16 



SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES REGIONS. 



Fie 



-Determination of the Meridian of 

 Quito. 

 Scale 1 : 3,500,000. 



obtained sixty years afterwards by the great Humboldt when determining certain 

 astronomic points in Ecuador. All the cartographic documents prepared during 

 the course of the present century down to recent years had taken for their base 

 Humboldt's observations of latitude and longitude, with the result that the section 

 of the northern Andes between Bogota and Cuzco was shifted much too far west- 

 wards. In some places, notably between 

 Guayaquil and the inland city of Alausi, 

 the error was as much as 20 Q-eoffra- 

 phical miles.* Hence all the lines on 

 the map had to be altered, so as to cor- 

 respond with the old network traced, by 

 Bouguer and his as-ociates. On his 

 return La Condaraine, dtscendingr the 

 course of the Amazons, prepared the 

 first chart of the river based on astro- 

 nomic obs*^rvations. 



The Spanish Government had de- 

 parted from its traditional policy in 

 allowing the French geodesians to 

 establish themselves in its American 

 colonies. Over fifty years afterwards 

 it made a like concession in favour of 

 Alexander von Humboldt and his com- 

 panion, Aimé Bonpland, who were per- 

 mitted to visit its Transatlantic terri- 

 tories without any restriction. Landing 

 in 1799 at Cumana, the two travellers 

 traversed Venezuela ; placed beyond 

 doubt the remarkable bifurcation of the 

 Orinoco already well known to the mis- 

 sionaries and local traders, but at times 

 questioned by ignorant writers of the 

 Old World ; visited the Bogota plateau, 

 the upper Magdalena basin, Quito, and 

 its lines of volcanoes. 



Humboldt tried to scale Ohimborazo, 

 which he believed to be pre-eminently 

 the giant amongst the great mountains 

 of the globe ; although he failed to reach the summit, he reached a higher point 

 on its slopes than any other previous climber. He never completed the descrip- 

 tion of his five years' travels in the " equinoxial regions." Nevertheless, his 

 studies, embracing all phenomena of planetary life, as w^ell as the discussion of 

 all problems associated with them, became a veritable guide and vade-mecum for 

 * Theodor Wolf, Verhancllungen der Gesellschnft ftir Erdkunde zu Berlin, Nos. 9 and 10, 1891. 



Miles. 



