Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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M.
Cuvier Has Enriched This Work With A Very Comprehensive Treatise On
The Axolotl Of The Lake Of Mexico, And
On the genera of the Protei.
That naturalist has also recognized two new species of mastodons
and an elephant among
The fossil bones of quadrupeds which we
brought from North and South America. For the description of the
insects collected by M. Bonpland we are indebted to M. Latreille,
whose labours have so much contributed to the progress of
entomology in our times. The second volume of this work contains
figures of the Mexican, Peruvian, and Aturian skulls, which we have
deposited in the Museum of Natural History at Paris, and respecting
which Blumenbach has published observations in the 'Decas quinta
Craniorum diversarum gentium.'
1.I.6. POLITICAL ESSAY ON THE KINGDOM OF NEW SPAIN, WITH A PHYSICAL
AND GEOGRAPHICAL ATLAS, FOUNDED ON ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS AND
TRIGONOMETRICAL AND BAROMETRICAL MEASUREMENTS.
This work, based on numerous official memoirs, presents, in six
divisions, considerations on the extent and natural appearance of
Mexico, on the population, on the manners of the inhabitants, their
ancient civilization, and the political division of their
territory. It embraces also the agriculture, the mineral riches,
the manufactures, the commerce, the finances, and the military
defence of that vast country. In treating these different subjects
I have endeavoured to consider them under a general point of view;
I have drawn a parallel not only between New Spain, the other
Spanish colonies, and the United States of North America, but also
between New Spain and the possessions of the English in Asia; I
have compared the agriculture of the countries situated in the
torrid zone with that of the temperate climates; and I have
examined the quantity of colonial produce necessary to Europe in
the present state of civilization. In tracing the geological
description of the richest mining districts in Mexico, I have, in
short, given a statement of the mineral produce, the population,
the imports and exports of the whole of Spanish America. I have
examined several questions which, for want of precise data, had not
hitherto been treated with the attention they demand, such as the
influx and reflux of metals, their progressive accumulation in
Europe and Asia, and the quantity of gold and silver which, since
the discovery of America down to our own times, the Old World has
received from the New. The geographical introduction at the
beginning of this work contains the analysis of the materials which
have been employed in the construction of the Mexican Atlas.
1.I.7. VIEWS OF THE CORDILLERAS, AND MONUMENTS OF THE INDIGENOUS
NATIONS OF THE NEW CONTINENT.* (*Atlas Pittoresque, ou Vues des
Cordilleres, 1 volume folio, with 69 plates, part of which are
coloured, accompanied by explanatory treatises. This work may be
considered as the Atlas to the historical narrative of the travels.)
This work is intended to represent a few of the grand scenes which
nature presents in the lofty chain of the Andes, and at the same
time to throw some light on the ancient civilization of the
Americans, through the study of their monuments of architecture,
their hieroglyphics, their religious rites, and their astrological
reveries.
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