254 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



Spain, however, had not a conception of the true advantages 

 to be derived from colonial possessions, or how, by securing 

 their prosperity, they might be made a source of wealth to the 

 mother country, and through her to the rest of the world. 

 The government consisted of the most absolute military rule, 

 for the support of which, strange to say, an army of 2,000 

 men sufficed. Commerce was carried on by a system of mono- 

 polies of a most oppressive character. The whole export and 

 import trade was restricted to a limited number of markets, 

 and conducted by a half-yearly convoy of vessels homeward and 

 outward bound, plying between Cadiz and Seville, and two or 

 three ports in the New World. A Spaniard discovered in any 

 commercial relationship with foreigners was condemned by law 

 to a confiscation of his property, if not to a forfeiture of his 

 life ; while he who was detected collecting statistical data, or 

 publishing any information concerning the government, was 

 subjected to perpetual imprisonment. To all foreigners the 

 colonies were absolutely closed. During three centuries it- 

 would be scarcely possible to name more than six expeditions 

 undertaken in the interests of science to any part of the 

 Spanish colonies either by the Spaniards themselves, or by 

 foreigners under permission of the Spanish Grovernment. These 

 expeditions had been undertaken mainly for the purpose of 

 determining by astronomical observation the position of cer- 

 tain places, as a means for the better construction of charts 

 of the coast; at most the travellers returned with some 

 dried specimens of new plants for the botanist, and some 

 prepared skins of birds and animals as a contribution to the 

 museums. Of this nature were the travels of Francisco 

 Dominguez in 1577, of Feuillee in 1705, and of Frezier 

 in 1712. Even the valuable trigonometric labours of the 

 French academicians La Condamine, Bouguer, and Grodin, the 

 former of whom explored the valley of the Amazon, the re- 

 sults obtained in Quito and Peru by the Spanish geome- 

 tricians Jorge Juan and Antonio Ulloa, and the more recent 

 labours of Azara in the territory of La Plata, contributed but 

 little towards a more extended knowledge of South America. 

 If to this list be added the unfortunate expedition of Solano in 

 1754 to the Upper Orinoco and the Rio Meta, from which only 



