account of the travels between the tropics of messrs. humboldt and bonpland, in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804.

By j. c. delametherie.

AFTER making physical researches for eight years in Germany, Poland, England, France, Swisserland, and Italy, M. Humboldt came to Paris in 1798, where the Museum of Natural History afforded him an opportunity of making a voyage round the world with Captain Baudin.

When on the point of setting out for Havre, with Alexander Aime Gonjou Bonpland, a pupil of the School of Medicine and Garden of Plants, the war which recommenced with Austria, and the want of funds, induced the Directory to put off the voyage of Baudin till a more favourable occasion. M. Humboldt, who, since 1792, had conceived the design of undertaking, at his own expence, a voyage to the tropics, in order to promote the physical sciences, resolved then to accompany the men of science who were destined for Egypt.-- The battle of Aboukir having interrupted all direct communication with Alexandria, his plan was, to take advantage of a Swedish frigate which was to carry the consul Sezioldebrant to Algiers, to accompany the caravan thence to Mecca, and to proceed to India by Egypt and the Persian Gulph; but the war, which broke out in an unexpected manner in the month of October 1798, between France and the Barbary Powers, and the troubles in the East, prevented M. Humboldt from setting out from Marseilles, where he waited to no purpose for two months.-- Impatient at this new delay, but always firm in the project of joining the expedition in Egypt, he set out for Spain, hoping he should be able to proceed more easily under the Spanish flag from Carthagena to Algiers or Tunis.

He took the road to Madrid, through Montpellier, Perpignan, Barcelona, and Valentia; but the news from the East became every day more distressing.

The war there was carried on with unexampled fury, and he was at length obliged to renounce the design of going through Egypt to Indostan.

A happy concurrence of circumstances soon indemnified M. Humboldt for this delay.

In the month of March 1799, the Court of Madrid granted him full permission to proceed to the Spanish Colonies in both the Americas, in order to make such researches as might be useful to the sciences.

His Catholic Majesty even deigned to show particular interest for the success of this expedition; and M. Humboldt, after residing some months at Madrid and Aranjues, set out from Europe in June 1799, accompanied by his friend Bonpland, who unites an extensive knowledge of botany and zoology to that indefatigable zeal and love for the sciences which induce men to submit with indifference to every kind of hardship.

With this friend M. Humboldt travelled for five years, at his own expence, between the tropics, passing over, by sea and land, nearly nine thousand leagues.

These two travellers, provided with recommendations from the Court of Spain, embarked in the Pizarro frigate, at Corunna, for the Canaries.

They touched at the island of Graciosa, near Lancerotta, and at Teneriff, where they ascended to the crater of the Peak, in order to analyse the atmospheric air, and make geological observations on the basaltes and porphyritic schist of Africa.

In the month of July they arrived at the port of Cumana, in the gulph of Cariaco, a part of South America, celebrated by the labours and misfortunes of the indefatigable Löfling.

In the course of 1799 and 1800 they visited the coast of Paria, the Indian missions of Chaymas, and the province of New Andalusia, one of the hottest, but, at the same time, healthiest, countries in the world, though convulsed by dreadful and frequent earthquakes.-- They traversed the provinces of New Barcelona, Venezuela, and Spanish Guyana.

After determining the longitude of Cumana, Caraccas, and several other points, by observations of the satellites of Jupiter; after collecting plants on the summits of Caripe and Silla de Avila, crowned by befaria, they set out for the capital of Caraccas in February 1800, and the beautiful valleys of Aragua, where the large lake of Valentia calls to remembrance that of Geneva, but embellished by the majestic vegetation of the tropics.

From Portocabello they proceeded south, penetrating from the coast of the sea of the Antilles as far as the boundaries of Brazil towards the equator.-- They first traversed the immense plains of Calabozo, Apure, and Lower Orenoko; the Llanos, deserts similar to those of Africa, where, by the reverberation of the heat, but under the shade, Reaumur's thermometer rises to 33° or 37°, and where the scorching soil, for more than two thousand leagues, differs in its level only five inches.

The sand, similar to the horizon at sea, exhibits every where the most curious phenomena of refraction and elevation.

Without any vegetation, in the dry months it affords shelter to the crocodile and the torpid boa.

The want of water, the heat of the sun, and the dust raised by the scorching winds, harass in turns the traveller, who directs himself and mule by the course of the stars, or by some scattered trunks of the mauritia and embothrium, which are discovered every three or four leagues.

At St. Fernando d'Apure, in the province of Varinas, Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland began a laborious navigation of nearly five hundred nautical leagues in canoes, during which they made a chart of the country by the help of time-keepers, the satellites, and lunar distances.-- They descended the river Apure, which falls into the Orenoko in the latitude of seven degrees.

Having escaped from the danger of imminent shipwreck near the island of Pananuma, they ascended the latter river as far as the mouth of the Rio Guaviare, passing the famous cataracts of Atures and Maypure, where the cavern of Ataruipe contains mummies of a nation destroyed by the war of the Caribs and Maravitains.

From the mouth of the Rio Guaviare, which descends from the Andes of New Granada, and which Father Gumilla erroneously took for the sources of the Orenoko, they quitted the latter and ascended the small rivers Atabapo, Tuamini, and Temi.

From the mission of Javita they proceeded by land to the sources of the Guiainia, which the Europeans call the Rio Negro, and which Condamine, who saw it only at its mouth in the river Amazon, calls a fresh water sea.

Thirty Indians carried their canoes through bushy trees of hevea, lecythis, and the laurus cinnamomoides, to Cano Pimichin.

By this small stream our travellers proceeded to the Rio Negro, which they descended as far as the small fortress of San Carlos, which has been erroneously believed to be situated under the equator, and as far as the frontiers of the Grand Para, the Captainry General of Brazil.

A canal from Temi to Pimichin, which, on account of the level nature of the ground is very practicable, would form an interior communication between the provinces of Caraccas and the capital of Peru much shorter than that of Casquiare.

By this canal also, such is the astonishing disposition of the rivers in this new continent, one might descend in a canoe from Rio Guallaga, within three days journey of Lima, or the South Sea, by the river Amazon and Rio Negro, as far as the mouths of the Orenoko opposite to Trinidad, a navigation of nearly two thousand leagues.

The misunderstanding which prevailed then between the Courts of Madrid and Lisbon prevented M. Humboldt from carrying his operations beyond St.

Gabriel de las Cochuellas, in the Captainry General of Great Para.

La Condamine and Maldonado having determined astronomically the mouth of the Rio Negro, this obstacle was less sensible, and it remained to fix a part more unknown, which is the arm of the Orenoko called Casquiare, forming the communication between the Orenoko and the river Amazon, and respecting the existence of which there have been so many disputes for fifty years past. To execute this labour, Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland ascended from the Spanish fortress of St. Carlos along the Rio Negro and the Casquiare to the Orenoko, and on the latter to the Mission of Esmeraldo, near the volcano Duida, or as far as the sources of that river.

The Guaica Indians, a very white, small, and almost pigmy race of men, but exceedingly warlike, who inhabit the country to the east of the Pasimoni; and the Guajaribes, of a dark copper colour, extremely ferocious, and still anthropophagi, render fruitless every attempt to reach the sources of the Orenoko, which the maps of Caulin, though in other respects meritorious, place in a longitude much too far east.

From the mission of Esmeralda, an assemblage of huts situated in the most remote and most solitary corner of this Indian world, our travellers descended, with the assistance of the floods, 340 leagues; that is to say, the whole of the Orenoko, as far as towards its mouths at St.

Thomas de la Nueva Guyana or Angostura, passing a second time the cataracts, to the south of which the two historiographers of these countries, Father Gumilla and Caulin, never penetrated.

In the course of this long and painful navigation, the want of food and shelter; the nocturnal rains; living in the woods; the mosquitoes, and a multitude of other stinging and venemous insects; the impossibility of cooling themselves by the bath, on account of the ferocity of the crocodile and of the small carib fish; together with the miasmata of a hot and damp climate, exposed our travellers to continual suffering.

They returned from the Orenoko to Barcelona and Cumana by the plains of Cari and the Missions of the Carib Indians, a very extraordinary race of men, and, next to the Patagonians, the tallest and most robust perhaps in the world.

After a stay of some months on the coast, they proceeded to the Havannah by the south of St. Domingo and Jamaica.

This navigation, performed when the season was far advanced, was both long and dangerous, the vessel having been in great danger of being lost on the bank of Vibora, the position of which M. Humboldt determined by the time-keeper.

He staid in the island of Cuba three months, during which time he employed himself on the longitude of the Havannah, and the construction of a new kind of stove in the sugar-houses, which was speedily and generally adopted.

When on the point of setting out for La Vera Cruz, intending to proceed by the way of Mexico and Acapulco to the Philippines, and thence, if possible, by Bombay, Bussorah, and Aleppo, to Constantinople, false intelligence respecting the voyage of Captain Baudin alarmed him, and induced him to alter his plan.

The American papers announced that this navigator would set out from France for Buenos-Ayres, and that, after doubling Cape Horn, he would proceed along the coasts of Chili and Peru.

M. Humboldt, at the time of his departure from Paris in the year 1798, had promised to the Museum and to Captain Baudin, that, in whatever part of the world he might be, he would endeavour to join the French expedition as soon as he should hear of its having been set on foot.

He flattered himself that his researches and those of Bonpland would be more useful to the progress of the sciences if they united their labours to those of the men of science who were to accompany Captain Baudin.

These considerations induced M. Humboldt to send his manuscripts of the years 1799 and 1800 directly to Europe, and to freight a small galliot in the port of Batabano to proceed to Carthagena in the Indies, and thence, as soon as possible, by the isthmus of Panama, to the South Sea.

He hoped to find Capta in Baudin at Guyaquil or at Lima, and to visit New Holland and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, so interesting in a moral point of view, and by the richness of their vegetation.

It appeared to him imprudent to expose the manuscripts and collections already formed to the dangers of this long navigation.

The manuscripts, respecting the fate of which M. Humboldt remained in painful uncertainty for three years, till his arrival at Philadelphia, were saved; but a third of the collections were lost at sea by shipwreck.

Fortunately this loss, and that of some insects from the Orenoko and Rio Negro, extended only to duplicates; but this shipwreck proved fatal to a friend to whom M. Humboldt had intrusted his plants and insects, Fray Juan Gonzales, a Franciscan, a young man of great courage and activity, who bad penetrated in this unknown world from Spanish Guyana much farther than any other European.

(To be continued.)

account of the travels between the tropics of messrs. humboldt and bonpland, in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804.

By j. c. delametherie.

(Continued from p. 558. No. 130.)

M. HUMBOLDT set out from Batabano in March, 1801, coasting along the South side of the island of Cuba, and determining astronomically several points in that group of small isles called the King's Gardens, and the approaches to the part of Trinidad.

A navigation which ought to have been only thirteen or fifteen days, was prolonged by currents beyond a month.

The galliot was carried by them too far east, beyond the mouths of the Atracto.

They touched at Rio Sinu, where no botanist had ever searched for plants; but they found it difficult to land at Carthagena, on account of the violence of the breakers of St. Martha.

The galliot had almost gone to pieces near Giant's Point: they were obliged to save themselves towards the shore in order to anchor; and this disappointment gave M. Humboldt an opportunity of observing the eclipse of the moon on the 2d of March, 1801.

Unfortunately they learned on this coast that the season for navigating the South Sea, from Panama to Guyaquil, was already too far advanced: it was necessary to give up the design of crossing the isthmus; and the desire of seeing the celebrated Mutis, and examining his immense treasures in natural history, induced M. Humboldt to spend some weeks in the forests of Turbaco, ornamented with gustavia, toluifera, anacardium caracoli, and the Cavanillesca of the Peruvian botanists; and to ascend in thirty-five days the beautiful and majestic river of the Magdalen, of which he sketched out a chart, though tormented by the mosquitoes, while Bonpland studied the vegetation, rich in heliconia, psychostria, melastoma, myrodia, and dychotria emetica, the root of which is the ipecacuanha of Carthagena.

Having landed at Honda, our travellers proceeded on mules, the only way of travelling in South America, and by frightful roads through forests of oaks, melastoma and cinchona, to Santa Fe de Bagota, the capital of the kingdom of New Grenada, situated in a beautiful plain 1360 toises above the level of the sea, and, in consequence of a perpetual spring temperature, abounding in the wheat of Europe and the sesamum of Asia.

The superb collections of Mutis; the grand and sublime cataract of Tequendama, 98 toises or 588 feet in height; the mines of Mariquita, St.

Ana, and Zipaguira; the natural bridge of Icononzo, two detached rocks which by means of an earthquake have been disposed in such a manner as to support a third; occupied the attention of our travellers at Santa Fe till September 1801.

Though the rainy season had now rendered the roads almost impassable, they set out for Quito; they re-descended by Fusagasuga, in the valley of Magdalena, and passed the Andes of Quindiu, where the snowy pyramid of Tolina rises amidst forests of styrax passiflora in trees, bambusa, and wax palms.

For thirteen days they were obliged to drag themselves through horrid mud, and to sleep, as on the Orenoko, under the bare heavens, in woods where they saw no vestiges of man.

When they arrived, bare-footed, and drenched with continual rain, in the valley of the river Cauca, they stopped at Cathago and Buga, and proceeded along the province of Choco, the country of platina, which is found between rolled fragments of basaltes, filled with olivin and augite, green rock (the grunstein of Werner), and fossil wood.

They ascended by Caloto and Quilichao, where gold is washed, to Popayan, visited by Bouguer when he returned to France, and situated at the bottom of the snowy volcanoes of Purace and Sotara, one of the most picturesque situations and in the most delightful climate of the universe, where Reaumur's thermometer stands constantly between 17 and 19 degrees.

When they had reached, with much difficulty, the crater of the volcano of Purace, filled with boiling water, which from the midst of the snow throws up, with a horrid roaring, vapours of sulphurated hydrogen, our travellers passed from Popayan by the steep cordilleras of Almaguer a Parto, avoiding the contagious air of the valley of Patia.

From Pasto, a town situated at the bottom of a burning volcano, they traversed by Guachucal the high plateau of the province of Pastes, separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Andes of the volcano of Chili and Cumbal, and celebrated for its great fertility in wheat and the erytroxylou Peruvianum, called cocoa.

At length, after a journey of four months on mules, they arrived at the towns of Ibarra and Quito.

This long passage through the cordillera of the high Andes, at a season which rendered the roads impassable, and during which they were exposed to rains which continued seven or eight hours a day, encumbered with a great number of instruments and voluminous collections, would have been almost impossible, without the generous and kind assistance of M. Mendiunetta, viceroy of Santa Fe, and the baron de Carondelet, president of Quito, who, being equally zealous for the progress of science, caused the roads and the most dangerous bridges to be repaired on a route of 450 leagues in length.

Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland arrived on the 6th of January 1802, at Quito, a capital celebrated in the annals of astronomy by the labours of La Condamine, Bouguer, Godin, and Don Jorge-Juan and Ulloa; justly celebrated also by the great amiableness of its inhabitants and their happy disposition for the arts.

Our travellers continued their geological and botanical researches for eight or nine months in the kingdom of Quito; a country rendered perhaps the most interesting in the world by the colossal height of its snowy summits; the activity of its volcanoes, which in turns throw up flames, rocks, mud, and hydro-sulphureous water; the frequency of its earthquakes, one of which, on the 7th of February 1797, swallowed up in a few seconds nearly 40,000 inhabitants; its vegetation; the remains of Peruvian architecture; and, above all, the manners of its ancient inhabitants.

After two fruitless attempts, they succeeded in twice ascending to the crater of the volcano of Pinchinca, where they made experiments on the analysis of the air; its electric charge, magnetism, hygroscopy, electricity, and the temperature of boiling water.

La Condamine saw the same crater, which he very properly compares to the chaos of the poets; but he was there without instruments, and could remain only some minutes.

In his time this immense mouth, hollowed out in basaltic porphyry, was cooled and filled with snow:

our travellers found it again on fire; and this intelligence was distressing to the town of Quito, which is distant only about four or five thousand toises.

Here M.

Humboldt was in danger of losing his life.

Being alone with an Indian, who was as little acquainted with the crater as himself, and walking over a fissure concealed by a thin stratum of congealed snow, he had almost fallen into it.

Our travellers, during their stay in the kingdom of Quito, made several excursions to the snowy mountains of Antisana, Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, and Chimborazo, which is the highest summit of our earth, and which the French academicians measured only by approximation.

They examined in particular the geognostic part of the cordillera of the Andes, respecting which nothing has yet been published in Europe; mineralogy, as we may say, being newer than the voyage of La Condamine, whose universal genius and incredible activity embraced every thing else that could be interesting to the sciences.

The trigonometrical and barometrical measurements of M.

Humboldt have proved that some of these volcanoes, and especially that of Tunguragua, have become considerably lower since 1753; a result which accords with what the inhabitants of Pellileo and the plains of Tapia have observed.

M. Humboldt found that all these large masses were the work of crystallization.

"Every thing I have seen," says he in a letter to Delametherie, "in these regions, where the highest elevations of the globe are situated, have confirmed me more and more in the grand idea that you threw out in your Theory of the Earth, the most complete work we have on that subject, in regard to the formation of mountains.

All the masses of which they consist have united according to then assinities by the laws of attraction, and have formed these elevations, more or less considerable in different parts on the surface of the earth, by the laws of general crystallization.

There can remain no doubt in this respect to the traveller who considers without prejudice these large masses.

You will see in our relations that there is not one of the objects you treat of which we have not endeavoured to improve by our labours."

In all these excursions, begun in January 1802, our travellers were accompanied by M.

Charles Montufar, son of the Marquis de Selvalegre, of Quito, an individual zealous for the progress of the sciences, and who caused to be reconstructed, at his own expense, the pyramids of Sarouguier, the boundaries of the celebrated base of the French and Spanish academicians.

This interesting young man, having accompanied M. Humboldt during the rest of his expedition to Peru and the kingdom of Mexico, proceeded with him to Europe.

The efforts of these three travellers were so much favoured by circumstances, that they reached the greatest heights to which man had ever attained in these mountains.

On the volcano of Antisana they carried instruments 2200, and on Chimborazo, June 23, 1802, 3300 feet higher than Condamine and Bouguer did on Corazon.

They ascended to the height of 3036 toises above the level of the Pacific Ocean, where the blood issued from their eyes, lips, and gums, and where they experienced a cold not indicated by the thermometer, but which arose from the little caloric disengaged during the inspiration of air so much rarefied.

A fissure eighty toises in depth and of great breadth prevented them from reaching the top of Chimborazo when they were distant from it only about 224 toises.

(To be continued.)

account of the travels between the tropics of messrs. humboldt and bonpland, in 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804.

By j. c. delametherie.

(Concluded from page 17 of our last Number.)

DURING his residence at Quito, M. Humboldt received a letter from the French National Institute, informing him that Captain Baudin had set out for New Holland, pursuing an easterly course by the Cape of Good Hope.

He found it necessary, therefore, to give up all idea of joining him, though our travellers had entertained this hope for thirteen months, by which means they lost the advantage of an easy passage from the Havannah to Mexico and the Philippines.

It had made them travel by sea and by land more than a thousand leagues to the south, exposed to every extreme of temperature, from summits covered with perpetual snow to the bottom of those profound ravines where the thermometer stands night and day between 25° and 31° of Reaumur.

But, accustomed to disappointments of every kind, they readily consoled themselves on account of their fate.

They were once more sensible that man must depend only on what can be produced by his own energy; and Baudin's voyage, or rather the false intelligence of the direction he had taken, made them traverse immense countries towards which no naturalist perhaps would otherwise have turned his researches. M.

Humboldt being then resolved to pursue his own expedition, proceeded from Quito towards the river Amazon and Lima, with a view of making the important observation of the transit of Mercury over the sun's disk.

Our travellers first visited the ruins of Lactacunga, Hambato, and Riobamba, a district convulsed by the dreadful earthquake of the year 1797.

They passed through the snows of Assonay to Cuenca, and thence with great difficulty, on account of the carriage of their instruments and packages of plants, by the Paramo of Saraguro to Loxa.

It was here, in the forests of Gonzanama and Malacates, that they studied the valuable tree which first made known to man the febrifuge qualities of cinchona.

The extent of the territory which their travels embraced, gave them an advantage never before enjoyed by any botanist, namely, that of comparing the different kinds of cinchona of Santa Fe, Popayan, Cuenca, Loxa, and Jaen, with the cuspa and cuspare of Cumana and Rio Carony, the latter of which, named improperly Cortex angusturae, appears to belong to a new genus of the pentandria monogynia, with alternate leaves.

From Loxa they entered Peru by Ayavaca and Gouncabamba, traversing the high summit of the Andes, to proceed to the river Amazon.

They had to pass thirty-five times in the course of two days the river Chamaya, sometimes on a raft, and sometimes by fording.

They saw the superb remains of the causeway of Ynga, which may be compared to the most beautiful causeways in France and Spain, and which proceeds on the porphyritic ridge of the Andes, from Cusco to Assonay, and is furnished with cambo (inns) and public fountains.

They then embarked on a raft of ochroma, at the small Indian village of Chamaya, and descended by the river of the same name, to that of the Amazons, determining by the culmination of several stars, and by the difference of time, the astronomical position of that confluence.

La Condamine, when he returned from Quito to Para and to France, embarked on the river Amazon only below Quebrada de Chucunga; he therefore observed the longitude only at the mouth of the Rio Napo. M.

Humboldt endeavoured to supply this deficiency in the beautiful chart of the French astronomer, navigating the river Amazon as far as the cataracts of Rentema, and forming at Tomependa, the capital of the province of Jaen de Bracamorros, a detailed plan of that unknown part of the Upper Maranon, both from his own observations and the information obtained from Indian travellers. M. Bonpland, in the mean time, made an interesting excursion to the forests around the town of Jaen, where he discovered new species of cinchona; and after greatly suffering from the scorching heat of these solitary districts, and admiring a vegetation rich in new species of Jacquinia, Godoya, Porteria, Bougainvillea, Colletia, and Pisonia, our three travellers crossed for the fifth time the cordillera of the Andes by Montan, in order to return to Peru.

They fixed the point where Borda's compass indicated the zero of the magnetic inclination, though at seven degrees of south latitude.

They examined the mines of Hualguayoc, where native silver is found in large masses at the height of 2000 toises above the level of the sea, in mines, some metalliferous veins of which contain petrified shells, and which, with those of Huontajayo, are at present the richest of Peru.

From Caxamarca, celebrated by its thermal waters, and by the ruins of the palace of Atahualpa, they descended to Truxillo, in the neighbourhood of which are found vestiges of the immense Peruvian city of Mansische, ornamented with pyramids, in one of which was discovered, in the eighteenth century, hammered gold to the value of more than 150,000l. sterling.

On this western declivity of the Andes our travellers enjoyed, for the first time, the striking view of the Pacific Ocean; and from that long and narrow valley, the inhabitants of which are unacquainted with rain or thunder, and where, under a happy climate, the most absolute power, and that most dangerous to man, theocracy itself, seems to imitate the beneficence of nature.

From Truxillo they followed the dry coasts of the South Sea, formerly watered and rendered fertile by the canals of the Ynga; nothing of which remains but melancholy ruins.

When they arrived, by Santa and Guarmey, at Lima, they remained some months in that interesting capital of Peru, the inhabitants of which are distinguished by the vivacity of their genius and the liberality of their sentiments. M.

Humboldt had the happiness of observing, in a pretty complete manner, at the port of Callao at Lima, the end of the transit of Mercury: a circumstance the more fortunate, as the thick fog which prevails at that season often prevents the sun's disk from being seen for twenty days.

He was astonished to find in Peru, at so immense a distance from Europe, the newest literary productions in chemistry, mathematics, and physiology; and he admired the great intellectual activity of a people whom the Europeans accuse of indolence and luxury.

In the month of January 1803, our travellers embarked in the King's corvette La Castora for Guyaquil; a passage which is performed, by the help of the winds and currents, in three or four days, whereas the return from Guyaquil requires as many months.

In the former port, situated on the banks of an immense river, the vegetation of which in palms, plumeria tabernaemontana, and scitamineae, is majestic beyond all description.

They heard growling every moment the volcano of Catopaxi, which made a dreadful explosion on the 6th of January 1803.

They immediately set out that they might have a nearer view of its ravages, and to visit it a second time; but the unexpected news of the sudden departure of the Atlanta frigate, and the sear of not finding another opportunity for several months, obliged them to return, after being tormented for seven days by the mosquitoes of Babaoyo and Ugibar.

They had a favourable navigation of thirty days on the Pacific Ocean to Acapulco, the western port of the kingdom of New Spain, celebrated by the beauty of its bason, which appears to have been cut out in the granite rocks by the violence of earthquakes; celebrated also by the wretchedness of its inhabitants, who see there millions of piastres embarked for the Philippines and China; and unfortunately celebrated by a climate as scorching as mortal.

M. Humboldt intended at first to stay only a few months in Mexico, and to hasten his return to Europe; his travels had already been too long; the instruments, and particularly the time-keepers, began to be gradually deranged; and all the efforts he had made to get new ones had proved fruitless.

Besides, the progress of the sciences in Europe is so rapid, that in travels of more than four years a traveller may see certain phenomena under points of view which are no longer interesting when his labours are presented to the public.

M. Humboldt flattered himself with the hope of being in England in the months of August or September 1803; but the attraction of a country so beautiful and so variegated as the kingdom of New Spain, the great hospitality of its inhabitants, and the dread of the yellow-fever at Vera Cruz, which cuts off almost all those who between the months of June and October come down from the mountains, induced him to defer his departure till the middle of winter.

After having occupied his attention with plants, the state of the air, the hourly variations of the barometer, the phenomena of the magnet, and, in particular, the longitude of Acapulco, a port in which two able astronomers, Messrs. Espinosa and Galeano, had before made observations, our travellers set out for Mexico.

They ascended gradually from the scorching valleys of Mescala and Papagayo, where the thermometer in the shade stood at 32° of Reaumur, and where they passed the river on the fruit of the crescentia pinnata, bound together by ropes of agave, to the high table lands of Chilpantzingo, Tehuilotepec, and Tasco.

At these heights of six or seven hundred toises above the level of the sea, in consequence of the mildness and coolness of the climate, the oak, cypress, fir, and fern, begin to be seen, together with the kinds of grain cultivated in Europe.

Having spent some time in the mines of Tasco, the oldest and formerly the richest in the kingdom, and having studied the nature of those silvery veins which pass from the hard calcareous rock to micaceous schist, and inclose foliaceous gypsum, they ascended, by Cuernaraca and the cold regions of Guchilaqua, to the capital of Mexico.

This city, which has 150,000 inhabitants, and stands on the site of the old Tenochtitlan, between the lakes of Tezcuco and Xochimilo, which have decreased in size since the Spaniards, to lessen the danger of inundations, have opened the mountains of Sincoc, is intersected by broad straight streets.

It stands in sight of two snowy mountains, one of which is named Popocatepec; and of a volcano still burning; and, at the height of 1160 toises, enjoys a temperate and agreeable climate: it is surrounded by canals, walks bordered with trees, a multitude of Indian hamlets, and without doubt may be compared to the finest cities of Europe. It is distinguished also by its large scientific establishments, which may vie with several of the old continent, and to which there are none similar in the new.

The botanical garden, directed by that excellent botanist M. Cervantes; the expedition of M. Sesse, who is accompanied by able draftsmen, and whose object is to acquire a knowledge of the plants of Mexico; the School of Mines, established by the liberality of the corps of miners and by the creative genius of M. d'Elhuyar; and the Academy of Painting, Engraving, and Sculpture; all tend to diffuse taste and knowledge in a country, the riches of which seem to oppose intellectual culture.

With instruments taken from the excellent collection of the School of Mines, M. Humboldt determined the longitude of Mexico, in which there was an error of nearly two degrees, as has been confirmed by corresponding observations of the satellites made at the Havannah.

After a stay of some months in that capital, our travellers visited the celebrated mines of Moran and Real-del-Monte, where the vein of La Biscayna has given millions of piastres to the Counts De Regla; they examined the obsidian stones of Oyamel, which form strata in the pearlstone and porphyry, and served as knives to the ancient Mexicans.

The whole of this country, filled with basaltes, amygdaloids, and calcareous and secondary formations, from the large cavern of Danto, traversed by a river to the porphyritic rocks of Actopan, presents phenomena interesting to the geologist, which have been already examined by M. del Rio, the pupil of Werner, and one of the most learned mineralogists of the present day.

On their return from their excursion to Moran in July 1803, they undertook another to the northern part of the kingdom.

At first they directed their researches to Huehuetoca, where, at the expence of six millions of piastres, an aperture has been formed in the mountain of Sincoc to drain off the waters from the valley of Mexico to the river Montezuma.

They then passed Queretaro, by Salamanca and the fertile plains of Yrapuaro, to Guanaxuato, a town which contains 50,000 inhabitants: it is situated in a narrow defile, and celebrated by its mines, which are of far greater consequence than those of Potosi.

The mine of Count de Valenciana, which has given birth to a considerable town on a hill which thirty years ago scarcely afforded pasture to goats, is already 1840 feet in perpendicular depth.

It is the deepest and richest in the world; the annual profit of the proprietors having never been less than three millions of livres, and it sometimes amounts to five or six.

After two months employed in measurements and geological researches, and after having examined the thermal waters of Comagillas, the temperature of which is 11° of Reaumur higher than those of the Philippine islands, which Sonnerat considers as the hottest in the word, our travellers proceeded through the valley of St. Jago, where they thought they saw in several lakes at the summits of the basaltic mountains so many craters of burntout volcanoes, to Valladolid, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Michoacan.-- They thence descended, notwithstanding the continual autumnal rains, by Patzquaro, situated on the margin of a very extensive lake towards the coast of the Pacific Ocean, to the plains of Jorullo, where, in the course of one night in 1759, during one of the greatest convulsions which the globe ever experienced, there issued from the earth a volcano 1494 feet in height, surrounded by more than 2000 mouths still emitting smoke.

They descended into the burning crater of the great volcano to the perpendicular depth of 258 feet, jumping over fissures which exhaled flaming sulphurated hydrogen gas.

After great danger, arising from the brittleness of the basaltic and sienitic lava, they reached nearly the bottom of the crater, and analysed the air in it, which was found to be surcharged in an extraordinary manner with carbonic acid.

From the kingdom of Michoacan, one of the most agreeable and most fertile countries in the Indies, they returned to Mexico by the high table-land of Tolucca, in which they measured the snowy mountain of the same name, ascending to its highest summit, the peak of Fraide, which rises 2364 toises above the level of the sea.

They visited also at Tolucca the famous hand-tree, the cheiranthostaemon of M. Cervantes, a genus which presents a phenomenon almost unique,--that of there being only one individual of it, which has existed since the remotest antiquity.

On their return to the capital of Mexico, they remained there several months to arrange their herbals, abundant in gramineous plants, and their geological collections; to calculate their barometric and trigonometrical measurements performed in the course of that year; and in particular to make fair drawings of the geological Atlas, which M. Humboldt proposes to publish.

Their return furnished them also with an opportunity of assisting at the erection of the colossal equestrian statue of the King, which one artist, M. Tolsa, overcoming difficulties of which a proper idea cannot be formed in Europe, modelled, cast, and erected on a very high pedestal: it is wrought in the simplest style, and would be an ornament in the finest capitals in Europe.

In January 1804 our travellers left Mexico to explore the eastern declivity of the cordillera of New Spain: they measured geometrically the two volcanoes of Puebla, Popocatepec, and Itzaccihuatl.-- According to a fabulous tradition, Diego Ordaz entered the inaccessible crater of the former, suspended by ropes, in order to collect sulphur, which may be found every where in the plains.

M. Humboldt discovered that the volcano of Popocatepec, on which M. Sonnenschmidt, a zealous mineralogist, had the courage to ascend 2557 toises, is higher than the peak of Orizaba, which has hitherto been considered the highest colossus of the country of Anahuac.

He measured also the great pyramid of Cholula, a mysterious work constructed of unbaked brick by the Tultequas, and from the summit of which there is a most beautiful view over the snowy summits and smiling plains of Tlaxcala.

After these researches they descended by Perote to Xalapa, a town situated at the height of 674 toises above the level of the sea, at a mean height at which the inhabitants enjoy the fruits of all climates, and a temperature equally mild and beneficial to the health of man.

It was here that, by the kindness of Mr. Thomas Murphy, a respectable individual, who to a large fortune adds a taste for the sciences, our travellers found every facility imaginable for performing their operations in the neighbouring mountains.

The level of the horrid road which leads from Xalapa to Perote, through almost impenetrable forests of oaks and firs, and which has begun to be converted into a magnificent causeway, was three times taken with the barometer. M.

Humboldt, notwithstanding the quantity of snow which had fallen the evening before, ascended to the summit of the famous Cofre, which is 162 toises higher than the Peak of Teneriffe, and fixed its position by direct observations.

He measured also trigonometrically the Peak of Orizava, which the Indians call Sitlalteptl, because the luminous exhalations of its crater resemble at a distance a falling star, and respecting the longitude of which M. Ferrer published very exact observations.

After an interesting residence in these countries, where, under the shade of the liquidambar and amyris, are found growing the epidendrum vanilla and convolvulus jalappa, two productions equally valuable for exportation, our travellers descended towards the coast of Vera Cruz, situated between hills of shifting sand, the reverberation of which causes a suffocating heat; but happily escaped the yellow-fever, which prevailed there at that time.

They proceeded in a Spanish frigate to the Havannah to get the collections and herbals left there in 1800, and, after a stay of two months, embarked for the United States: but they were exposed to great danger in the channel of the Bahamas from a hurricane which lasted seven days.

After a passage of thirty-two days they arrived at Philadelphia; remained in that city and in Washington two months; and returned to Europe in August 1804, by the way of Bourdeaux, with a great number of drawings, thirty-five boxes of collections, and 6000 species of plants.