338 IIOAV BE WBOTE His JOURNAL. 



sical constitution of the air in the equinoctial regions, &c # 

 I had left Europe with the firm intention of not writing 

 what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, 

 but to publish the fruit of my inquiries in works merely 

 descriptive; and I had arranged the facts, not in the 

 order in which they successively presented themselves, 

 but according to the relation they bore to each other. 

 Amidst the overwhelming majesty of Nature, and the 

 stupendous objects she presents at every step, the traveller 

 is little disposed to record in his journal matters which 

 relate only to himself, and the ordinary details of 

 life. 



11 1 composed a very brief itinerary during the course 

 of my excursions on the rivers of South America, and in 

 my long journeys by land. I regularly described (and 

 almost always on the spot) the visits I made to the summits 

 of volcanoes, or mountains remarkable for their height ; 

 but the entries in my journal were interrupted whenever 

 I resided in a town, or when other occupations prevented 

 me from continuing a work which I considered as having 

 only a secondary interest. Whenever I wrote in my 

 journal, I had no other motive than the preservation of 

 some of those fugitive ideas which present themselves to 

 a naturalist, whose life is almost wholly passed in the 

 open air. I wished to make a temporary collection of such 

 facts as I had not then leisure to class, and note down the 

 first impressions, whether agreeable or painful, which I 

 received from nature or from man. Far from thinking 

 at the time that those pages thus hurriedly written would 

 form the basis of an extensive work to be offered to the 

 public, it appeared to me, that my journal, though it might 

 furnish certain data useful to science, would present very 



