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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I Had Traversed A Part Of Italy In 1795, But Had Not Been Able To
Visit The Volcanic Regions Of Naples And Sicily; And I Regretted
Leaving Europe Without Having Seen Vesuvius, Stromboli, And Etna.
I
felt, that in order to form a proper judgment of many geological
phenomena, especially of the nature of the rocks of trap-formation,
it was necessary to examine the phenomena presented by burning
volcanoes.
I determined therefore to return to Italy in the month
of November, 1797. I made a long stay at Vienna, where the fine
collections of exotic plants, and the friendship of Messrs. de
Jacquin, and Joseph van der Schott, were highly useful to my
preparatory studies. I travelled with M. Leopold von Buch, through
several cantons of Salzburg and Styria, countries alike interesting
to the landscape-painter and the geologist; but just when I was
about to cross the Tyrolese Alps, the war then raging in Italy
obliged me to abandon the project of going to Naples.
A short time before, a gentleman passionately fond of the fine
arts, and who had visited the coasts of Greece and Illyria to
inspect their monuments, made me a proposal to accompany him in an
expedition to Upper Egypt. This expedition was to occupy only eight
months. Provided with astronomical instruments and able
draughtsmen, we were to ascend the Nile as far as Assouan, after
minutely examining the positions of the Said, between Tentyris and
the cataracts. Though my views had not hitherto been fixed on any
region but the tropics, I could not resist the temptation of
visiting countries so celebrated in the annals of human
civilization.
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