Travels in South America, by Messrs Humboldt and Bonpland.

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 Santo Fe de Bagoa, the capital of the kingdom of New Grenada, situated in a beautiful plain, 1,360 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 in natural history by the celebrated Mutis; the grand and sublime cataract of Tequendama, 98 toises, or 588 feet in height; the mines of Mariquitta, 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 impassible, they set out for Quito; they redescended 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 Pastos, 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 erytroxylon 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-sulphurous 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 antient inhabitants.

After two fruitless attempts, they succeeded in twice ascending to the crater of the volcano of Pinchinca, where they made experiments on the analyses 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 eongealed 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 Tuaguragua, 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 their affinities 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 Sarouguler, 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.

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 Gonzamana 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 Nape. 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 Jucquinia, 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 Yuga; 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.