Brief Narrative of De Humboldt's Travels in Russia.

Extract from a Letter from M. de Humboldt to M. Arago.--Oust Kamenogorsk,, Upper Irtych, Siberia Aug. 28. 1829--Travelling for nearly the last two months beyond the frontiers of Europe, to the east of the Ural, and in the restless life which we pass, I have lost many occasions of giving you a token of my existence and of friendship.

It is impossible in this hasty letter, (we arrived in this fort, on the frontier of the Step of Kirguiz, about 4 o'clock this morning, and we must advance this night to the east towards Boucktorma, Narim, and the first post of Chinese Mongolia;) it is impossible, I say, to communicate to you the substance of the observations which we have made since our departure from St.

Petersburgh on the 8th of May.

You will find no other interest in the perusal of these lines, than that of learning that the scientific object of my journey has been completed beyond my hopes: that, in spite of the fatigues I have undergone, and the distance I have travelled, (we are already more than 5600 versts from St. Petersburgh, 320 of which we have passed in this part of Asia,) my health is good; that I suffer with patience and courage; that I have much reason to congratulate myself on my companions, MM.

Rose and Ehrenberg; and that, laden with geological, botanical, and zoological collections from the Ural, the Altai, the Obi, the Irtych, and Orenburgh, we hope to return to Berlin towards the end of November.

Our route has been by Moscow, Nijnei-Novogorod, and thence on the Wolga to Cazan, and to the ruins of the Tatar village of Bulgari.

From Cazan we ascended the Ural by the picturesque vallies of Koungour and Perme.

Throughout the whole journey from Novogorod to Catherineburgh, and to the platinumwashings of Nijnei-Tagilsk, we were accompanied by Count Polier, whom you will recollect to have seen at Paris.

He has been exercising his fine talent for landscape-painting in these savage regions.

Fixed by marriage in Russia, he is zealously occupied in improving the working of mines.

We spent a month in visiting the gold mines of Borisovsk, the malachite mines of Goumeselevski and of Tagilsk, and the washings of gold and platinum.

We were astonished at the pepitas (water-worn masses) of gold from 2 to 3 Ibs.

and even from 18 to 20 lbs, found a few inches below the turf, where they had lain unknown for ages.

The position and probable origin of these alluvia, mixed generally with fragments of greenstone, chlorite-slate, and serpentine, was one of the principal objects of this journey.

The gold annually procured from the washings amounts to 6000 kil.

The discoveries beyond 59° and 60° lat. become very important.

We possess the teeth of fossil elephants, enveloped in these alluvia of auriferous sand.

Their formation, consequent on local irruptions and on levellings, is perhaps even posterior to the destruction of the large animals.

The amber and the lignites which we discovered on the eastern side of the Ural, are decidedly more ancient.

With the auriferous sand are found grains of cinnabar, native copper, ceylanites, garnets, little white zircons, as brilliant as diamonds, anatase, albite, &c.

It is very remarkable, that in the middle and northern parts of the Ural, the platinum is found in abundance only on the western, European side.

The rich gold-washings of the Demidov family at Nijnei-Tagilsk, are on the Asiatic side, on the two acclivities of the Bartiraya, where the alluvium of Vilkni alone has already produced more than 2800 lbs. of gold.

The platinum is found about a league to the east of the line of the separation of waters, (which must not be confounded with the axis of the high summits,) on the European side, near the course of the Oulka, at Sukoi Visnin, and at Martian. M. Schvetsov, who had the good fortune to study under Berthier, and whose learning and activity have been most useful during our travels in the Ural, discovered chromate of iron, containing grains of platinum, which an able chemist at Catherineburgh, M. Helm, has analyzed.

The washings of platinum at Nijnei-Tagilsk are so rich that 100 puds (about 400 lbs. Russian) of sand afford 30 (sometimes 50) solotniks of platinum, whilst the rich alluvia of gold at Vilkni, and other gold-washings on the Asiatic side, do not give more than 1 [Formel] to 2 solotniks in the 100 puds of sand.

In South America, a very low chain of the Cordilleras, that of Cali, also separates the auriferous and non-platiniferous sands of the eastern declivity, (Popayan,) from the sands of the isthmus of the Raspadura of Choco, which are very rich in platinum as well as gold. M. Bousingault may perhaps already have thrown a new light on this American formation, and his observations will derive some additional interest from those which we have made in this place.

We possess pepitas of platinum of many inches in length, in which M. Rose has discovered beautiful groups of crystals of the metal.

As to the greenstone-porphyry of Laya, in which M. Engelhardt has observed little grains of platinum, we have examined it on the spot with much care, but the only metallic grains which we have been able to detect in the rocks of Laya, and in the greenstone of Mount Belayr-Gora, have appeared to M. Rose to be sulphuret of iron; this phenomenon will be a subject for new research.

The work of M.

Engelhardt on the Ural seemed to us to be worthy of much praise.

Osmium and iridium have also a particular locality, not amongst the rich platiniferous alluvia of Nijnei-Tagilsk, but near Bilembayevski and Kichtem. I insist upon the geognostical characters drawn from the metals which accompany the grains of platinum at Choco, Brazil, and in the Ural.

These last lines were written on the 20th August. I have abandoned the pen for the last eight days, to occupy myself with taking lunar distances; for this southern extremity of Siberia, where the sources of the Obi and the confines of Chinese Mongolia are found, require much attention in the geographical determination of places,--the rate of the chronometers alone being liable to alteration by the rapidity of the journey.

I have been since the 13th to visit the Chinese picquet (outposts) in Dzongarie.

We have been obliged to leave our carriages at Oust Kamenogorsk, to make use, in these frightful roads, of the long Siberian carriages, in which one lies down.

But before speaking of the journey we have passed in the midst of the celestial empire, I must follow the thread of our travels.

After having visited the north of the Ural by Verkhoturia and Bogeslavsk, taken azimuths to determine the positions of the northerly peaks, visited the mines of beryls and topazes at Moursinsk, we travelled from Catherineburgh, which we left on the 6th July, through Tobolsk and Jioumere, where the family of Batou-Khan formerly resided.

We intended to go directly through Omsk to Slatooust; but the fineness of the season induced us to add the Altai and the high Irtych, (3000 versts round,) to the original plan of our excursion.

The governor-general of Western Siberia, General Villiaminov, gave us one of his aides-de-camp, M. de Yermolov, for an escort.

General Litvinov, who commands on the whole line of the Kirguiz, took his place in coming from Tomsk to the mountains of Kolyvan, and escorted us to the Chinese post. We arrived here by Kainks and the step of Baraba, where the musquitoes rival those of the Orinoco, and where we were smothered under masks of horse hair.

Here are the romantic lake of Kolyvan, and the famous mines of Schlangenberg, (in porphyry,) of Reiders, and of Siriainovski, which annually yield 40,000 lbs. of auriferous silver.

At Oust we had the first view of the chain of the Kirguiz.

We took the route of Baty, by the fort of Boukhtarma and of Krasnoyar, where, passing the whole night of 16th to 17th August (new style) for observation, I saw the singular phenomena of the polar bands.

At Baty there are two Chinese encampments, on the two sides of the Irtych,--miserable yourtes inhabited by Mongolian or Cambauzian soldiers.

A little Chinese temple is seen on an arid eminence.

The Bactrian camel with two humps pastures in the valley.

This frontier of Mongolia supplied M. Ehrenberg with numerous plants and new insects.

But what renders the journey in the Altai particularly important is, that no where else in the two worlds, does the granite with common large feldspar, deprived of albite, and unaccompanied by gneiss and mica slate, exhibit proofs of irruption and effusion, as in the Altai.

We do not only see the granite penetrating in veins which are lost towards the top in the clay-slate, and making its way to the surface through this rock, but also distinctly spreading out over it, and covering a continuous space of more than 2000 toises: then conical hills, and little bells of granite, and domes of trachytic porphyry, dolomites in granite, veins of porphyry, &c. &c.

M. Rose discovered, in the north of the Ural, a place where the porphyry, cleft and partly rounded, had converted, by contact, lime into jasper, divided by parallel bands.

I have also seen these striae and silifications at Pedrazio.

The Ural is also remarkable for the intimate connection of the euphotide (serpentine) chlorite slate, with pyroxenic greenstones containing more hornblende than pyroxene.

I have endeavoured to observe the temperature of the earth, (it is often above 2° cent.) and the inclination and magnetic intensity in the places which had not been visited by MM. Hansteen and Ehrmann.

The same points prove the motion of knots from east to west, which you have noticed in your report on the voyage of M. Freycinet.

But the post is going, and leaves me not a moment to re-write or correct this confused letter.