228 QUITO. 



of tlie Rio Yinagre, whicli were loaded with oxide of iron, 

 and sul]3liuric and muriatic acids. 



The travellers arrived at Quito on the 6th of January, 

 1802, and remained there nearly nine months. How 

 they filled up the greater part of this time is not stated ; 

 but from the number of celebrated mountains in the 

 neighbourhood, most of which they visited, and from 

 their omnivorous taste in the sciences, it is certain that it 

 seldom or never hung heavily on their hands. They had 

 first to look after their instruments and their collections ; 

 Humboldt had to complete his map of the Rio Magdalena, 

 and Bonpland to arrange his crowded herbal. Then there 

 were visits to be received, and returned ; excursions to be 

 planned and executed : in short a thousand ways to .make 

 the days and months slip away unperceived. When not 

 in the city of Quito itself they resided in the neighbour- 

 hood, in the villas and country houses of their friends. 

 Humboldt resided at one time in the hacienda of General 

 Aguerre, at Chileo, where his portrait was painted by a 

 Quitan artist, and where it still hangs. When Mr. 

 Church, our greatest landscape painter, was in South 

 America, making studies for his magnificent painting, 

 " The Heart of the Andes," he lodged in the very room 

 that Humboldt occupied, and struck with his portrait, 

 which continuall}^ met his eyes on the wall, he procured 

 a copy of it, from a pupil of the artist who painted it, 

 and brought it with him, in his return to the United 

 States. It is an invaluable relict of the great traveller, 

 representing him, not as we know him from later engrav- 

 ings and photographs, a gray old man, with his head 

 drooping on his bosom, heavy with its harvest of thought ; 

 but in the vigour of manhood, thin and muscular, with 



