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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It May
Also Be Feared That, During A Long Series Of Years, No Foreign
Traveller Will Be Enabled To Traverse All The Countries Which I
Have Visited.
This circumstance may perhaps add to the interest of
a work which pourtrays the state of the greater part of the Spanish
colonies at the beginning of the 19th century.
I even venture to
indulge the hope that this work will be thought worthy of attention
when passions shall be hushed into peace, and when, under the
influence of a new social order, those countries shall have made
rapid progress in public welfare. If then some pages of my book are
snatched from oblivion, the inhabitant of the banks of the Orinoco
and the Atabapo will behold with delight populous cities enriched
by commerce, and fertile fields cultivated by the hands of free
men, on those very spots where, at the time of my travels, I found
only impenetrable forests and inundated lands.
***
PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS
OF THE NEW CONTINENT.
VOLUME 1.
CHAPTER 1.1.
PREPARATIONS.
INSTRUMENTS.
DEPARTURE FROM SPAIN.
LANDING AT THE CANARY ISLANDS.
From my earliest youth I felt an ardent desire to travel into
distant regions, seldom visited by Europeans. This desire is
characteristic of a period of our existence when appears an
unlimited horizon, and when we find an irresistible attraction in
the impetuous agitations of the mind, and the image of positive
danger. Though educated in a country which has no direct
communication with either the East or the West Indies, living
amidst mountains remote from coasts, and celebrated for their
numerous mines, I felt an increasing passion for the sea and
distant expeditions. Objects with which we are acquainted only by
the animated narratives of travellers have a peculiar charm;
imagination wanders with delight over that which is vague and
undefined; and the pleasures we are deprived of seem to possess a
fascinating power, compared with which all we daily feel in the
narrow circle of sedentary life appears insipid. The taste for
herborisation, the study of geology, rapid excursions to Holland,
England, and France, with the celebrated Mr. George Forster, who
had the happiness to accompany captain Cook in his second
expedition round the globe, contributed to give a determined
direction to the plan of travels which I had formed at eighteen
years of age. No longer deluded by the agitation of a wandering
life, I was anxious to contemplate nature in all her variety of
wild and stupendous scenery; and the hope of collecting some facts
useful to the advancement of science, incessantly impelled my
wishes towards the luxuriant regions of the torrid zone. As
personal circumstances then prevented me from executing the
projects by which I was so powerfully influenced, I had leisure to
prepare myself during six years for the observations I proposed to
make on the New Continent, as well as to visit different parts of
Europe, and to explore the lofty chain of the Alps, the structure
of which I might afterwards compare with that of the Andes of Quito
and of Peru.
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. I therefore accepted this proposition, but with the
express condition, that on our return to Alexandria I should be at
liberty to continue my journey through Syria and Palestine. The
studies which I entered upon with a view to this new project, I
afterwards found useful, when I examined the relations between the
barbarous monuments of Mexico, and those belonging to the nations
of the old world. I thought myself on the point of embarking for
Egypt, when political events forced me to abandon a plan which
promised me so much satisfaction.
An expedition of discovery in the South Sea, under the direction of
captain Baudin, was then preparing in France. The plan was great,
bold, and worthy of being executed by a more enlightened commander.
The purpose of this expedition was to visit the Spanish possessions
of South America, from the mouth of the river Plata to the kingdom
of Quito and the isthmus of Panama. After visiting the archipelago
of the Pacific, and exploring the coasts of New Holland, from Van
Diemen's Land to that of Nuyts, both vessels were to stop at
Madagascar, and return by the Cape of Good Hope. I was in Paris
when the preparations for this voyage were begun. I had but little
confidence in the personal character of captain Baudin, who had
given cause of discontent to the court of Vienna, when he was
commissioned to conduct to Brazil one of my friends, the young
botanist, Van der Schott; but as I could not hope, with my own
resources, to make a voyage of such extent, and view so fine a
portion of the globe, I determined to take the chances of this
expedition.
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