388 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



we both escaped the slightest injury, for which we have to 

 thank Providence. As two men of science and an accom- 

 plished rifleman were of the party, there was no lack of con- 

 tradictory theories as to the cause of the accident. This much, 

 however, is certain, that the carriage swung round, and that,' as 

 he good-naturedly adds in exculpation of the man in charge 

 of the conveyance, ' the postilion was quite free from blame.' 



On December 28, Humboldt and his companions arrived at 

 Berlin. The results of the journey were published in the 

 following separate works: ' Fragmens asiatiques,' 1831, ' Asie 

 centrale," 1843, both edited by Humboldt, and ' Journey to the 

 Caspian Sea and the Mountains of the Ural and the Altai,' 

 1837-42, edited by Grustav Kose. Ehrenberg published in a 

 separate form his descriptions of the Siberian tiger and the 

 northern panther, while in his ' Micro-Greology,' 1854, he dis- 

 cusses the forms of organic nature existing in Eussia, Siberia, 

 and Central Asia, amid the mountains of the Ural and those of 

 Altai, drawing special attention to the life visible only through 

 the microscope a kind of organism which had hitherto been 

 unsuspected. His botanical collections have never yet been 

 published. 



Amid the universal applause that greeted Humboldt upon 

 his return to Berlin, he was yet the victim of an irritating 

 attack made upon him in England. Unfortunate speculators 

 in the Mexican mines challenged the correctness of some of 

 his views, and attributed to him motives which ought never to 

 have been imputed to a man of science, least of all to such a 

 one as Alexander von Humboldt. To this he refers in the 

 following passage, in a letter to Cancrin, dated April 3, 1830: 



6 It is really quite inhuman thus to attack a man who has 

 never given any evidence of selfishness, at the moment of his 

 return from a distant journey in the interests of science ! Is it 

 my fault that the accounts I published fifteen years ago, 

 of the richness of the Mexican mines (the correctness of which 

 has never been called in question by anyone living in Mexico) 

 should have led John Bull in the most foolish manner to trust 

 millions into the hands of ignorant speculators ? I have always 

 declared from the first that I would have nothing to do with 

 speculative schemes ; I declined the appointment of Consulting 



