300 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



orders, and is possessed of considerable wealth. The king pays 

 annually 10,000 piastres towards the expenses of botanical 

 research. Thirty artists have been engaged during the last 

 fifteen years in painting under the superintendence of Mutis ; 

 he has from 2,000 to 3,000 drawings in large portfolios, which 

 are executed like miniature paintings. He possesses the largest 

 botanical library I have ever seen, excepting that of Banks in 

 London. Notwithstanding its proximity to the equator, the 

 climate is decidedly cool, on account of the great elevation ; 

 the thermometer usually stands at 46 or 48, frequently at 32, 

 and never above 72. 



' 1 have kept perfectly well amid the river miasma and the 

 inflammation caused by the mosquito bites, but poor Bonpland 

 was again attacked by intermittent fever on the road from Honda 

 to Santa Fe, and by this illness we were detained in the capital 

 full two months, till the 8th of September, 1801. I employed my 

 time in visiting the curiosities of the neighbourhood, and in 

 measuring the height of some of the surrounding mountains, 

 several of which rise to 13,000 and 16,000 feet.' . . . 'Among 

 the sights of the neighbourhood ' (as we learn from Humboldt's 

 treatise ' On the Elevated Plain of Bogota' 1 ) 'were included 

 the following objects of interest : the magnificent waterfall of 

 Tequendama, 2 where, through a cleft in the rock shadowed 

 by evergreen oaks, the water rushes down a ravine, bordered 

 on either side by palms and ferns of most luxuriant ' growth ; 

 the wide plain, Campo de Grigantes, filled with bones of the 

 mastodon ; an extensive field of coal, and an immense bed of 

 rock -salt. The existence of these formations excites surprise 

 -from the great elevation at which they occur a height almost 

 as great as if the Brocken were piled upon the summit of the 

 Schneekoppe.' 



On the recovery of Bonpland, the travellers set out upon their 

 journey in September, 1801, from Santa Fe to Quito. The road 

 lay westward across the Rio Magdalena and through Contreras to 



1 Read before the Berlin Academy on March 19, 1838, printed in an 

 abridged form in their monthly reports of March 1838, and published 

 entire in the f Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift,' v?l. v. p. 97, &c., in Poggen- 

 dorffs 'Annalen,' 1838, vol. xlii. p. 570, &c., as well as in Alexander YOU 

 Humboldt's ' Kleinere Schriften ' (1853), vol. i. p. 100. 



3 l Atlas pittoresque, ou Vues des Cordilleres/ PI. VI. 



