COLLEGE LIFE. 81 



detestable roads. The difficulties of the journey were willingly 

 encountered for the sake of seeing a brother who had been an 

 eye-witness of so many extraordinary events. We spent two 

 days with Loffler, and it was delightful to me to renew the 

 relationships of the old Frankfort days. What are all the 

 sensations that inanimate nature can inspire, in comparison 

 with those heart-stirring emotions elicited by the sympathy 

 of friendship and the gratification of being loved by good 

 men!' .... 



The anonymous pamphlet, ' Mineralogical Observations on 

 some Basalts of the Rhine ' l was the result of this tour, under- 

 taken by Humboldt when a youth of twenty-one years of age, 

 and not, as is usually represented, of the journey he subsequently 

 took to the Lower Rhine in company with George Forster : and 

 it is necessary here to state distinctly that Humboldt was at 

 this time self-taught both in mineralogy and geology. 2 His 

 next works were two small treatises published in Crell's ' Che- 

 mische Annalen,' on ' The Aqueous Origin of Basalt,' and c The 

 Metallic Seams in the Basalts at Unkel.' In the chapter on 

 * Incidental Remarks on Basalt in ancient and modern Writers,' 

 which precedes his ' Observations,' he proves with a great ex- 

 penditure of philological learning, and in that lucid manner 

 which subsequently developed into the full flower of his later 

 genius, that the classic writers give no ground for supposing 

 that the basalt of Pliny is identical with syenite, basanite, lapis 

 lydius, or lapis sethiopicus ; that it is erroneous to maintain, 

 as hitherto has been the practice, that the basalt of our time 

 is the same as that referred to by Pliny ; that it is impossible 

 now to ascertain what was the particular mineral rock that 

 was termed by Pliny basalt ; that the supposed basalt of Strabo 

 is granite ; and lastly, that it is quite uncertain whether the 

 passage in Pliny has any connection with that in Strabo. The 



1 ' Mineralogische Beobachtungen iiber einige Basalte am Rhein.' Bruns- 

 wick, 1790. 



2 Humboldt writes somewhat later to Freiesleben, ( I take the liberty 

 of sending you my small pamphlet on the basalts, which (with many 

 typographical errors) has appeared during my absence in England. I wrote 

 it before I had received the benefit of any instructions in mineralogy, and I 

 should never have ventured to have allowed it to be printed had I not been 

 urged to do so by many considerations.? 



YOL. I. G 



