376 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



labourers, and all necessary help afforded you at the cost of 

 the crown in any experiments you may wish to make. As 

 soon as your route is more accurately planned, directions for 

 the journey shall be prepared, pointing out all that is of 

 interest in the districts you may visit, in addition to which 

 any further information you may require shall be communicated 

 to you.' 



Humboldt's request that his two friends, Professors Ehrenberg 

 and Eose, might be allowed to accompany him was acceded to 

 in the most gracious manner. Furnished with letters of re- 

 commendation from the King and Crown Prince to the Im- 

 perial Family, in which he was styled, 'Actual Privy Counsellor 

 with the honorary title of Excellency,' Humboldt left Berlin on 

 April 12, 1829. The cortege consisted of two travelling car- 

 riages, loaded with numerous instruments and apparatus of every 

 kind. In the low plains of the Vistula and the Nogath, the 

 transit was rendered both difficult and dangerous by the floods 

 and the floating ice, but the travellers reached Konigsberg in 

 safety on April 15, where they had the pleasure of meeting 

 with Bessel. The journey beyond Konigsberg was still more 

 difficult. ' The roads are really very tolerable, but since leaving 

 Dorpat we have been surrounded by all the horrors of winter, 

 and see nothing but snow and ice as far as the eye can reach ; 

 we are considerably delayed by the rivers, which are either 

 blocked up with ice. as was the case with the Dwina and Narowa, 

 or can only be approached by roads so much washed away 

 that the front wheels become buried in the mud, and travellers 

 have to provide themselves with planks, that, with extra horses 

 and the manual assistance of the peasantry, the carriages may 

 be helped over the deepest holes. These, are some of the 

 ordinary occurrences of returning spring. ... Owing to these 

 difficulties, the journey to St. Petersburg will probably cost 

 900 thalers.' Up to April 29, the carriages had been ferried 

 over rivers seventeen times. At length, the travellers reached 

 St. Petersburg on May 1, and Humboldt took up his quarters, 

 in apartments prepared for him at the residence of the 

 Prussian Ambassador, Lieutenant-General von Scholer. 



' My success in society is most surprising,' he writes to his 

 brother, from St. Petersburg on May 10. 'I seem to be sur- 



