Digitale Ausgabe

Among the scientific honors paid to Col-onel Fremont, as a pioneer of American dis- covery, certainly not the least notable was that conferred by the King of Prussia in “the great Golden Medal of Progress in the Sciences.” The manner of its communica- tion added a rare value to the gift. It was sent with a most complimentary letter of Baron Humboldt, who took occasion to add the warmest expressions of his own person- al respect and admiration. As this letter has apparently been overlooked in the noti- ces recently made of Fremont by the press, we avail ourselves of the advance sheets of the new Biography in the course of publi- cation by Derby & Co. of this city, to lay it before our readers. One sentence of Humboldt’s letter we have marked in ital- ics; it was a conscientious tribute paid to the Senator then; it is highly significant of Fremont’s “friendship to liberty and to the progress of intelligence” now. The following is the English translation of Baron Humboldt’s letter, which was writ- ten in French: “To Col. Fremont, Senator: “It is very agreeable to me, sir, to ad- dress you these lines by my excellent friend, our Minister to the United States, M. de Gerolt. After having given you, in the new edition of my ‘Aspects of Nature,’ the public testimony of the admiration which is due to your gigantic labors between St. Louis, of Missouri, and the coasts of the South Sea, I feel happy to offer you, in this living token (dans ce petit signe de vie) the homage of my warm acknowledgment. You have displayed a noble courage in dis- tant expeditions, enriched all the branches of the natural sciences, illustrated a vast country almost entirely unknown to us. “A merit so rare has been acknowledged by a sovereign warmly interested in the pro- gress of physical geography; the King or- ders me to offer you the grand golden med- al destined to those who have labored at scientific progress. I hope this mark of the Royal good will, will be agreeable to you at a time when, upon the proposition of the il- lustrious geographer, Charles Ritter, the Geographical Society at Berlin has named you an honorary member. For myself I must thank you particularly also for the honor which you have done in attaching my name and that of my fellow laboror and in- timate friend, Mr. Bonpland, to countries neighboring to those which have been the object of our labors. California, which has so nobly resisted the introduction of slavery, will be worthily represented by a friend of liberty and of the progress of in- telligence.

“Accept, I pray you, sir, the expression of my high and affectionate consideration. “Your most humble and most obedient servant, “A. V. Humboldt.

“Sans Souci, October 7, 1850.”

On the envelope thus addressed: “To Colonel Fremont, Senator. “With the great Golden Medal* “For progress in the sciences. “Baron Humboldt.”

The following is the public testimony of the Baron’s admiration of the gigantic la- bors of Fremont, referred to in the letter, as contained in the new or third editions of his ‘Aspects of Nature,’ and which, as a refer- ence, becomes a natural appendant to the letter: “Fremont’s map and geographical invest- igations comprehend the extensive region from the junction of the Kanzas River with the Missouri to the falls of the Columbia, and to the missions of Santa Barbara and Pue- bla de los Angeles, in New California; or a space of 28 degrees of longitude, and from the 34th to the 45th parallel of latitude. Four hundred points have been determined hyposometrically by barometric observa- tions, and, for the most part, geographically by astronomical observations; so that a dis- trict which, with the winding of the route, amounts to 3,600 geographical miles, from the mouth of the Kanzas to Fort Van Cou- ver and the shores of the Pacific, (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Ma- drid to Tobolsk,) has been represented in|Spaltenumbruch| profile, showing the relative hights above the level of the sea. “As I was, I believe, the first person who undertook to represent, in geognostic pro- file, the form of entire countries—such as the Iberian peninsula, the high lands of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South Ame- rica, (the semi-perspective projections of a Siberian traveler, the Abbe Chappe, were founded on mere and generally ill-judged estimations of the fall of rivers) it has giv- en me peeuliar pleasure to see the geogra- phical method of representing the form of the earth in a vertical direction, on the ele- vations of the solid portion of our planet above its watery covering, applied on so grand a scale as has been done in Fremont’s map.”