in all departments of natural science, in geog- raphy, statistics, and ethnography, than all previous travellers. He selected Paris for his residence, and remained there till March, 1805, arranging his numerous collections and manu- scripts, and experimenting with Gay-Lussac in the laboratory of the polytechnic school on the chemical elements of the atmosphere. He was accompanied by Gay-Lussac in a visit to Rome and Naples, and also by Von Bnch on his return through Switzerland to Berlin, where, after an absence of nine years, he ar- rived Nov. 16, 1805. In the hope of modify- ing the ignominious treaty of Tilsit by nego- tiation, the government resolved in 1808 to send the young brother of the king, Prince William of Prussia, to the emperor Napoleon at Paris. During the French occupation of Berlin Hnmboldt had been busy in his garden, making hourly observations of the magnetic declination, and he now received the command of the king to accompany Prince William on his mission. As the condition of Germany made it impracticable to publish there his large scientific works, he was permitted by Frederick William III., as one of the eight foreign mem- bers of the French academy of sciences, to remain in Paris, which was his residence, ex- cepting brief periods of absence, from 1808 to 1827. There appeared his Voyage aux regions eguinoxialea du nouveau monde (3 vols. fol., with an atlas, Paris, 1809-'25 ; translated into German, 6 vols., Stuttgart, 1825-'32). When in 1810 his elder brother resigned the direc- tion of educational affairs in Prussia to be- come ambassador at Vienna, the former post was urged upon Alexander von Humboldt ; but he declined it, as the publication of his astronomical, zoological, and botanical works was not yet far advanced. He had also already decided upon a second scientific expedition through upper India, the region of the Hima- . laya, and Thibet, in preparation for which he was diligently learning the Persian language. He accepted from Count Rumiantzeff in 1812 an invitation to accompany a Russian expe- dition over Kashgar and Yarkand to the high- lands of Thibet, but the outbreak of war be- tween Russia and France caused the abandon- ment of the plan. The political events be- tween the peace of Paris and the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle gave him occasion for several excursions. He went to England in the suite of the king of Prussia in 1814, again in company with Arago when his brother Wilhelm was ap- pointed ambassador to London, and again in 1818 with Valenciennes from Paris to London and from London to Aix-la-Chapelle, where the king and Hardenberg wished to have him near them during the congress. He also ac- companied the king to the congress of Verona and thence to Rome and Naples, and in 1827, at the solicitation of the monarch, gave up his residence in Paris, and returned by way of London and Hamburg to Berlin, where in the following winter he delivered public lectures on the cosmos. In 1829 began a new era in his active career. He undertook, under the patronage of the czar Nicholas, an expedition to northern Asia, the Chinese Dzungaria, and the Caspian sea, which was magnificently fit- ted out by the influence of the minister, Count Cancrin. The exploration of mines of gold and platinum, the discovery of diamonds out- side of the tropics, astronomical and mag- netic observations, and geognostic and botan- ical collections, were the principal results of this undertaking, in which Humboldt was ac- companied by Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose. Their course lay through Moscow, Kazan, and the ruins of old Bulgari to Yekaterinburg, the gold mines of the Ural, the platinum mines at Nizhni Tagilsk, Bogoslovsk, Verkhoturye, and Tobolsk, to Barnaul, Schlangenberg, and Ustkamengorsk in the Altai region, and thence to the Chinese frontier. From the snow-cov- ered Altai mountains the travellers turned to- ward the southern part of the Ural range, and, attended by a body of armed Cossacks, trav- ersed the great steppe of Ishim, passed through Petropavlovsk, Omsk, Miyask, the salt lake of Ilmen, Zlatusk, Taganai, Orenburg, Uralsk (the principal seat of the Uralian Cossacks), Sara- tov, Dubovka, Tzaritzyn, and the Moravian set- tlement Sarepta, to Astrakhan and the Cas- pian sea. They visited the Calmuck chieftain Sered Jab, and returned by Voronezh, Tula, and Moscow. The entire journey of over 10,- 000 miles was made in nine months ; its results are given in Rose's Mineralogisch-ffeognostische Seise naeh dem Ural, dem Altai und dem Ifaspi- schen Meer (2 vols., Berlin, 1837 '42), and Hum- boldt's Asie centrale, reeherches sur lea chaines de montagnes et la climatologie comparee (3 vols., Paris, 1843 ; translated into German by Mahlmann, 2 vols., Berlin, 1843-'4). This ex- pedition extended the knowledge of telluric magnetism, since in consequence of it tho Russian imperial academy established a series of magnetic and meteorological stations from St. Petersburg to Peking, an example which was followed by the British government in the southern hemisphere. The convulsions of 1830 gave a more political direction to Hum- boldt's activity for several years, without in- terrupting his scientific career. He had ac- companied the crown prince of Prussia in May, 1830, to Warsaw, to the last constitutional diet opened by the emperor Nicholas in per-