LITTLE gratify this controlling impulse of his life the habit of 

 JOURNEYS seeing and knowing. His genius for classification was 



superb; he approached every subject with an open 

 mind, willing to change his conclusions if it were 

 shown that he was wrong; he had imagination to see 

 the thing first with his inward eye ; he had the 

 strength of body to endure physical' discomfort, and 

 finally he had money enough so he was free to follow 

 his bent. These qualifications made him the prince of 

 scientific travelers the pioneer of close, accurate and 

 reliable explorers. 



BEFORE Humboldt's time travelers had 

 been mostly of the type of Marco Polo and 

 Sir John Mandeville, who discovered 

 strange and wondrous things, such as 

 horses with five legs, dogs that could 

 talk, and anthropopagi whose heads did 

 grow beneath their shoulders. The temptation to be 

 interesting at the expense of truth has always been 

 strong upon the sailor-man. Read even the history of 

 Christopher Columbus and you will hear of islands off 

 the coast of America inhabited exclusively by women 

 who had only one calling-day in a year when their 

 gentlemen friends from a neighboring island came to 

 see them. 



The world needed accurate, scientific knowledge con- 

 cerning those parts of the world seldom visited by man. 

 Travel a hundred years ago was accompanied by great 

 112 



