Aspects of nature, in different lands and different climates (Vol. 2 of 2) / with scientific elucidations

by Alexander von Humboldt

NOTE.

I have noticed in the Preface to the Second and Third Editions (S. xiii., p. xii. English Trans.) the subject of the republication here of the preceding pages, which were first printed in Schiller’s Horen (Jahrg. 1795, St. 5, S. 90-96). They contain the development of a physiological idea clothed in a semi-mythical garb. In the Latin “Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants” appended to my “Subterranean Flora,” in 1793,—I had defined the “vital force” as “the unknown cause which prevents the elements from following their original affinities.” The first of my aphorisms were as follows:—Rerum naturam si totam consideres, magnum atque durabile, quod inter elementa intercedit, discrimen perspicies, quorum altera affinitatum legibus obtemperantia, altera, vinculis solutis, varie juncta apparent. Quod quidem discrimen in elementis ipsis eorumque indole neutiquam positum, quum ex sola distributione singulorum petendum esse videatur. Materiam segnem, brutam, inanimam eam vocamus, cujus stamina secundum leges chymicæ affinitatis mixta sunt. Animata atque organica ea potissimum corpora appellamus, quæ, licet in novas mutari formas perpetuo tendant, vi interna quadam continentur, quominus priscam sibique insitam formam relinquant.

“Vim internam, quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus. Itaque nullum certius mortis criterium putredine datur, qua primæ partes vel stamina rerum, antiquis juribus revocatis, affinitatum legibus parent. Corporum inanimorum nulla putredo esse potest.” (Vide Aphorismi ex doctrina Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum, in Humboldt, Flora Fribergensis subterranea, 1793, p. 133-136).

I have placed in the mouth of Epicharmus the above propositions, which were disapproved by the acute Vicq d’Azyr, in his Traité d’Anatomie et de Physiologie, T. i. p. 5, but are now entertained by many distinguished persons among my friends. Reflection and continued study in the domains of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my earlier belief in a peculiar so-called vital force. In 1797, at the close of my work entitled “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel und Nervenfaser, nebst Vermuthungen über den chemischen Process des Lebens in der Thier und Pflanzenwelt” (Bd. ii. S. 430-436), I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of such peculiar vital forces as demonstrated. Since that time I have no longer called peculiar forces what may possibly only be the operation of the concurrent action of the several long-known substances and their material forces. We may, however deduce from the chemical relations of the elements a safer definition of animate and inanimate substances, than the criteria which are taken from voluntary motion, from the circulation of fluids within solids, from internal appropriation, and from the fibrous arrangements of the elements. I term that an animated substance “of which the parts being separated by external agency alter their state of composition after the separation, all other and external relations continuing the same.” This definition is merely the enunciation of a fact. The equilibrium of the elements in animated or organic matter is preserved by their being parts of a whole. One organ determines another, one gives to another its temperature and tone or disposition, in all which, these, and no other, affinities are operative. Thus in organised beings all is reciprocally means and end. The rapidity with which organic parts, separated from a complete living organism, change their slate of combination, differs greatly, according to the degree of their original dependence, and to the nature of the substance. Blood of animals, which varies much in the different classes, suffers change sooner than the juices of plants. Funguses generally decay sooner than leaves of trees, and muscle more easily than the cutis.

Bones, the elementary structure of which has been very recently recognised, hair of animals, wood in plants or trees, the feathery appendages of seeds of plants (Pappus), are not inorganic or without life; but even in life they approximate to the state in which they are found after their separation from the rest of the organism. The higher the degree of vitality or susceptibility of an animated substance, the more rapidly does organic change in its composition ensue after separation. “The aggregate total of the cells is an organism, and the organism lives so long as the parts are active in subservience to the whole. In opposition to lifeless or inorganic, organic nature appears to be self-determining.” (Henle, Allgemeine Anatomie, 1841, S. 216-219). The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of organic life to physical and chemical laws, consists chiefly (almost as in the question of predicting meteorological processes in the atmosphere), in the complication of the phænomena, and in the multiplicity of simultaneously acting forces and of the conditions of their activity.

I have remained faithful in “Kosmos” to the same mode of viewing and representing what are called “Lebenskräfte,” vital forces, and vital affinities, (Pulteney, in the Transact. of the Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), the formation-impulse, and the active principle in organisation. I have said, in Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 67, (English Ed. vol. i. p. 62), “The myths of imponderable matter and of vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions and forms of recognition the prodigious mass of our experimental knowledge has progressively accumulated, and is now enlarging with increased rapidity. Investigating reason essays from time to time with varying success to break through ancient forms and symbols, invented to effect the subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical constructions.” Farther on in the same volume, (p. 339 English, and 367 of the original,) I have said, “In a physical description of the universe, it should still be noticed that the same substances which compose the organic forms of plants and animals are also found in the inorganic crust of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings likewise, combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating the forms and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases under complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very vague terms of ‘vital phænomena,’ ‘operations of vital forces,’ have been assigned, and which have been systematically grouped, according to analogies more or less happily imagined.” (Compare also the critical notices on the assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces in Schleiden’s Botanik als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an Inductive Science), Th. i. S. 60, and in the recently published excellent Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (Researches on Animal Electricity), by Emil du Bois-Reymond, Bd. i. S. xxxiv.-l.)

THE
PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA,
THE
ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA:
AND
THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN,
FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.

After a residence of an entire year on the crest of the chain of the Andes or Antis[41], between 4° North and 4° South Latitude, in the high plains of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, whose mean elevations range between 8500 and 12800 English feet, we rejoiced in descending gradually through the milder climate of the Quina-yielding forests of Loxa to the plains of the upper part of the course of the Amazons, a terra incognita rich in magnificent vegetation. The small town of Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious of all the species of medicinal Fever-Bark: Quina, or Cascarilla fina de Loxa. It is the precious production of the tree which we have described botanically as Cinchona condaminea, but which, under the erroneous impression that all the kinds of the Quina or fever bark of commerce were furnished by the same species of tree, had previously been called Cinchona officinalis. The Fever Bark was first brought to Europe towards the middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebastian Badus asserts, to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of the wife of the Viceroy, the Countess of Chinchon[42], who had been cured of intermittent fever at Lima, accompanied by her physician, Juan del Vego. The trees which yield the finest quality of Quina de Loxa are found from 8 to 12 miles to the south east of the town, in the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Rumisitana, growing on mica-slate and gneiss, at very moderate elevations above the level of the sea, being between 5400 and 7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet, heights about equal respectively to those of the Hospice on the Grimsel and the Pass of the great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the Quina-woods in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu.

The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed: we heard with astonishment that at the period of my journey, according to official computations, the collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina Hunters),—only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found its way at that time into commerce; the whole was sent from the port of Payta on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish Court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 11000 Spanish pounds, eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and thicker stems have become more and more scarce; but the luxuriance of vegetation is such that the younger trees which are now resorted to, though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English feet in height. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves above 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found, ranges between 12½° and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit), which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be from their nature but little satisfactory.

In order to descend South-South-East from the mountain knot of Loxa to the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the Paramos of Chulucanas, Guamani and Yamoca,—mountain wildernesses of a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10125 English) feet; they are stormy, often enveloped for days in dense mist, or visited by violent and formidable showers of hail,—consisting not merely of hailstones of different spherical forms, usually a good deal flattened by rotation, but also sometimes of less regular forms, the hail having run together into thin plates of ice (papa-cara) which cut the face and hands. At such times I have occasionally seen the thermometer sink to 7° or 5° Reaumur, (47°.8 and 43°.2 Fahr.) and the electric tension of the atmosphere, measured by Volta’s electrometer, pass in a few minutes from positive to negative. When the temperature sinks below 5° Reaumur, (43°.2 Fahrenheit) snow falls in large and thinly scattered flakes. The vegetation of the Paramos has a peculiar physiognomy and character, from the absence of trees, the short close branches of the small-leaved myrtle-like shrubs, the large sized and numerous blossoms, and the perpetual freshness of the whole from the constant and abundant supply of moisture. No zone of Alpine vegetation in the temperate or cold parts of the globe can well be compared with that of the Paramos in the tropical Andes.

The impressions produced on the mind by the natural characters of these wildernesses of the Cordilleras are heightened in a remarkable and unexpected manner, from its being in those very regions that we still see admirable remains of the gigantic work, the artificial road of the Incas, which formed a line of communication through all the provinces of the Empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand English geographical miles. We find, placed at nearly equal distances apart, stations consisting of dwelling houses built of well-cut stone; they are a kind of Caravanserai, and are called Tambos and sometimes Inca-pilca (from pircca, the wall?). Some of them are surrounded by a kind of fortification; others were constructed for baths with arrangements for conducting hot water; the larger were designed for the use of the family of the Monarch himself. I had previously seen, measured, and drawn with care, buildings of the same kind in a good state of preservation at the foot of the volcano of Cotopaxi, near Callo. Pedro de Cieça, writing in the 16th century, called them “Aposentos de Mulalo.”[43] In the pass between Alausi and Loxa, called the Paramo del Assuay,—(a much frequented route across the Ladera de Cadlud, 14568 French or 15526 English feet above the level of the sea, or almost equal to the height of Mont Blanc),—as we were leading our heavily laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground on the elevated plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca’s road, which with a breadth of twenty-one English feet ran by our side for above a German mile. It had a deep under-structure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman roads in Italy, in the South of France, and in Spain, was more imposing than these works of the ancient Peruvians, which are moreover situated, according to my barometric measurements, at an elevation of 12440 (13258 English) feet above the sea, or more than a thousand feet higher than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ruins of what is called the Palace of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and which are known by the name of the “Paredones del Inca,” are situated at the same elevation on the Assuay. Proceeding from thence to the southward towards Cuenca, the road leads to the small but well preserved fortress of Cañar[44], belonging probably to the same period, that of Tupac Yupanqui, or to that of his warlike son, Huayna Capac.

We saw still finer remains of the old Peruvian artificial roads on the way between Loxa and the Amazons, at the Baths of the Incas on the Paramo de Chulucanas, not far from Guancabamba, and in the neighbourhood of Ingatambo, at Pomahuaca. These last named remains are at a so much lower elevation, that I found the difference of level between the Inca’s Road at Pomahuaca and that on the Paramo del Assuay upwards of 9100 (about 9700 English) feet. The distance in a straight line is by astronomically determined latitudes exactly 184 English geographical miles, and the ascent of the road is 3500 (3730 English) feet greater than the height of the Pass of Mount Cenis above the Lake of Como. There are two great artificial Peruvian paved roads or systems of roads, covered with flat stones, or sometimes even with cemented gravel[45] (Macadamised); one passes through the wide and arid plain between the Pacific Ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Mile-stones, or stones marking the distances, are often found placed at equal intervals. The road was conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges, stone, wood, and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca or de Maroma), and there were also aqueducts, or arrangements for bringing water to the Tambos, (hostelries or caravanserais) and to the fortresses. Both systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of government of the great empire, in 13° 31´ South latitude, and which is placed, according to Pentland’s map of Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378 English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly laden lamas, we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting places at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, who on their distant expeditions used the military roads of the Incas with so much advantage, found great difficulties for the Spanish Cavalry at the places where these steps occurred[46]. The impediment presented to their march on these occasions was so much the greater, because in the early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to deliberate on every step he takes. It was not until a later period that mules were employed.

Sarmiento, who saw the Roads of the Incas whilst they were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks in a “Relacion” which long lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, “how a nation unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand works in so high and rocky a region (“Caminos tan grandes y tan sovervios”), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles,” he adds, “with all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered Government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over whom they ruled.” Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilised of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years’ imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years of age “in the odour of sanctity,” “en olor de Santidad,” exclaims: “in the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here admire.” The two important capitals and seats of government of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are 1000 English geographical miles apart in a straight line (SS.E., NN.W.), without reckoning the many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilaso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at “500 leguas.” Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the building materials for the “princely buildings,” (the houses of the Incas) in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco.

When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity of communication, especially in the movement of troops, became an important necessity of government. Hence the construction of artificial roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of cultivation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians, Greeks[47], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, shew many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have been completed in less than 30 or 35 years; i. e. within the short period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of “Quitu” and the death of Huayna Capac, but entire obscurity prevails as to the period of the formation of the Southern, and more properly speaking Peruvian, roads.

The mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually placed 400 years before the landing of Pizarro in the Island of Puna (1532), therefore towards the middle of the 12th century, almost 200 years before the foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); some Spanish writers even reckon, instead of 400, 500 and 550 years between Manco Capac and Pizarro. But the history of the empire of Peru only recognises thirteen ruling princes of the Inca-dynasty, a number which, as Prescott very justly remarks, is not sufficient to occupy so long an interval as 550 or even 400 years. Quetzalcoatl, Botschica, and Manco Capac, are the three mythical forms with which the commencements of civilisation among the Aztecs, the Muyscas (more properly Chibchas), and the Peruvians, are connected. Quetzalcoatl, bearded, clothed in black, a high priest of Tula, subsequently a penance-performing anchorite on a mountain near Tlaxapuchicalco, comes to the highlands of Mexico from the coast of Panuco; therefore from the eastern coast of Anahuac. Botschica, or rather Nemterequeteba[48] (a Buddha of the Muyscas), a messenger sent by the Deity, bearded and wearing long garments, arrives in the high plains of Bogota from the grassy steppes east of the chain of the Andes. Before Manco Capac a degree of civilisation already prevailed on the picturesque shores of the Lake of Titicaca. The strong fort of Cuzco, on the hill of Sacsahuaman, was formed on the pattern of the older constructions of Tiahuanaco. In the same manner the Aztecs imitated the pyramidal structures of the Toltecs, and these, those of the Olmecs (Hulmecs); and gradually ascending, we arrive, still on historic ground in Mexico, as far back as the sixth century of our Era. According to Siguenza, the Toltec step-pyramid (or Teocalli) of Cholula is a repetition of the form of the Hulmec step-pyramid of Teotihuacan. Thus as we penetrate through each successive stratum of civilisation we arrive at an earlier one; and national self-consciousness not having awoke simultaneously in the two continents, we find in each nation the imaginative mythical domain always immediately preceding the period of historic knowledge.

Notwithstanding the tribute of admiration which the first Conquistadores paid to the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians, not only did they neglect the repair and preservation of both these classes of useful works, but they even wantonly destroyed them; and this still more towards the sea-coast, (for the sake of obtaining fine cut stones for new buildings; and where the want of water consequent on the destruction of the aqueducts has rendered the soil barren), than on the ridges of the Andes, or in the deep-cleft valleys by which the mountain chain is intersected. In the long day’s journey from the syenitic rocks of Zaulaca to the Valley of San Felipe (rich in fossils, and situated at the foot of the icy Paramo de Yamoca), we were obliged to wade through the Rio de Guancabamba (which flows into the Amazons), no less than twenty-seven times, on account of the windings of the stream; while we continually saw near us, running in a straight line along the side of a steep precipice, the remains of the high built road of the Incas with its Tambos. The mountain torrent, though only from 120 to 150 English feet broad, was so strong and rapid that, in fording it, our heavily laden mules were often in danger of being swept away by the flood. They carried our manuscripts, our dried plants, and all that we had been collecting for a year past. Under such circumstances one watches from the other side of the stream with very anxious suspense until the long train of eighteen or twenty beasts of burden have passed in safety.

The same Rio de Guancabamba, in the lower part of its course, where it has many falls and rapids, is made to serve in a very singular manner for the conveyance of correspondence with the coast of the Pacific. In order to expedite more quickly the few letters from Truxillo which are intended for the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, a “swimming courier,” “el correo que nada,” as he is called in the country, is employed. This post messenger, who is usually a young Indian, swims in two days from Pomahuaca to Tomependa, first by the Rio de Chamaya (the name given to the lower part of the Rio de Guancabamba), and then by the Amazons. He carefully places the few letters entrusted to him in a large cotton handkerchief, which he winds round his head in the manner of a turban. When he comes to waterfalls he leaves the river, and makes a circuit through the woods. In order to lessen the fatigue of swimming for so long a time, he sometimes throws one arm round a piece of a very light kind of wood (Ceiba, Palo de balsa), of a tree belonging to the family of Bombaceæ. Sometimes also a friend goes with him to bear him company. The pair have no concern about provisions, as they are always sure of a hospitable reception in any of the scattered huts, which are abundantly surrounded with fruit trees, in the beautiful Huertas de Pucara and Cavico.

Happily the river is free from crocodiles, which, in the upper part of the Amazons, are first met with below the cataracts of Mayasi. These unwieldy and slothful monsters generally prefer the more tranquil waters. According to my measurements the Rio de Chamaya, from the Ford (Paso) de Pucara to the place where it enters the Amazons River below the village of Choros, has a fall[49] of 1668 (1778 English) feet in the short space of 52 English geographical miles. The Governor of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros assured me that letters carried by this singular water-post were rarely either wetted or lost. Soon after my return to Europe from Mexico, I received, in Paris, letters from Tomependa, which had been sent in the manner above described. Several tribes of wild Indians, living on the banks of the Upper Amazons, make their journeys in a similar manner, swimming down the stream sociably in parties. I had the opportunity of seeing in this manner, in the bed of the river, the heads of thirty or forty persons (men, women, and children), of the tribe of the Xibaros, on their arrival at Tomependa. The “Correo que nada” returns by land by the difficult route of the Paramo del Paredon.

On approaching the hot climate of the basin of the Amazons, the eye is cheered by the aspect of a beautiful, and occasionally very luxuriant vegetation. We had never before, not even in the Canaries or on the hot sea coast of Cumana and Caraccas, seen finer orange trees than those of the Huertas de Pucara. They were principally the sweet orange (Citrus aurantium, Risso), and less frequently the bitter or Seville orange (C. vulgaris, Risso). Laden with many thousands of their golden fruits, they attain a height of sixty or sixty-four English feet; and, instead of rounded tops or crowns, have aspiring branches, almost like a laurel or bay tree. Not far from thence, near the Ford of Cavico, we were surprised by a very unexpected sight. We saw a grove of small trees, only about eighteen or nineteen English feet high, which, instead of green, had apparently perfectly red or rose-coloured leaves. It was a new species of Bougainvillæa, a genus first established by the elder Jussieu, from a Brazilian specimen in Commerson’s herbarium. The trees were almost entirely without true leaves, as what we took for leaves at a distance, proved to be thickly crowded bracteas. The appearance was altogether different, in the purity and freshness of the colour, from the autumnal tints which, in many of our forest trees, adorn the woods of the temperate zone at the season of the fall of the leaf. A single species of the South African family of Proteaceæ, Rhopala ferruginea, descends here from the cold heights of the Paramo de Yamoca to the hot plain of Chamaya. We often found here the Porlieria hygrometrica (belonging to the Zygophylleæ), which, by the closing of the leaflets of its finely pinnated foliage, foretels an impending change of weather, and especially the approach of rain, much better than any of the Mimosaceæ. It very rarely deceived us.

We found at Chamaya rafts (balsas) in readiness to convey us to Tomependa, which we desired to visit for the purpose of determining the difference of longitude between Quito and the mouth of the Chinchipe (a determination of some importance to the geography of South America on account of an old observation of La Condamine).[50] We slept as usual under the open sky on the sandy shore (Playa de Guayanchi) at the confluence of the Rio de Chamaya with the Amazons. The next day we embarked on the latter river, and descended it to the Cataracts and Narrows (Pongo in the Quichua language, from puncu, door or gate) of Rentema, where rocks of coarse-grained sandstone (conglomerate) rise like towers, and form a rocky dam across the river. I measured a base line on the flat and sandy shore, and found that at Tomependa the afterwards mighty River of the Amazons is only a little above 1386 English feet across. In the celebrated River Narrow or Pongo of Manseritche, between Santiago and San Borja, in a mountain ravine where at some points the overhanging rocks and the canopy of foliage forbid more than a very feeble light to penetrate, and where all the drift wood, consisting of a countless number of trunks of trees, is broken and dashed in pieces, the breadth of the stream is under 160 English feet. The rocks by which all these Pongos or Narrows are formed undergo many changes in the course of centuries. Thus a part of the rocks forming the Pongo de Rentema, spoken of above, had been broken up by a high flood a year before my journey; and there has even been preserved among the inhabitants, by tradition, a lively recollection of the precipitous fall of the then towering masses of rock along the whole of the Pongo,—an event which took place in the early part of the eighteenth century. This fall, and the consequent blocking up of the channel, arrested the flow of the stream; and the inhabitants of the village of Puyaya, situated below the Pongo de Rentema, saw with alarm the wide river-bed entirely dry: but after a few hours the waters again forced their way. Earthquake movements are not supposed to have occasioned this remarkable occurrence. The powerful stream appears to be as it were incessantly engaged in improving its bed, and some idea of the force which it exerts may be formed from the circumstance, that notwithstanding its breadth it is sometimes so swollen as to rise more than 26 English feet in the course of twenty or thirty hours.

We remained for seventeen days in the hot valley of the Upper Marañon or Amazons. In order to pass from thence to the shores of the Pacific, the Andes have to be crossed at the point where, between Micuipampa and Caxamarca (in 6° 57´ S. lat. and 78° 34´ W. long. from Greenwich), they are intersected, according to my observations, by the magnetic equator. Ascending to a still higher elevation among the mountains, the celebrated silver mines of Chota are reached, and from thence with a few interruptions the route descends until the low grounds of Peru are gained; passing intermediately over the ancient Caxamarca, where 316 years ago the most sanguinary drama in the annals of the Spanish Conquista took place, and also over Aroma and Gangamarca. Here, as almost everywhere in the Chain of the Andes and in the Mexican Mountains, the most elevated parts are picturesquely marked by tower-like outbreaks of porphyry (often columnar), and trachyte. Masses of this kind give to the crest of the mountains sometimes a cliff-like and precipitous, and sometimes a dome-shaped character. They have here broken through calcareous rocks, which, both on this and on the northern side of the equator, are largely developed; and which, according to Leopold von Buch’s researches, belong to the cretaceous group. Between Guambos and Montan, 12000 French (12790 English) feet above the sea, we found marine fossils[51] (Ammonites nearly fifteen English inches in diameter, the large Pecten alatus, oyster shells, Echini, Isocardias, and Exogyra polygona). A species of Cidaris, which, according to Leopold von Buch, cannot be distinguished from that which Brongniart found in the lower part of the chalk series at the Perte du Rhone, was collected by us, both at Tomependa in the basin of the Amazons and at Micuipampa,—stations of which the elevations differ 9900 (10551 English) feet. In a similar manner, in the Amuich Chain of the Caucasian Daghestan, the cretaceous beds rise from the banks of the Sulak, which are hardly 530 English feet above the sea, to a height of fully 9000 (9592 English) feet on the Tschunum; while on the summit of the Schadagh Mountain, 13090 (13950 English) feet high, the Ostrea diluviana (Goldf.) and the same cretaceous beds are again found. Abich’s excellent observations in the Caucasus would thus appear to have confirmed in the most brilliant manner Leopold von Buch’s geological views on the mountain development of the cretaceous group.

From the lonely grazing farm of Montan surrounded by herds of lamas, we ascended more to the south the eastern declivity of the Cordilleras, and arrived as night was closing in at an elevated plain where the argentiferous mountain of Gualgayoc, the principal site of the celebrated silver mines of Chota, afforded us a remarkable spectacle. The Cerro de Gualgayoc, separated by a deep-cleft ravine or valley (Quebrada) from the limestone mountain of Cormolatsche, is an isolated mass of siliceous rock traversed by a multitude of veins of silver which often meet or intersect, and terminated to the north and west by a deep and almost perpendicular precipice. The highest workings are 1445 (1540 English) feet above the floor of the gallery, the Socabon de Espinachi. The outline of the mountain is broken by numerous tower-like and pyramidal points; the summit bears indeed the name of “Las Puntas,” and offers the most decided contrast to the “rounded outlines” which the miners are accustomed to attribute to metalliferous districts generally. “Our mountain,” said a rich possessor of mines with whom we had arrived, “stands there like an enchanted castle (como si fuese un castillo encantado).” The Gualgayoc reminds the beholder in some degree of a cone of dolomite, but still more of the serrated crest of the Monserrat Mountains in Catalonia, which I have also visited, and which were subsequently described in so pleasing a manner by my brother. The silver mountain Gualgayoc, besides being perforated to its summit by many hundred galleries driven in every direction, presents also natural openings in the mass of the siliceous rock, through which the intensely dark blue sky of these elevated regions is visible to a spectator standing at the foot of the mountain. These openings are popularly called “windows,” “las ventanillas de Gualgayoc.” Similar “windows” were pointed out to us in the trachytic walls of the volcano of Pichincha, and called by a similar name,—“ventanillas de Pichincha.” The strangeness of the view presented to us was still farther increased by the numerous small sheds and dwelling-houses, which nestled on the side of the fortress-like mountain wherever a flat surface permitted their erection. The miners carry down the ore in baskets by very steep and dangerous paths to the places where the process of amalgamation is performed.

The value of the silver furnished by the mines in the first thirty years (from 1771 to 1802) amounted probably to considerably above thirty-two millions of piastres. Notwithstanding the hardness of the quartzose rock, the Peruvians, before the arrival of the Spaniards (as ancient galleries and excavations testify), extracted rich argentiferous galena on the Cerro de la Lin and on the Chupiquiyacu, and gold in Curumayo (where native sulphur is also found in the quartz rock as well as in the Brazilian Itacolumite). We inhabited near the mines the small mountain town of Micuipampa, which is 11140 (11873 English) feet above the level of the sea, and where, though only 6° 43´ from the equator, water freezes in the house nightly throughout a large portion of the year. In this desert devoid of vegetation live three or four thousand persons, who are obliged to have all their means of subsistence brought from the warm valleys, as they themselves only rear some kinds of kale and excellent salad. In this wilderness, as in every town in the high mountains of Peru, ennui leads the richer class of persons, who are not on that account more cultivated or more civilised, to pass their time in deep gambling: thus wealth quickly won is still more quickly dissipated. There is much that reminds one of the soldier of Pizarro’s troop, who, after the pillage of the temple at Cuzco, complained that he had lost in one night at play “a great piece of the sun” (a gold plate). I observed the thermometer at Micuipampa at 8 in the morning 1°, and at noon 7° Reaumur (34°.2 and 47°.8 Fahrenheit). We found among the thin blades of Ichhu-grass (perhaps our Stipa eriostachya), a beautiful Calceolaria (C. sibthorpioides), which we should not have expected at such an elevation.

Not far from the town of Micuipampa, in a high plain called Llanos or Pampa de Navar, there have been found throughout an area of above an English geographical square mile, immediately under the turf, and as it were intertwined with the roots of the alpine grasses, enormous masses of rich red silver ore and threads of pure silver (in remolinos, clavos, and vetas manteadas). Another elevated plain west of the Purgatorio, near the Quebrada de Chiquera, is called “Choropampa” or the “Field of Shells” (churu, in the Quichua language, signifies shells, and particularly small eatable kinds, hostion, mexillon). The name refers to fossils which belong to the cretaceous group, and which are found there in such abundance that they early attracted the attention of the natives. This is the place where there was obtained near the surface a mass of pure gold spun round with threads of silver in the richest manner. Such an occurrence shows how independent many of the ores thrown up from the interior of the earth into fissures or veins, are of the nature of the adjacent rock and of the relative age of the formations broken through. The rock of the Cerro de Gualgayoc and of Fuentestiana has a great deal of water, but in the Purgatorio absolute dryness prevails. I found to my astonishment that notwithstanding the height of the strata above the level of the sea, the temperature of the last named mine was 15°.8 Reaumur (67°.4 Fahr.); while in the neighbouring Mina de Guadalupe the water in the mine showed about 9° Reaumur (52°.2 Fahr.) As in the open air the thermometer only rises to about 4° Reaumur (41° Fahr.), the miners, whose toil is severe, and who are almost without clothing, call the subterranean heat in the Purgatorio stifling.

The narrow path from Micuipampa to the ancient city of the Incas, Caxamarca, is difficult even for mules. The name of the town was originally Cassamarca or Kazamarca, i. e. the Frost town; (marca, as signifying a place or locality, belongs to the northern Chinchaysuyo or Chinchaysuyu dialect, while the word in the general Quichua language signifies the stories of houses, and also defences or forts). Our way lay for five or six hours over a succession of Paramos, where we were exposed almost incessantly to the fury of the wind and to the sharp-edged hail so peculiar to the ridges of the Andes. The height of the route above the level of the sea is generally between nine and ten thousand feet (about 9600 and 10660 Eng.) It afforded me, however, the opportunity of making a magnetic observation of general interest; i. e. the determination of the point where the North Inclination of the Needle passes into South Inclination, or where the traveller’s route crosses the Magnetic Equator.[52]

On reaching at length the last of these mountain wildernesses, the Paramo de Yanaguanga, the traveller looks down with increased pleasure on the fertile valley of Caxamarca. It affords a charming prospect: a small river winds through the elevated plain, which is of an oval form and about six or seven German geographical square miles in extent (96 or 112 English geographical square miles). The plain resembles that of Bogota: both are probably the bottoms of ancient lakes; but at Caxamarca there is wanting the myth of the wonder-working Botschica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, who opened for the waters a passage through the rock of Tequendama. Caxamarca is situated 600 (640 Eng.) feet higher than Santa Fé de Bogota, therefore almost as high as the city of Quito; but being sheltered by surrounding mountains it enjoys a far milder and more agreeable climate. The soil is extremely fertile, and the plain full of cultivated fields and gardens traversed by avenues of Willows, large flowered red, white, and yellow varieties of Datura, Mimosas, and the beautiful Quinuar-trees (our Polylepsis villosa, a Rosacea allied to Alchemilla and Sanguisorba). Wheat yields on an average in the Pampa de Caxamarca fifteen to twentyfold, but the hopes of a plentiful harvest are sometimes disappointed by night frosts, occasioned by the great radiation of heat towards the unclouded sky through the dry and rarefied mountain air: the frosts are not felt in the roofed houses.

In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes break through the widely extended sandstone strata, and probably once formed islands in the ancient lake before its waters had flowed off. On the summit of one of these domes, the Cerro de Santa Polonia, we enjoyed a pleasing prospect. The ancient residence of Atuhuallpa is surrounded on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne (Medicago sativa, “campos de alfalfa”). Columns of smoke are seen at a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which are still called Baños del Inca. I found the temperature of these sulphur-springs 55°.2 Reaumur (156°.2 Fahrenheit). Atahuallpa spent a part of the year at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace still survive the devastating rage of the Conquistadores. The large and deep basin or reservoir in which, according to tradition, one of the golden chairs in which the Inca was carried had been sunk and has ever since been sought in vain, appeared to me, from the regularity of its circular shape, to have been artificially excavated in the sandstone rock above one of the fissures through which the springs issue.

Of the fort and palace of Atahuallpa there are also only very slight remains in the town, which is now adorned with some fine churches. The destruction of the ancient buildings has been accelerated by the devouring thirst of gold which led men, before the close of the sixteenth century, in digging for supposed hidden treasures, to overturn walls and carelessly to undermine or weaken the foundations of all the houses. The palace of the Inca was situated on a hill of porphyry which had originally been hollowed at the surface, so that it surrounds the principal dwelling almost like a wall or rampart. A state prison and a municipal building (la Casa del Cabildo) have been erected on a part of the ruins. The most considerable ruins still visible, but which are only from 13 to 16 feet high, are opposite the convent of San Francisco; they consist, as may be observed in the house of the Cacique, of fine cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed upon each other without cement, as in the Inca-Pilca or strong fortress of Cañar in the high land of Quito.

There is a shaft sunk in the porphyritic rock which once led into subterranean chambers, and a gallery said to extend to the other porphyritic dome before spoken of, that of Santa Polonia. Such arrangements shew an apprehension of the uncertainties of war, and the desire to secure the means of escape. The burying of treasures was an old and very generally prevailing Peruvian custom. There may still be found subterranean chambers below many of the private dwellings of Caxamarca.

We were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what is called the Inca’s foot-bath (el lavatorio de los pies). The washing of the monarch’s feet was accompanied by some inconvenient usages of court etiquette.[53] Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servants, are constructed partly like the others of cut stones, and provided with sloped roofs, and partly with well formed bricks alternating with siliceous cement (muros y obra de tapia). In the latter class of constructions there are vaulted recesses, the antiquity of which I long doubted, but, as I now believe, without sufficient grounds.

In the principal building the room is still shown in which the unhappy Atahuallpa was kept a prisoner for nine months[54] from November 1532, and there is pointed out to the traveller the wall on which the captive signified to what height he would fill the room with gold if set free. This height is given very variously, by Xerez in his “Conquista del Peru” which Barcia has preserved for us, by Hernando Pizarro in his letters, and by other writers of the period. The prince said that “gold in bars, plates, and vessels, should be heaped up as high as he could reach with his hand.” Xerez assigns to the room a length of 23, and a breadth of 18 English feet. Garcilaso de la Vega, who quitted Peru in his 20th year, in 1560, estimates the value of the treasure collected from the temples of the sun at Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco, and Pachacamac, up to the fateful 29th of August 1553, on which day the Inca was put to death, at 3,838,000 Ducados de Oro[55].

In the chapel of the state prison, to which I have before alluded as built upon the ruins of the Inca’s palace, the stone still marked by the indelible stains of blood is shown to the credulous. It is a very thin slab, 13 feet long, placed in front of the altar, and has probably been taken from the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. One is not permitted to make any more precise examination by striking off a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood spots appear to be natural collections of hornblende or pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fernando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that early period gave currency to the fable that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and that stains of blood were still visible on the stone on which the execution had taken place. There is no reason to doubt the fact, confirmed by many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, in order to avoid being burnt alive, consented to be baptised under the name of Juan de Atahuallpa by his fanatic persecutor, the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. He was put to death by strangulation (el garrote) publicly, and in the open air. Another tradition relates that a chapel was raised over the spot where Atahuallpa was strangled, and that his body rests beneath the stone; in such case, however, the supposed spots of blood would remain unaccounted for. In reality, however, the corpse was never placed beneath the stone in question. After a mass for the dead, and solemn funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro were present in mourning habits (!), it was conveyed first to the churchyard of the convent of San Francisco, and afterwards to Quito, Atahuallpa’s birthplace. This last transfer was in compliance with the expressed wish of the dying Inca. His personal enemy, the astute Rumiñavi (“stone-eye,” a name given from the disfigurement of one eye by a wart; “rumi,” signifying “stone,” and “ñaui,” “eye,” in the Quichua language), from political motives caused the body to be buried at Quito with solemn obsequies.

We found descendants of the monarch, the family of the Indian Cacique Astorpilco, dwelling in Caxamarca, among the melancholy ruins of ancient departed splendour, and living in great poverty and privation; but patient and uncomplaining. Their descent from Atahuallpa through the female line has never been doubted in Caxamarca, but traces of beard may perhaps indicate some admixture of Spanish blood. Of the sons of the Great (but for a child of the sun somewhat free thinking),[56] Huayna Capac, neither of the two who swayed the sceptre before the arrival of the Spaniards, Huascar and Atahuallpa, left behind them acknowledged sons. Huascar became the prisoner of Atahuallpa in the plains of Quipaypan, and was soon afterwards secretly murdered by his order. Neither were there any surviving male descendants of the two remaining brothers of Atahuallpa, the insignificant youth Toparca, who Pizarro caused to be crowned as Inca in the autumn of 1553, and the enterprising Manco Capac, similarly crowned, but who afterwards rebelled again. Atahuallpa left indeed a son, whose christian name was Don Francisco, (but who died very young), and a daughter, Doña Angelina, by whom Francisco Pizarro (with whom she led a wild and warlike life), had a son whom he loved fondly, grandchild of the slaughtered monarch. Besides the family of the Cacique Astorpilco, with whom I was acquainted at Caxamarca, the Carguraicos and Titu Buscamayta were pointed out at the period of my visit as belonging to the Inca dynasty; but the Buscamayta family has since become extinct.

The son of the Cacique Astorpilco, a pleasing and friendly youth of seventeen, who accompanied me over the ruins of the palace of his ancestor, while living in extreme poverty, had filled his imagination with images of buried splendour and golden treasures hidden beneath the masses of rubbish upon which we trod. He related to me that one of his more immediate forefathers had bound his wife’s eyes, and then conducted her through many labyrinths cut in the rock into the subterranean garden of the Incas. There she saw, skilfully and elaborately imitated, and formed of the purest gold, artificial trees, with leaves and fruit, and birds sitting on the branches; and there too was the much sought for golden travelling chair (una de las andas) of Atahuallpa. The man commanded his wife not to touch any of these enchanted riches, because the long foretold period of the restoration of the empire had not yet arrived, and that whoever should attempt before that time to appropriate aught of them would die that very night. These golden dreams and fancies of the youth were founded on recollections and traditions of former days. These artificial “golden gardens” (Jardines o Huertas de oro) were often described by actual eye-witnesses, Cieza de Leon Sarmiento, Garcilaso, and other early historians of the Conquest. They were found beneath the temple of the sun at Cuzco, in Caxamarca, and in the pleasant valley of Yucay, a favourite residence of the monarch’s family. Where the golden Huertas were not below ground, living plants grew by the side of the artificial ones: among the latter, tall plants and ears of maize (mazorcas) are mentioned as particularly well executed.

The morbid confidence with which the young Astorpilco assured me that below our feet, a little to the right of the spot on which I stood at the moment, there was an artificial large-flowered Datura tree (Guanto), formed of gold wire and gold plates, which spread its branches over the Inca’s chair, impressed me deeply but painfully, for it seemed as if these illusive and baseless visions were cherished as consolations in present sufferings. I asked the lad—“Since you and your parents believe so firmly in the existence of this garden, are not you sometimes tempted in your necessities to dig in search of treasures so close at hand?” The boy’s answer was so simple, and expressed so fully the quiet resignation characteristic of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, that I noted it in Spanish in my journal. “Such a desire (tal antojo) does not come to us; father says it would be sinful (que fuese pecado). If we had the golden branches with all their golden fruits our white neighbours would hate and injure us. We have a small field and good wheat (buen trigo).” Few of my readers, I think, will blame me for recalling here the words of the young Astorpilco and his golden visions.

The belief, so widely current among the natives, that to take possession of buried treasures which belonged to the Incas would be wrong, and would incur punishment and bring misfortune on the entire race, is connected with another belief which prevailed, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries, i. e. the future restoration of a kingdom of the Incas. Every suppressed nationality looks forward to a day of change, and to a renewal of the old government. The flight of Manco Inca, the brother of Atahuallpa, into the forests of Vilcapampa on the declivity of the eastern Cordillera, and the sojourn of Sayri Tupac and Inca Tupac Amaru in those wildernesses, have left permanent recollections. It was believed that the dethroned dynasty had settled between the rivers Apurimac and Beni, or still farther to the east in Guiana. The myth of el Dorado and the golden city of Manoa, travelling from the west to the east, increased these dreams, and Raleigh’s imagination was so inflamed by them, that he founded an expedition on the hope of “conquering ‘the imperial and golden city,’ placing in it a garrison of three or four thousand English, and levying from the ‘Emperor of Guiana,’ a descendant of Huayna Capac, and who holds his court with the same magnificence, an annual tribute of £300,000 sterling, as the price of his promised restoration to the throne in Cuzco and Caxamarca.” Wherever the Peruvian Quichua language has extended, some traces of such expectations of the return of the Inca’s sovereignty continue[57] to exist in the minds of many among those of the natives who are possessed of some knowledge of the history of their country.

We remained for five days in the town of the Inca Atahuallpa, which at that time scarcely reckoned seven or eight thousand inhabitants. Our departure was delayed by the number of mules which were required for the conveyance of our collections, and by the necessity of making a careful choice of the guides who were to conduct us across the chain of the Andes to the entrance of the long but narrow Peruvian sandy desert (Desierto de Sechura). The passage over the Cordillera is from north-east to south-west. Immediately after quitting the plain of Caxamarca, on ascending a height of scarcely 9600 (10230 English) feet, the traveller is struck with the sight of two grotesquely shaped porphyritic summits, Aroma and Cunturcaga (a favourite haunt of the powerful vulture which we commonly call Condor; kacca in the Quichua language signifies “the rock.”) These summits consisted of five, six, or seven-sided columns, 37 to 42 English feet high, and some of them jointed. The Cerro Aroma is particularly picturesque. By the distribution of its often converging series of columns placed one above another, it resembles a two-storied building, which, moreover, is surmounted by a dome or cupola of non-columnar rock. Such outbursts of porphyry and trachyte are, as I have before remarked, characteristic of the high crests of the Cordilleras, to which they impart a physiognomy quite distinct from that presented by the Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Siberian Altai.

From Cunturcaga and Aroma we descended by a zig-zag course a steep rocky declivity of 6400 English feet into the deep cleft valley of the Magdalena, the bottom of which is still 4260 English feet above the level of the sea. A few wretched huts, surrounded by the same wool or cotton-trees (Bombax discolor) which we had first seen on the banks of the Amazons, were called an Indian village. The scanty vegetation of the valley bears some resemblance to that of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, but we missed the red groves of Bougainvillæa. This valley is one of the deepest with which I am acquainted in the chain of the Andes: it is a true transverse valley directed from east to west, deeply cleft, and hemmed in on the two sides by the Altos de Aroma and Guangamarca. In this valley recommences the same quartz formation which we had observed in the Paramo de Yanaguanga, between Micuipampa and Caxamarca, at an elevation of 11720 English feet, and which, on the western declivity of the Cordillera, attains a thickness of several thousand feet, and was long an enigma to me. Since von Buch has shown us that the cretaceous group is also widely extended in the highest chains of the Andes, on either side of the Isthmus of Panama, the quartz formation which we are now considering, which has perhaps been altered in its texture by the action of volcanic forces, may be considered to belong to the Quadersandstein, intermediate between the upper part of the chalk series, and the Gault and Greensand. On quitting the mild temperature of the Magdalena valley we had to ascend again for three hours the mountain wall of 5120 English feet, opposite to the porphyritic group of the Alto de Aroma. The change of climate in so doing was the more sensible, as we were often enveloped in the course of the ascent in a cold fog.

The longing desire which we felt to enjoy once more the open view of the sea after eighteen months’ constant sojourn in the ever restricted range of the interior of the mountains, had been heightened by repeated disappointments. In looking from the summit of the volcano of Pichincha, over the dense forests of the Provincia de las Esmeraldas, no sea horizon can be clearly distinguished, by reason of the too great distance of the coast and height of the station: it is like looking down from an air-balloon into vacancy. One divines, but one does not distinguish. Subsequently, when between Loxa and Guancabamba we reached the Paramo de Guamini, where there are several ruined buildings of the times of the Incas, and from whence the mule-drivers had confidently assured us that we should see beyond the plain, beyond the low districts of Piura and Lambajeque, the sea itself which we so much desired to behold, a thick mist covered both the plain and the distant sea shore. We saw only variously shaped masses of rock alternately rise like islands above the waving sea of mist, and again disappear, as had been the case in our view from the Peak of Teneriffe. We were exposed to almost the same disappointment in our subsequent transit over the pass of Guangamarca, at the time of which I am now speaking. As we toiled up the mighty mountain side, with our expectations continually on the stretch, our guides, who were not perfectly acquainted with the road, repeatedly promised us that at the end of the hour’s march which was nearly concluded, our hopes would be realised. The stratum of mist which enveloped us appeared occasionally to be about to disperse, but at such moments our field of view was again restricted by intervening heights.

The desire which we feel to behold certain objects does not depend solely on their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance; it is interwoven in each individual with many accidental impressions of his youth, with early predilection for particular occupations, with an attachment to the remote and distant, and with the love of an active and varied life. The previous improbability of the fulfilment of a wish gives besides to its realisation a peculiar kind of charm. The traveller enjoys by anticipation the first sight of the constellation of the cross, and of the Magellanic clouds circling round the Southern Pole,—of the snow of the Chimborazo, and the column of smoke ascending from the volcano of Quito,—of the first grove of tree-ferns, and of the Pacific Ocean. The days on which such wishes are realised form epochs in life, and produce ineffaceable impressions; exciting feelings of which the vividness seeks not justification by processes of reasoning. With the longing which I felt for the first view of the Pacific from the crests of the Andes, there mingled the interest with which I had listened as a boy to the narrative of the adventurous expedition of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa,[58] the fortunate man who (followed by Francisco Pizarro) first among Europeans beheld from the heights of Quarequa, on the Isthmus of Panama, the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean,—the “South Sea.” The reedy shores of the Caspian, at the place where I first saw them, i. e. from the Delta formed by the mouths of the Volga, cannot certainly be called picturesque; yet I viewed them with a gratification heightened almost into delight by the particular interest and pleasure with which, in early childhood, I had looked at the shape of this Asiatic inland sea on maps. That which is thus excited in us[59] by childish impressions, or by accidental circumstances in life, takes at a later period a graver direction, and often becomes a motive for scientific labours and distant enterprises.

When after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep mountain ridge, we finally reached the highest point, the Alto de Guangamarca, the heavens which had long been veiled became suddenly clear: a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the highest cirrous clouds. The whole of the western declivity of the Cordillera by Chorillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz 13 to 15 English feet long, and the plains of Chala and Molinos as far as the sea shore near Truxillo, lay beneath our eyes in astonishing apparent proximity. We now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean itself; and we saw it clearly: forming along the line of the shore a large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its immensity to the well-defined, no longer merely conjectured horizon. The joy it inspired, and which was vividly shared by my companions Bonpland and Carlos Montufar, made us forget to open the barometer until we had quitted the Alto de Guangamarca. From our measurement taken soon after, but somewhat lower down, at an isolated cattle-farm called the Hato de Guangamarca, the point from which we first saw the sea would be only somewhere between 9380 and 9600 English feet above the level of the sea.

The view of the Pacific was peculiarly impressive to one who like myself owed a part of the formation of his mind and character, and many of the directions which his wishes had assumed, to intercourse with one of the companions of Cook. My schemes of travel were early made known, in their leading outlines at least, to George Forster, when I enjoyed the advantage of making my first visit to England under his guidance, more than half a century ago. Forster’s charming descriptions of Otaheite had awakened throughout Northern Europe a general interest (mixed, I might almost say, with romantic longings) for the Islands of the Pacific which had at that time been seen by very few Europeans. I too cherished at the time of which I am speaking the hope of soon landing on them; for the object of my visit to Lima was twofold,—to observe the transit of Mercury over the solar disk, and to fulfil an engagement made with Captain Baudin before I left Paris, to join him in a voyage of circumnavigation which was to take place as soon as the Government of the French Republic could furnish the requisite funds.

Whilst we were in the Antilles, North American newspapers announced that the two Corvettes, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, would sail round Cape Horn and touch at Callao de Lima. On receiving this intelligence at Havana, where I then was, after having completed my Orinoco journey, I relinquished my original plan of going through Mexico to the Philippines, and hastened to engage a vessel to convey me from the Island of Cuba to Cartagena de Indias. Baudin’s Expedition, however, took quite a different route from that which was announced and expected; instead of sailing round Cape Horn, as had been designed when it had been intended that Bonpland and myself should form part of it, it sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. One of the two objects of my Peruvian journey and of our last passage over the Chain of the Andes failed; but on the other hand I had, at the critical moment, the rare good fortune of a perfectly clear day, during a very unfavourable season of the year, on the misty coast of Low Peru. I observed the passage of Mercury over the Sun at Callao, an observation which has become of some importance towards the exact determination of the longitude of Lima[60], and of all the south-western part of the New Continent. Thus in the intricate relations and graver circumstances of life, there may often be found, associated with disappointment, a germ of compensation.