Page:Travels and Researches of Alexander von Humboldt.djvu/11

 KSIVERSn Y OV CALIFORNH 6AM A BAHBAilA

PREFACE.

The celebrity which Baron Humboldt enjoys, and which he has earned by a life of laborious investigation and perilous enterprise, renders his name familiar to eveiy person whose attention has been drawn to political statistics or natural philosophy. In the estimation of the learned no author of the present day occupies a higher place among those who have enlarged the boundai'ies of human knowledge. To every one accord- ingly whose aim is the general cultivation of the mental faculties, his works are recommended by the splendid pictures of scener}'- which they contain, the diversified information which they afford respecting objects of uni- versal interest, and the graceful attractions with which he has succeeded in investing the majesty of science.

These considerations have induced the Publishers to offer a condensed account of his Travels and Researches, such as, without excluding subjects even of laboured investigation, might yet chiefly embrace those which are best suited to the purposes of the general reader. The public taste has of late years gradually inclined towards objects of useful knowledge, — works of imagi- nation have in a great measure given place to those occupied with descriptions of nature, physical or moral, — and the phenomena of the material world now afford entertainment to many who in former times would have sought for it at a different source. Romantic incidents, perilous adventures, the struggles of conflicting armies,