Great pains have been taken with the present translation, as well in regard to fidelity and style, as in what may be termed the accessories. In addition to all that is contained in the original work, it comprises an interesting view of Chimborazo, from a sketch by Humboldt himself; a fac-simile of the author’s handwriting; head-lines of contents; translations of the principal Latin, French, and Spanish quotations; [A] a very complete index; and a conversion of all the foreign measurements. It wa

With some diffidence, I here present to the public a series of papers which originated in the presence of the noblest objects of nature,—on the Ocean,—in the forests of the Orinoco,—in the Savannahs of Venezuela,—and in the solitudes of the Peruvian and Mexican Mountains. Several detached fragments, written on the spot, have since been wrought into a whole. A survey of nature at large,—proofs of the co-operation of forces,—and a renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate aspect of the tropical

The twofold object of this work,—an anxious endeavour to heighten the enjoyment of nature by vivid representations, and at the same time to increase, according to the present state of science, the reader’s insight into the harmonious co-operation of forces,—was pointed out by me in the preface to the first edition, nearly half a century ago. I there alluded to the several obstacles which oppose themselves to the æsthetic treatment of the grand scenes of nature. The combination of a literary and

At the foot of the lofty granitic range which, in the early age of our planet, resisted the irruption of the waters on the formation of the Caribbean Gulf, extends a vast and boundless plain. When the traveller turns from the Alpine valleys of Caracas, and the island-studded lake of Tacarigua [1] , whose waters reflect the forms of the neighbouring bananas,—when he leaves the fields verdant with the light and tender green of the Tahitian sugar-cane, or the sombre shade of the cacoa groves,—his e

In the preceding section, which I made the subject of an Academical Lecture, I have delineated those boundless plains, whose natural character is so variously modified by climatic relations, that what in one region appear as barren treeless wastes or deserts, in another are Steppes or far-stretching Prairies. With the Llanos of the southern portion of the New Continent, may be contrasted the fearful sandy deserts in the interior of Africa; and these again with the Steppes of Central Asia, the ha

If the faculty of appreciating nature, in different races of man, and if the character of the countries they now inhabit, or have traversed in their earlier migrations, have more or less enriched the respective languages by appropriate terms, expressive of the forms of mountains, the state of vegetation, the appearances of the atmosphere, and the contour and grouping of the clouds, it must be admitted that by long use and literary caprice many of these designations have been diverted from the se

I am indebted to Mr. Pentland, whose scientific labours have thrown so much light on the geology and geography of Bolivia, for the following determinations of position, which he communicated to me in a letter from Paris (October 1848), subsequent to the publication of his great map. The numbers representing the heights are, with the exception of the unimportant difference of a few feet in the South Peak of Illimani, the same as those in the map of the Lake of Titicaca. A sketch of the Illimani,

When the active spirit of man is directed to the investigation of nature, or when in imagination he scans the vast fields of organic creation, among the varied emotions excited in his mind there is none more profound or vivid than that awakened by the universal profusion of life. Everywhere—even near the ice-bound poles,—the air resounds with the song of birds and with the busy hum of insects. Not only the lower strata, in which the denser vapours float, but also the higher and ethereal regions

When we consider the influence exerted on the study of nature during the last few centuries, by the extension of geographical knowledge and by means of scientific expeditions to remote regions of the earth, we are at once made sensible of the various character of this influence, according as the investigations have been directed to the forms of the organic world, the study of the inorganic crust of the earth, or to the knowledge of rocks, their relative ages, and their origin. Different vegetabl

108 . P. 363.—“ A more complete determination of the margins of the Crater of Mount Vesuvius. ” My astronomical fellow-labourer, Oltmanns, who was unhappily too early lost to science, has re-calculated the barometric measurements I made on Mount Vesuvius (from the 22nd to the 25th of November, and on the 1st of December, 1822), and compared the results with those yielded by the measurements given to me in manuscript by Lord Minto, Visconti, Monticelli, Brioschi, and Poulett Scrope. Some of my me

The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Poecile, [RJ] where representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian art, adorned the richly decorated halls of the Portico. Incessantly the people streamed thither; the young warrior to feast his eyes upon the deeds of his forefathers, the artist to contemplate the works of the great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active enterprise of the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was but one which f

In the Preface to the Second and Third Editions of this work (See preliminary pages of this translation) I have already noticed the republication of the preceding tale, which was first printed in Schiller’s Horen (for the year 1795, part 5, pages 90–96). It embodies the development of a physiological idea in a semi-mythical garb. In the year 1793, in the Latin Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants , appended to my Subterranean Flora , I had defined the vital force as the unknown cause

After having sojourned for a whole year on the ridge of the Andes, or Antis, [111] , between 4° north and 4° south latitude, amidst the table-lands of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, and consequently at an elevation varying between 8,500 and 13,000 feet above the level of the sea, it is delightful to descend gradually through the more genial climate of the Cinchona or Quina Woods of Loxa, into the plains of the Upper Amazon. There an unknown world unfolds itself, rich in magnificent vegetation.