326 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



was very nearly being an eye-witness of the frightful eruption 

 of Cotopaxi. 



On February 15, 1803, he sailed from Guayaquil for Mexico, 

 and landed in the harbour of Acapulco towards the end of 

 March. 



It has often been erroneously maintained among others by 

 Carl Eitter that the cold current upon the coast of Peru, 

 known as the Humboldt current, was discovered by him during 

 this voyage. The truth is, that Humboldt merely instituted a 

 series of very careful observations, especially with regarjd to 

 the temperature of the current, and far from having any wish 

 to appropriate to himself or allow others to ascribe to him a 

 merit to which he was not fully entitled, he distinctly re- 

 pudiated the discovery attributed to him by the remark : ' The 

 existence of this current has been known since the sixteenth 

 century to every sailor-boy accustomed to navigate from Chili 

 to Payta.' l 



Humboldt had no wish to remain long in the kingdom of 

 Mexico. The motives by which he was induced to curtail the 

 journey as originally planned, and to postpone, at least for the 

 present, his projected tour through a part of Asia and Africa, 

 are specified in the following letter, addressed to the National 

 Institute of France, dated 'Mexico, 2 Messidor IX. (21st June, 

 1803)': 2 



' Our voyage through the Pacific to Acapulco was happily 

 accomplished, notwithstanding a violent tempest which we en- 

 countered when more than 300 leagues to the we'st of the 

 volcanoes of Guatemala a part of the ocean to which the 

 name of Pacific is scarcely applicable. The damaged state of 

 our instruments occasioned by land transport, in journeys ex- 

 tending over 2,000 leagues, the futility of our efforts to replace 

 them by new ones, the impossibility of meeting with Captain 

 Baudin, for whom we had waited in vain upon the shores of 

 the Pacific, the reluctance we felt to traverse a boundless ocean 

 in a merchant ship which could furnish no facilities for touch- 

 ing at any of those lovely islands so interesting to the natu- 



1 * Briefwechsel mit Berghaus/ vol. ii. p. 284. (See also pp. 160 and 

 275.) 



2 'Annales du Museum d'Hist. natur.' An XII. (1804) vol. iii. p. 396. 



