I Have Often Directed The Attention Of Botanists To This Extraordinary Phenomenon In The Geography Of Plants.

The pine (Pinus occidentalis) is not found in the Lesser Antilles; not even in Jamaica (between 17 3/4 and 18 1/2 degrees of latitude).

It is only seen further north, in the mountains of San Domingo, and in all that part of the island of Cuba situated between 20 and 23 degrees of latitude. It attains a height of from sixty to seventy feet; and it is remarkable that the cahoba* (mahogany (* Swieteinia Mahogani, Linn.)) and the pine vegetate at the island of Pinos in the same plains. We also find pines in the south-eastern part of the island of Cuba, on the declivity of the Copper Mountains where the soil is barren and sandy. The interior table-land of Mexico is covered with the same species of coniferous plants; at least the specimens brought by M. Bonpland and myself from Acaguisotla, Nevado de Toluca and Cofre de Perote do not appear to differ specifically from the Pinus occidentalis of the West India Islands described by Schwartz. Now those pines which we see at sea level in the island of Cuba, in 20 and 22 degrees of latitude, and which belong only to the southern part of that island, do not descend on the Mexican continent between the parallels of 17 1/2 and 19 1/2 degrees, below the elevation of 500 toises. I even observed that, on the road from Perote to Xalapa in the eastern mountains opposite to the island of Cuba, the limit of the pines is 935 toises; while in the western mountains, between Chilpanzingo and Acapulco, near Quasiniquilapa, two degrees further south, it is 580 toises and perhaps on some points 450. These anomalies of stations are very rare in the torrid zone and are probably less connected with the temperature than with the nature of the soil. In the system of the migration of plants we must suppose that the Pinus occidentalis of Cuba came from Yucatan before the opening of the channel between Cape Catoche and Cape San Antonio, and not from the United States, so rich in coniferous plants; for in Florida the species of which we have here traced the botanical geography has not been discovered.

About the end of April, M. Bonpland and myself, having completed the observations we proposed to make at the northern extremity of the torrid zone, were on the point of proceeding to Vera Cruz with the squadron of Admiral Ariztizabal; but being misled by false intelligence respecting the expedition of Captain Baudin, we were induced to relinquish the project of passing through Mexico on our way to the Philippine Islands. The public journals announced that two French sloops, the Geographe and Naturaliste, had sailed for Cape Horn; that they were to proceed along the coasts of Chili and Peru, and thence to New Holland. This intelligence revived in my mind all the projects I had formed during my stay in Paris, when I solicited the Directory to hasten the departure of Captain Baudin. On leaving Spain, I had promised to rejoin the expedition wherever I could reach it. M. Bonpland and I resolved instantly to divide our herbals into three portions, to avoid exposing to the risks of a long voyage the objects we had obtained with so much difficulty on the banks of the Orinoco, the Atabapo and the Rio Negro. We sent one collection by way of England to Germany, another by way of Cadiz to France, and a third remained at the Havannah. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on this foresight: each collection contained nearly the same species, and no precautions were neglected to have the cases, if taken by English or French vessels, remitted to Sir Joseph Banks or to the professors of natural history at the Museum at Paris. It happened fortunately that the manuscripts which I at first intended to send with the collection to Cadiz were not intrusted to our much esteemed friend and fellow traveller, Fray Juan Gonzales, of the order of the Observance of St. Francis, who had followed us to the Havannah with the view of returning to Spain. He left the island of Cuba soon after us, but the vessel in which he sailed foundered on the coast of Africa, and the cargo and crew were all lost. By this event we lost some of the duplicates of our herbals, and what was more important, all the insects which M. Bonpland had with great difficulty collected during our voyage to the Orinoco and the Rio Negro. By a singular fatality, we remained two years in the Spanish colonies without receiving a single letter from Europe; and those which arrived in the three following years made no mention of what we had transmitted. The reader may imagine my uneasiness for the fate of a journal which contained astronomical observations and barometrical measurements, of which I had not made any copy. After having visited New Grenada, Peru and Mexico, and just when I was preparing to leave the New Continent, I happened, at a public library of Philadelphia, to cast my eyes on a scientific Publication, in which I found these words: "Arrival of M. de Humboldt's manuscripts at his brother's house in Paris, by way of Spain!" I could scarcely suppress an exclamation of joy.

While M. Bonpland laboured day and night to divide and put our collections in order, a thousand obstacles arose to impede our departure. There was no vessel in the port of the Havannah that would convey us to Porto Bello or Carthagena. The persons I consulted seemed to take pleasure in exaggerating the difficulties of the passage of the isthmus, and the dangerous voyage from Panama to Guyaquil, and from Guyaquil to Lima and Valparaiso. Not being able to find a passage in any neutral vessel, I freighted a Catalonian sloop, lying at Batabano, which was to be at my disposal to take me either to Porto Bello or Carthagena, according as the gales of Saint Martha might permit.* (* The gales of Saint Martha blow with great violence at that season below latitude 12 degrees.) The prosperous state of commerce at the Havannah and the multiplied connections of that city with the ports of the Pacific would facilitate for me the means of procuring funds for several years.

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