240 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



Fould of Paris had placed 40,000 francs to his credit. In the 

 afternoon of the same day he was informed that instructions 

 had been received from Fould ten days previously not to 

 advance him the smallest sum, and that it had only been from 

 a feeling of delicacy that he had not been earlier made 

 acquainted with this unpleasant information. (See p. 245.) 



This, however, was not allowed to interfere with the pro- 

 jected journey to Spain, and towards the end of December, 1798, 

 Humboldt and Bonpland left Marseilles. During the six weeks 

 spent in reaching Madrid, where they arrived in the beginning 

 of February, they found abundant occupation in collecting 

 plants, determining the latitude and longitude of places, and 

 their height above the sea, besides making various observations 

 connected with meteorology, geology, and magnetism. Hum- 

 boldt makes but slight allusion to this journey in his works ; 

 and this gives an increased value to his letters, full of detail, 

 whence the following extracts of biographical interest are taken. 



4 My journey hither was chiefly made on foot,' he writes to 

 Willdenow from Aranjuez, on April 20, 1799, 'and I tra- 

 velled by way of the coast of the Mediterranean through Cette, 

 Montpellier, Narbonne, Perpignan, over the Pyrenees, and 

 across Catalonia to Valencia and Murcia ; thence I proceeded 

 across the high table-land of La Mancha. In Montpellier 

 I passed some most agreeable days with Chaptal, and in 

 Barcelona with John Grill, an Englishman with whom I had 

 lived at Hamburg, and who is now a partner in an extensive 

 mercantile house in Spain. In the valleys of the Pyrenees 

 the pea was in blossom, while the snow-capped summit of 

 the Canigou reared itself just above us. In Catalonia and 

 Valencia the country is like a succession of gardens enclosed by 

 cacti (torch thistles) and aloes ; date-palms forty and fifty 

 feet high, laden with fruit, tower over every monastery. The 

 fields present the appearance of a forest of locust or carob trees 

 (Ceratonia siliqucL), olives, and orange trees, the tops of which 

 separate into several heads in the manner of some of our pear 

 trees. In Valencia eight oranges may be bought for a peseta. 

 At the mouth of the Ebro, near Balaguer, is a plain forty miles 

 in extent covered with dwarf palms ((7/iamcm>>s),pistachios, and 

 numerous varieties of the Erica, rose cistus, and holly rose. The 

 heaths were in blossom, and even in the wildest regions we 



