From the chain of mountains which borders the Lake of Valencia toward the south, there stretches in the same direction a vast extent of level land, constituting the Llanos or Savannahs of Caraccas; and from the cultivated and populous district of Aragua, embellished with mountains and rivers and teeming with vegetation, one descends into a parched desolate plain, bounded by the horizon. On this route we now accompany our travellers, who on the 6th March left the valleys of Aragua, and keeping along the south-west side of the lake, passed over a rich champaign country covered with calabashes, water-melons, and plantains. The rising of the sun was announced by the howling of monkeys, of which they saw numerous bands moving as in procession from one tree to another. These creatures (the Simia ursina) execute their evolutions with singular uniformity. When the boughs of two trees do not touch each other, the leader of the party swings himself by the tail upon the nearest twigs, the rest following in regular succession. The distance to which their howlings may be heard was ascertained by Humboldt to be 1705 yards. The Indians assert that one always chants as leader of the choir; and the missionaries say that when a female is on the point of bringing forth, the howlings are suspended till the moment when the young appears.

Leaving the capital of New Spain our travellers descended to the port of Vera Cruz, which is situated among sand-hills, in a burning and unhealthy climate. They happily escaped the yellow-fever,—which prevails there and attacks persons who have arrived from the elevated districts as readily as Europeans who have come by sea,—and embarked in a Spanish frigate for Havannah, where they had left part of their specimens. They remained there two months; after which they set sail for the United States, on their passage to which they encountered a violent storm that lasted seven days. Arriving at Philadelphia, and afterwards visiting Washington, they spent eight weeks in that interesting country, for the purpose of studying its political constitution and commercial relations. In August 1804 they returned to Europe, carrying with them the extensive collections which they had made during their perilous and fatiguing journeys.

The results of this expedition, conducted with so much courage and zeal, have been of the highest importance to science. With respect to natural history, it may be stated generally, that the mass of information already laid before the public, as obtained from the observation of six years, exceeds any thing that had been presented by the most successful cultivators of the same field during a whole lifetime. Much light has been thrown on the migrations and relations of the indigenous tribes of America, their origin, languages, and manners.

Having sailed from Santa Cruz on the evening of the 25th of June, with a strong wind from the north-east, our travellers soon lost sight of the Canary Islands, the mountains of which were covered with reddish vapour, the Peak alone appearing at intervals in the breaks. The passage from Teneriffe to Cumana was performed in twenty days, the distance being 3106 miles.

The wind gradually subsided as they retired from the African coast. Short calms of several hours occasionally took place, which were regularly interrupted by slight squalls, accompanied by masses of dark clouds, emitting a few large drops of rain, but without thunder. To the north of the Cape Verd Islands they met with large patches of floating seaweed (Fucus natans), which grows on submarine rocks, from the equator to forty degrees of latitude on either side. These scattered plants, however, must not be confounded with the vast beds, said by Columbus to resemble extensive meadows, and which inspired with terror the crew of the Santa Maria. From a comparison of numerous journals it appears that there are two such fields of seaweed in the Atlantic. The largest occurs a little to the west of the meridian of Fayal, one of the Azores, between 25° and 36° of latitude. The temperature of the ocean there is between 60·8° and 68°; and the north-west winds, which blow sometimes with impetuosity, drive floating islands of those weeds into low latitudes, as far as the parallels of 24° and even 20°.

The city of Cumana, the capital of New Andalusia, is a mile distant from the landing-place, and in proceeding towards it our travellers crossed a large sandy plain, which separates the suburb inhabited by the Guayqueria Indians from the seashore. The excessive heat of the atmosphere was increased by the reflection of the sun's rays from a naked soil, the thermometer immersed in which rose to 99·9°. In the little pools of salt water it remained at 86·9°, while the surface of the sea in the port generally ranges from 77·4° to 79·3°. The first plant gathered by them was the Avicennia tomentosa, which is remarkable for occurring also on the Malabar coast, and belongs to the small number that live in society, like the heaths of Europe, and are seen in the torrid zone only on the shores of the ocean and the elevated platforms of the Andes.

Crossing the Indian suburb, the streets of which were very neat, they were conducted by the captain of the Pizarro to the governor of the province, Don Vicente Emparan, who received them with frankness; expressed his satisfaction at the resolution which they had taken of remaining for some time in New Andalusia; showed them cottons dyed with native plants and furniture made of indigenous wood; and surprised them with questions indicative of scientific attainments. On disembarking their instruments, they had the pleasure of finding that none of them had been damaged.

Leaving the city of Caraccas, on their way to the Orinoco, our travellers slept the first night at the base of the woody mountains which close the valley toward the south-west. They followed the right bank of the Rio Guayra, as far as the village of Antimano, by an excellent road, partly scooped out of the rock. The mountains were all of gneiss or mica-slate. A little before reaching that hamlet they observed two large veins of gneiss in the slate, containing balls of granular diabase or greenstone, composed of felspar and hornblende, with garnet disseminated. In the vicinity all the orchards were full of peach-trees covered with flowers. Between Antimano and Ajuntas, they crossed the Rio Guayra seventeen times, and proceeded along the bottom of the valley. The river was bordered by a gramineous plant, the Gynerium saccharoides, which sometimes reaches the height of 32 feet, while the huts were surrounded by enormous trees of Laurus persea, covered by creepers. They passed the night in a sugar-plantation. In a square house were nearly eighty negroes, lying on skins of oxen spread on the floor, while a dozen fires were burning in the yard, at which people were cooking.

A great predilection for the culture of the coffeetree was entertained in the province. The young plants were chiefly procured by exposing the seeds to germination between plantain-leaves. They were then sown, and produced shoots better adapted to bear the heat of the sun than such as spring up in the shade of the plantations.

The valley of Caraccas, a few years after Humboldt's visit, became the theatre of one of those physical revolutions which from time to time produce violent alterations upon the surface of our planet; involving the overthrow of cities, the destruction of human life, and a temporary agitation of those elements of nature on which the system of the universe is founded. In the narrative of his Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, he has recorded all that he could collect with certainty respecting the earthquake of the 26th March 1812, which destroyed the city of Caraceas, together with 20,000 inhabitants of the province of Venezuela.

When our travellers visited those countries, they found it to be a general opinion, that the eastern parts of the coasts were most exposed to the destructive effects of such concussions, and that the elevated districts, remote from the shores, were in a great measure secure; but in 1811 all these ideas were proved groundless.

At Humboldt's arrival in Terra Firma, he was struck with the connexion which appeared between the destruction of Cumana in 1797 and the eruption of volcanoes in the smaller West India islands. A similar principle was manifested in 1812, in the case of Caraccas. From the beginning of 1811 till 1813, a vast extent of the earth's surface, limited by the meridian of the Azores, the valley of the Ohio, the cordilleras of New Grenada, the coasts of Venezuela, and the volcanoes of the West Indies, was shaken by subterranean commotions, indicative of a common agency exerted at a great depth in the interior of the globe.

On the 4th of September, at an early hour, our travellers commenced an excursion to the missionary stations of the Chayma Indians, and to the lofty mountains which traverse New Andalusia. The morning was deliriously cool; and from the summit of the hill of San Francisco they enjoyed in the short twilight an extensive view of the sea, the adjacent plain, and the distant peaks. After walking two hours they arrived at the foot of the chain, where they found different rocks, together with a new and more luxuriant vegetation. They observed that the latter was more brilliant wherever the limestone was covered by a quartzy sandstone,—a circumstance which probably depends not so much on the nature of the soil as on its greater humidity; the thin layers of slate-clay which the latter contains preventing the water from filtering into the crevices of the former. In those moist places they always discovered appearances of cultivation, huts inhabited by mestizoes, and placed in the centre of small enclosures, containing papaws, plantains, sugar-canes, and maize. In Europe, the wheat, barley, and other kinds of grain, cover vast spaces of ground, and, in general, wherever the inhabitants live upon corn, the cultivated lands are not separated from each other by the intervention of large wastes; but in the torrid zone, where the fertility of the soil is proportionate to the heat and humidity of the air, and where man has appropriated plants that yield earlier and more abundant crops, an immense population finds ample subsistence on a narrow space.

A country extending from the sixteenth to the thirty-seventh degree of latitude, and presenting a great variety of surface, necessarily affords numerous modifications of climate. Such is the admirable distribution of heat on the globe, that the strata of the atmosphere become colder as we ascend, while those of the sea are warmest near the surface. Hence, under the tropics, on the declivities of the Cordilleras, and in the depths of the ocean, the plants and marine animals of the polar regions find a temperature suited to their development. It may easily be conceived that, in a mountainous country like Mexico, having so great a diversity of elevation, temperature, and soil, the variety of indigenous productions must be immense; and that most of the plants cultivated in other parts of the globe may there find situations adapted to their nature.

There, however, the principal objects of agriculture are not the productions which European luxury draws from the West India Islands, but the grasses, nutritive roots, and the agave. The appearance of the land proclaims to the traveller that the natives are nourished by the soil, and that they are independent of foreign commerce. Yet agriculture is by no means so flourishing as might be expected from its natural resources, although considerable improvement has been effected of late years. The depressed state of cultivation, it is true, has been attributed to the existence of numerous rich mines; but Humboldt, on the contrary, maintains that the working of these ores has been beneficial in causing many places to be improved which would otherwise have remained steril.

It was night when our travellers for the last time crossed the bed of the Orinoco. They intended to rest near the little fort of San Rafael, and in the morning begin their journey over the Llanos of Venezuela;, with the view of proceeding to Cumana or New Barcelona, whence they might sail to the island of Cuba and thence again to Mexico. There they purposed to remain a year, and to take a passage in the galleon from Acapulco to Manilla.

The botanical and geological collections which they had brought from Esmeralda and the Rio Negro had greatly increased their baggage; and as it would have been hazardous to lose sight of such stores, they journeyed but slowly over the deserts, which they crossed in thirteen days. This eastern part of the Llanos, between Angostura and Barcelona, is similar to that already described on the passage from the valley of Aragua to San Fernando de Apure; but the breeze is felt with greater force, although at this period it had ceased. They spent the first night at the house of a Frenchman, a native of Lyons, who received them with the kindest hospitality. He was employed in joining wood by means of a kind of glue called guayca, which resembles the best made from animal substances, and is found between the bark and alburnum of the Combretum guayca, a kind of creeping plant.

The mines of Mexico have of late years engaged the attention and excited the enterprise of the English in a more than ordinary degree. The subject is therefore one of much interest; but as later information may be obtained in several works, and especially in Ward's “Mexico in 1827,” it is unnecessary to follow our author in all his details.

Long before the voyage of Columbus, the natives of Mexico were acquainted with the uses of several metals, and had made considerable proficiency in the various operations necessary for obtaining them in a pure state. Cortes, in the historical account of his expedition, states that gold, silver, copper, lead, and tin, were publicly sold in the great market of Tenochtitlan. In all the large towns of Anahuac gold and silver vessels were manufactured, and the foreigners, on their first advance to Tenochtitlan, could not refrain from admiring the ingenuity of the Mexican goldsmiths. The Aztec tribes extracted lead and tin from the veins of Tlacheo, and obtained cinnabar from the mines of Chilapan. From copper, found in the mountains of Zacotollan and Cohuixco, they manufactured their arms, axes, chisels, and other implements. With the use of iron they seem to have been unacquainted; but they contrived to give the requisite hardness to their tools by mixing a portion of tin with the copper of which they were composed.

The wind having come round to the north-east, the Pizarro set sail on the afternoon of the 5th of June 1799, and after working out of the narrow passage passed the Tower of Hercules, or lighthouse of Corunna, at half-past six. Towards evening the wind increased, and the sea ran high. They directed their course to the north-west, for the purpose of avoiding the English frigates which were cruising off the coast, and about nine spied the fire of a fishing-hut at Lisarga, which was the last object they beheld in the west of Europe. As they advanced, the light mingled itself with the stars which rose on the horizon. “Our eyes,” says Humboldt, “remained involuntarily fixed upon it. Such impressions do not fade from the memory of those who have undertaken long voyages at an age when the emotions of the heart are in full force. How many recollections are awakened in the imagination by a luminous point, which in the middle of a dark night, appearing at intervals above the agitated waves, marks the shore of one's native land!”

They were obliged to run under courses, and proceeded at the rate of ten knots, although the vessel was not a fast sailer. At six in the morning she rolled so much that the fore topgallant-mast was carried away. On the 7th they were in the latitude of Cape Finisterre, the group of granitic rocks on which, named the Sierra de Torinona, is visible at sea to the distance of 59 miles.

Our travellers remained a month longer at Cumana. As they had determined to make a voyage on the Orinoco and Rio Negro, preparations of various kinds were necessary; and the astronomical determination of places being the most important object of this undertaking, it was of essential advantage to observe an eclipse of the sun which was to happen in the end of October.

On the 27th, the day before the obscuration, they went out in the evening, as usual, to take the air. Crossing the beach which separates the suburb of the Guayquerias from the landing-place, they heard the sound of footsteps behind, and on turning saw a tall Zambo, who, coming up, flourished a great palm-tree bludgeon over Humboldt's head. He avoided the stroke by leaping aside; but Bonpland was less fortunate, for, receiving a blow above the temple, he was felled to the ground. The former assisted his companion to rise, and both now pursued the ruffian, who had run off with one of their hats, and on being seized, drew a long knife from his trousers. In the mean time some Biscayan merchants, who were walking on the shore, came to their assistance; when the Zamho, seeing himself surrounded, took to his heels and sought refuge in a cowhouse, from which he was led to prison. The inhabitants showed the warmest concern for the strangers, and although Bonpland had a fever during the night he speedily recovered.

No detailed narrative has yet been published of Humboldt's journey to Asiatic Russia; and the only sources of authentic information on the subject are to be found in a work lately printed at Paris, under the title of Fragmens de Géologie et de Climatologie Asiatiques, par A. de Humboldt, from which the following particulars are extracted:—

This illustrious traveller, accompanied by MM. Ehrenberg and Gustavus Rose, embarked at Nijnei-Novgorod on the Volga, and descended to Kasan and the Tartar ruins of Bolgari. From thence he went by Perm to Jekatherinenburg on the Asiatic side of the Uralian Mountains,—a vast chain composed of several ranges running nearly parallel to each other, of which the highest summits scarcely attain an elevation of 4593 or 4920 feet, but which, like the Andes, follows the direction of a meridian, from the tertiary deposites in the neighbourhood of Lake Aral to the greenstone rocks in the vicinity of the Frozen Sea. A month was occupied in visiting the central and northern parts of these mountains, which abound in alluvial beds containing gold and platina, the malachite mines of Goumeschevskoi, the great magnetic ridge of Blagodad, and the celebrated deposites at Mourzinsk, in which topaz and beryl are found. Near Nijnei-Tagilsk, a country which may be compared to Choco in South America, a mass of platina weighing about 21½ pounds troy has been found.