324 Humboldt's Letters. 



176. 



HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN. 



BERLIN, September llth, 1856. 



KNOWING the warm interest you take, ray dear 

 friend, in the slavery question, and in what concerns 

 myself, I send you the last letter of Gerolt, which was 

 very long in coming, but which will certainly command 

 your attention. Most unfortunately Buchanan will be 

 the next President, and not Fremont, the traveller of 

 great acquirements, who has four times travelled* the 

 land route to San Francisco, surveying the country over 

 which he passed, to whom it is owing that California did 

 become a free State. Do not return the letter, nor 

 the enclosure. On the heels of this African absurdity 

 comes another folly, of a more serious cast, though 

 richly fraught with ridicule, not royalistic so much as 

 aristocratically Bernese, and spiced with a little railroad 

 speculation as to whether the route by the way of 

 Neufchatel or that by way of Chaux de Fonds is to be 

 preferred ! And the heroic Count,* who executes the 

 coup d'etat a 1# Napoleon, whence did he derive his 



* Pourtales, conspicuous in the Neufchatel embroglio. 7h 



