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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These
Materials Are Now In The Hands Of My Brother, William Von Humboldt,
Who, During His Travels In Spain, And A Long Abode At Rome, Formed
The Richest Collection Of American Vocabularies In Existence.
His
extensive knowledge of the ancient and modern languages has enabled
him to trace some curious analogies in relation to this subject, so
important to the philosophical study of the history of man.
A part
of his labours will find a place in this narrative.
Of the different works which I have here enumerated, the second and
third were composed by M. Bonpland, from the observations which he
made in a botanical journal. This journal contains more than four
thousand methodical descriptions of equinoctial plants, a ninth
part only of which have been made by me. They appear in a separate
publication, under the title of Nova Genera et Species Plantariem.
In this work will be found, not only the new species we collected,
which, after a careful examination by one of the first botanists of
the age, Professor Willdenouw, are computed to amount to fourteen
or fifteen hundred, but also the interesting observations made by
M. Bonpland on plants hitherto imperfectly described. The plates of
this work are all engraved according to the method followed by M.
Labillardiere, in the Specimen Planterum Novae Hollandiae, a work
remarkable for profound research and clearness of arrangement.
After having distributed into separate works all that belongs to
astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain,
and the history of the ancient civilization of certain nations of
the New Continent, there still remained many general results and
local descriptions, which I might have collected into separate
treatises. I had, during my journey, prepared papers on the races
of men in South America; on the Missions of the Orinoco; on the
obstacles to the progress of society in the torrid zone arising
from the climate and the strength of vegetation; on the character
of the landscape in the Cordilleras of the Andes compared with that
of the Alps in Switzerland; on the analogies between the rocks of
the two hemispheres; on the physical constitution of the air in the
equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm intention
of not writing what is usually called the historical narrative of a
journey, but to publish the fruit of my inquiries in works merely
descriptive; and I had arranged the facts, not in the order in
which they successively presented themselves, but according to the
relation they bore to each other. Amidst the overwhelming majesty
of Nature, and the stupendous objects she presents at every step,
the traveller is little disposed to record in his journal matters
which relate only to himself, and the ordinary details of life.
I composed a very brief itinerary during the course of my
excursions on the rivers of South America, and in my long journeys
by land. I regularly described (and almost always on the spot) the
visits I made to the summits of volcanoes, or mountains remarkable
for their height; but the entries in my journal were interrupted
whenever I resided in a town, or when other occupations prevented
me from continuing a work which I considered as having only a
secondary interest. Whenever I wrote in my journal, I had no other
motive than the preservation of some of those fugitive ideas which
present themselves to a naturalist, whose life is almost wholly
passed in the open air. I wished to make a temporary collection of
such facts as I had not then leisure to class, and note down the
first impressions, whether agreeable or painful, which I received
from nature or from man. Far from thinking at the time that those
pages thus hurriedly written would form the basis of an extensive
work to be offered to the public, it appeared to me, that my
journal, though it might furnish certain data useful to science,
would present very few of those incidents, the recital of which
constitutes the principal charm of an itinerary.
The difficulties I have experienced since my return, in the
composition of a considerable number of treatises, for the purpose
of making known certain classes of phenomena, insensibly overcame
my repugnance to write the narrative of my journey. In undertaking
this task, I have been guided by the advice of many estimable
persons, who honour me with their friendship. I also perceived that
such a preference is given to this sort of composition, that
scientific men, after having presented in an isolated form the
account of their researches on the productions, the manners, and
the political state of the countries through which they have
passed, imagine that they have not fulfilled their engagements with
the public, till they have written their itinerary.
An historical narrative embraces two very distinct objects; the
greater or the less important events connected with the purpose of
the traveller, and the observations he has made during his journey.
The unity of composition also, which distinguishes good works from
those on an ill-constructed plan, can be strictly observed only
when the traveller describes what has passed under his own eye; and
when his principal attention has been fixed less on scientific
observations than on the manners of different people and the great
phenomena of nature. Now, the most faithful picture of manners is
that which best displays the relations of men towards each other.
The character of savage or civilized life is portrayed either in
the obstacles a traveller meets with, or in the sensations he
feels. It is the traveller himself whom we continually desire to
see in contact with the objects which surround him; and his
narration interests us the more, when a local tint is diffused over
the description of a country and its inhabitants. Such is the
source of the interest excited by the history of those early
navigators, who, impelled by intrepidity rather than by science,
struggled against the elements in their search for the discovery of
a new world.
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