Humboldt and Fremont.

Among the honors conferred upon Fremont for his contributions to science and history, is the presentation, by the King of Prussia, “the Golden Medal of Progress in the sciences.”

The honor was greatly enhanced, from the fact that the great naturalist, Humboldt, was made the medium of its communication.

The following is the English translation of Baron Humboldt’s letter:

To Col.

Fremont, Senator:

—It is very agreeable to me, Sir, to address you these lines by my excellent friend, our Minister to the United States, N. 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 distant expeditions, braved all the dangers of cold and famine, enriched all the branches of the natural sciences, illustrated a vast country which was almost entirely unknown to us.

A merit so rare has been acknowledged by a sovereign warmly interested in the progress of physical geography; the King orders me to offer you the grand golden medal destined to those who have labored at scientific progress.

I hope that this mark of the Royal good will, will be agreeable to you at a time when, upon the proposition of the illustrious geographer, Chas.

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-laborer and intimate 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 nobly represented by a friend of Liberty and of the progress of intelligence.

Accept, I pray you, Sir, the expression of my high and affectionate consideration.

Your most humble and most obed’t serv’t, 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.

The following is the description of the medal: Of fine gold, massive, more than double the size of the American double eagle, and of exquisite workmanship.

On the face is the medallion head of the King, Frederic William the Fourth, surrounded by figures emblematical of Religion, Jurisprudence, Medicine and the Arts.

On the reverse, Apollo, in the chariot of the Sun, drawn by four high-mettled, plunging horses, traversing the zodiac, and darting rays of light from his head.

Baron Humboldt.”

The following is the public testimony of the Baron’s admiration of the gigantic labors of Fremont, referred to in the letter, as contained in the new or third edition of his “Aspects of Nature,” and which, as a reference, becomes a natural appendant to the letter:

Fremont’s map and geographical investigations comprehend the extensive region from the junction of the Kansas river with the Missouri to the Falls of the Columbia, and to the missions of Santa Barbara and Puebla 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 observations, and, for the most part, geographically by astronomical observations; so that a district which, with the windings of the route, amounts to 3,600 geographical miles, from the mouth of the Kansas to Fort Vancouver and the shores of the Pacific, (almost 720 miles more than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk,) has been represented in profile, showing the relative heights above the level of the sea.

As I was, I believe, the first person who undertook to represent, in geognostic profile, the form of entire countries—such as the Iberian Peninsula, the high lands of Mexico, and the Cordilleras of South America, (the semiperspective projections of a Siberian traveller, the Abbe Chappe, were founded on mere and generally ill-judged estimations of the tall of rivers)—it has given me peculiar pleasure to see the geographical method of representing the form of the earth in a vertical direction, or the elevations 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.