FRAGMENT OF A LETTER of BARON ALEXANDER HUMBOLDT TO MR.

ALBERT BERG.

If in the noble creations of painting our imagination delights to find animated pictures of exotic scenery, this enjoyment is by no means exclusively confined to the majestic in the forms or in the richness and wild luxuriance of the soil which such pictures may present, but is at the same time reflected in our understanding.

It reminds us of the intimate relation between the distribution of forms and the influences of climate depending on the altitude of the plateaux, as also on the latitude.

It is this relation which, by presenting to us the wonders and peculiar characteristics of the vegetation, renders that, which at first seemed only picturesque, both instructive and suggestive in the field of Physical Geography.

Before I enter, my dear Sir, upon the charm spread over the delightful pages which you have brought from the tropical regions of South America, I have thought it right to determine the point of view from which I consider the publication of the drawings you were kind enough to present to me, both as useful and desirable in a high degree.

These happy conceptions, displaying at once fine talents and the inspiration of a deep love of nature, will possess an interest all the greater, inasmuch as they refer to countries which had not yet been visited by distinguished artists.

Speaking generally, it is only within the last few years that any persons have devoted themselves with much interest to the representation of the great forms of the equatorial zone, and their varied groupings under their real physiognomical aspect.

Your work is quite worthy of appearing at the side of those of your illustrious predecessors.

Having lived for several years with my excellent friend M. Bonpland on the declivity of the great Cordillera de los Andes, and in the very same countries which you have visited, I must bear testimony to the admirable truth with which you have succeeded in representing not only the interior of the virgin forests, but also that alpine vegetation of the Cordilleras which offers an entirely different character.

You have not contented yourself with seizing the type of the greater productions of the vegetable world by placing them in the foreground, but you have also represented their individuality and that curious interlacing of the roots above the soil, of which the forests of our temperate zone offer no example.

The drawings of the passage of the Cordillera in the Paramo de Quindiu which you are going to publish, will give great interest to your work.

The breadth of the chain interrupted by valleys and ravines is so considerable, that not wishing to be carried in a little chair of Bamboo reeds on the backs of the natives, I required twenty-four days for my journey from the small town of Ibague to that of Cartago. I have found the highest point of this route, that of the division of the waters, to be at an elevation of 1798 toises (10788 Par. feet) above the level of the South Sea. It is the Garita del Paramo where we have encamped in a portable hut made of the large leaves of the Marantaceae, and is almost 600 feet higher than the summit of Etna.

In a much more southerly passage of the Cordilleras, at the Paramo del Assuay (S. Lat. 2° [Formel] ) between the towns of Alausi and Cuenca, I have found the highest point of the route at the Ladera de Cadlud at an elevation of 2428 toises (14568 Par. feet), which is nearly the height of the summit of Mont Blanc.

The Paramo de Quindiu presents the very extraordinary phenomenon of a group of Palm-trees which may be classed amongst the alpine plants.

To this group belongs the Wax-palm (Ceroxylon Andicola), the Palmito del Azufral (Oreodoxa frigida) and the Canna de la Vibora (Kunthia montana).

Whilst the family of the Palm-trees generally only vegetates in the tropics in a zone where the mean temperature of the air is from 22° to 24° of the centigrade thermometer, and is not found on the declivity of the Cordillera at a greater elevation than 2000 or 2500 feet, the alpine Palm-trees which we have just mentioned are first found at Quindiu (with a northern latitude of 4°26' to 4°34') at an elevation of 6000 feet with a superior limit of 9000 feet.

This is a region which in this zone is still 5400 feet from the inferior limit of perpetual snow, and in which, according to my observations, the thermometer often falls in the night to 4°, 8 and to 6 above the freezing point.

To you, my dear Sir, belongs the great merit of having been the first to represent the physiognomical traits of the Wax-palm, whose majestic and slender form, according to the stems which I ordered to be cut down, attains a height of 160 to 180 feet.

The drawings in which you have represented these Palm-trees are the most graceful ornament of your work.

The association of the Wax-palm with the Coniferae (the yewtree-leaved Podocarpus) and the Oaks (Quercus Granadensis, similar to our northern Oaks) forms as remarkable a contrast as the mixture of Palm-trees with Pines (Pinus occidentalis) and with the Mahogany (Swietenia Mahagoni) of the warmer regions of the Isla de Pinos in the south of Cuba, and in the Pinal of the Cayo de Moya in the north of Cuba, which Christopher Columbus already mentions 'with astonishment' in his Journal of Navigation of November 1492.

Types which we call northern, supposing them to belong exclusively to cold and temperate regions, appear again with the same facies, but in very different species, in the tropical regions of America and the Indian Archipelago. It is this circumstance which occasioned me to say in one of my earliest works, that the inhabitants of the equator, where the climates follow each other on the plateaux as on different stories, have the privilege of contemplating at the same time all the stars which glisten in the vault of heaven, and almost all the forms of vegetable life.

The view of the volcano of Tolima, which may be enjoyed from several points of the eastern side of Quindiu, has supplied the subject of one of your most picturesque sketches in Plate III. The volcano, which is of a very regular shape, and like the Cayambe de Quito, rises in the form of a truncated cone, forms the background of the landscape; while in the foreground, the soil is perceived to be encumbered with a most luxuriant growth of the tree-fern, the Heliconia and Passiflores, which climb to the top of the trees.

It is a great advantage of your collection, that, through the care of an excellent botanist, Dr. Klotzsch, my friend and colleague at the Academy of Berlin, you have been able to add to your drawings the botanical names of a great number of species, and this with the greatest accuracy.

As this learned man is Director of the great collection of the Herbarium, he has been able to consult the reports of M.

Bonpland and myself, in which we have indicated the localities, as also the descriptions given by M. Kunth, in our 'Nova Genera et Species Plantarum.'

In your beautiful drawing, the vast snowy masses appear in the horizon through a clearing in the forest.

They stand out against the azure of the tropical sky at an apparent but illusive proximity.

A formidable eruption of the volcano of Tolima took place on the 12th March, 1595, and devastated the entire province of Mariquita, since which time it seemed almost extinguished.

A celebrated chemist, M. Boussingault, accompanied by M. Goudot, the botanist, ascended it to the height of 13,240 feet, which is very near to the region of perpetual snow, in order to examine the composition of the vapours emanating from the clefts of trachytic rock, which has itself emerged from the bosom of a formation of micaceous and amphibolic schist.

Recently the volcano has again been in activity.

It deserved a place in your work and in my views of the Cordilleras, all the more, as it seems to me to be the loftiest summit of the whole northern hemisphere of the New Continent. I made a trigonometrical measurement of the Tolima in the valley of the Carvajal, on the west of Ibague, and found it 384 feet higher than the Popocatepetl, the great volcano of Mexico.

Descending with you, my dear Sir, from the heights of the Cordilleras, to the lower regions of the valley of the Magdalena, I take much pleasure in bearing the same testimony to the truth with which you have seized its character.

Having passed fifty-six dull days in navigating this great river, I had sufficient time to become acquainted with the distribution of its vegetation.

The affectionate interest which I take in yourself, induces me to advise you to leave to your interesting drawings, so excellently drawn upon stone, that character of sketches which they have had in their original state.

All later additions to objects of which we received happy inspirations, take off a little from the spirit of the drawing.

I do not mean to say that the technical perfection of a drawing carefully finished on the spot, may not add to the effect and to the truth of the character of the landscape; but a traveller in his rapid progress through places difficult of access, is very seldom in a position to finish his sketches at leisure.

The travels in a beautiful part of the East, which you were so happy as to make before your journey to New Granada, have fortunately prepared you to seize with talent in different zones the aspect of the forms which are the real elements of the beauty of a landscape.

Potsdam, May 1853.