iv translator's preface. 



of the last century prevented our author from carrymg out 

 various plans of foreign travel which he had contemplated, 

 and detained him an unwilling prisoner in Europe. In the 

 year 1799 he went to Spain, with the hope of entering Africa 

 from Cadiz, but the unexpected patronage which he received 

 at the court of Madrid led to a great alteration in his plans, 

 and decided him to proceed directly to the Spanish posses- 

 eions in America, " and there gratify the longings for foreign 

 adventure, and the scenery of the tropics, which had haunted 

 him from boyhood, but had all along been turned in the dia- 

 metrically opposite direction of Asia." After encountering 

 various risks of capture, he succeeded in reaching America, 

 and from 1799 to 1804 prosecuted there extensive researches 

 in the physical geography of the New World, which have in- 

 delibly stamped his name in the undying records of science. 



Excepting an excursion to Naples with Gay-Lussac and 

 Von Buch in 1805 (the year after his return from America), 

 the succeeding twenty years of his life were spent in Paris, and 

 were almost exclusively employed in editing the results of his 

 American journey. In order to bring these results before the 

 world in a manner worthy of their importance, he commenced 

 a series of gigantic publications in almost every branch of 

 science on which he had instituted observations. In 1817, 

 after twelve years of incessant toil, four fifths were completed, 

 and an ordinary copy of the part then in print cost considera- 

 bly more than one hundred pounds sterling. Since that time 

 the publication has gone on more slowly, and even now, after 

 the lapse of nearly half a century, it remains, and probably 

 ever will remain, incomplete. 



In the year 1828, when the greatest portion of his literary 

 labor had been accomplished, he undertook a scientific journey 

 to Siberia, under the special protection of the Russian govern- 

 ment. In this journey — a journey for which he had prepared 

 liimself by a course of study unparalleled in the history of 

 travel — he was accompanied by two companions hardly less 

 distinguished than himself Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, and 



