ASPECTS OF NATURE.
Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London.
ASPECTS OF NATURE,
IN
DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES;
WITH
Scientific Elucidations.
BY
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1849.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of grandeur or of beauty,—on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco, in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at the moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various forces or powers, and the renewal of the enjoyment which the immediate prospect of tropical scenery affords to sensitive minds, are the objects which I have proposed to myself. According to the design of my work, whilst each of the treatises of which it consists should form a whole complete in itself, one common tendency should pervade them all. Such an artistic and literary treatment of subjects of natural history is liable to difficulties of composition, notwithstanding the aid which it derives from the power and flexibility of our noble language. The unbounded riches of Nature occasion an accumulation of separate images; and accumulation disturbs the repose and the unity of impression which should belong to the picture. Moreover, when addressing the feelings and imagination, a firm hand is needed to guard the style from degenerating into an undesirable species of poetic prose. But I need not here describe more fully dangers which I fear the following pages will shew I have not always succeeded in avoiding.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding faults which I can more easily perceive than amend, I venture to hope that these descriptions of the varied Aspects which Nature assumes in distant lands, may impart to the reader a portion of that enjoyment which is derived from their immediate contemplation by a mind susceptible of such impressions. As this enjoyment is enhanced by insight into the more hidden connection of the different powers and forces of nature, I have subjoined to each treatise scientific elucidations and additions.
Throughout the entire work I have sought to indicate the unfailing influence of external nature on the feelings, the moral dispositions, and the destinies of man. To minds oppressed with the cares or the sorrows of life, the soothing influence of the contemplation of nature is peculiarly precious; and to such these pages are more especially dedicated. May they, “escaping from the stormy waves of life,” follow me in spirit with willing steps to the recesses of the primeval forests, over the boundless surface of the Steppe, and to the higher ridges of the Andes. To them is addressed the poet’s voice, in the sentence of the Chorus—
“Auf den Bergen ist Freiheit! Der Hauch der Grüfte
Steigt nicht hinauf in die reinen Lüfte;
Die Welt ist vollkommen überall,
Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.”
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
TO THE
SECOND AND THIRD EDITIONS.
The twofold aim of the present work (a carefully prepared and executed attempt to enhance the enjoyment of Nature by animated description, and at the same time to increase in proportion to the state of knowledge at the time the reader’s insight into the harmonious and concurrent action of different powers and forces of Nature) was pointed out by me nearly half a century ago in the Preface to the First Edition. In so doing, I alluded to the various obstacles which oppose a successful treatment of the subject in the manner designed. The combination of a literary and of a purely scientific object,—the endeavour at once to interest and occupy the imagination, and to enrich the mind with new ideas by the augmentation of knowledge,—renders the due arrangement of the separate parts, and the desired unity of composition, difficult of attainment. Yet, notwithstanding these disadvantages, the public have long regarded my imperfectly executed undertaking with friendly partiality.
The second edition of the “Ansichten der Natur” was prepared by me in Paris in 1826; and at the same time two fresh treatises were added,—one an Essay on the Structure and mode of Action of Volcanoes in different regions of the earth; and the other on the “Vital Power,” bearing the title “Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius.” During my long stay at Jena, Schiller, in the recollection of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me on physiological subjects; and the considerations in which I was then engaged on the muscular and nervous fibres when excited by contact with chemically different substances, often gave a more specific and graver turn to our discourse. The “Rhodian Genius” was written at this time: it appeared first in Schiller’s “Horen,” a periodical journal; and it was his partiality for this little work which encouraged me to allow it to be reprinted. My brother, in a letter forming part of a collection which has recently been given to the public (Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Briefe an eine Freundin, Th. ii. S. 39), touches tenderly on the subject of the memoir in question, but adds at the same time a very just remark: “The development of a physiological idea is the object of the entire treatise; men were fonder at that time than they would now be of such semi-poetic clothing of severe scientific truths.”
In my eightieth year, I am still enabled to enjoy the satisfaction of completing a third edition of my work, remoulding it entirely afresh to meet the requirements of the present time. Almost all the scientific Elucidations or Annotations have been either enlarged or replaced by new and more comprehensive ones. I have hoped that these volumes might tend to inspire and cherish a love for the study of Nature, by bringing together in a small space the results of careful observation on the most varied subjects; by showing the importance of exact numerical data, and the use to be made of them by well-considered arrangement and comparison; and by opposing the dogmatic half-knowledge and arrogant scepticism which have long too much prevailed in what are called the higher circles of society.
The expedition made by Ehrenberg, Gustav Rose, and myself, by the command of the Emperor of Russia, in 1829, to Northern Asia (in the Ural and Altai mountains, and on the shores of the Caspian Sea), falls between the period of publication of the second and third editions. This expedition has contributed materially to the enlargement of my views in all that regards the form of the surface of the earth, the direction of mountain-chains, the connection of steppes and deserts with each other, and the geographical distribution of plants in relation to ascertained conditions of temperature. The long subsisting want of any accurate knowledge on the subject of the great snow-covered mountain-chains which are situated between the Altai and the Himalaya (i. e. the Thian-schan and the Kuen-lün), and the ill-judged neglect of Chinese authorities, have thrown great obscurity around the geography of Central Asia, and have allowed imagination to be substituted for the results of observation in works which have obtained extensive circulation. In the course of the last few months the hypsometrical comparison of the culminating summits of the two continents has almost unexpectedly received important corrections and additions, of which I hasten to avail myself. (Vol. i. pp. [57]–[58], and [92]–[93].) The determinations of the heights of two mountains in the eastern chain of the Andes of Bolivia, the Sorata and the Illimani, have been freed from the errors which had placed those mountains above the Chimborazo, but without as yet altogether restoring to the latter with certainty its ancient pre-eminence among the snowy summits of the New World. In the Himalaya the recently executed trigonometrical measurement of the Kinchinjinga (28178 English feet) places it next in altitude to the Dhawalagiri, a new and more exact trigonometrical measurement of which has also been recently made.
For the sake of uniformity with the two previous editions of the “Ansichten der Natur,” I have given the degrees of temperature in the present work (unless where expressly stated otherwise) in degrees of Reaumur’s scale. The linear measures are the old French, in which the toise equals six Parisian feet. The miles are geographical, fifteen to a degree of the equator. The longitudes are reckoned from the Observatory at Paris as a first meridian.
Berlin, 1849.