8 Alexander von Humboldt. 
nounce to ss dear ec; Roderick, the saddest news that I could 
atl i onvey:’. Leopold von Buch was taken from us this 
aioe him Iam desolate.’ . . . is mind 
left a a ssi of ight wherever it passed.’ . .. We were to- 
gether in Italy, in Switzerland, in France —four months in 
Saltzburg.’ At Breibens Humboldt devoted himself with hum- 
boldtian energy to the study of mining and metallurgy. His 
mind was ever open and ready for impressions, which it received 
as surely as wax, and as speedily as photography. No bee 
could exhaust the wild darens of the woods quicker than 4 
could extract from his masters all they had to impart. Scar 
ly a year then sufficed to accomplish his aim at W erner’s, sea 
he left in March, 1792, and returned to his mother at Tegel. 
Humboldt had now arrived at the end of pas ae a and 
such a pupilage! unparalled in ee 0 before him 
was ever so favored by fortune, so mentally gifted, so lovingly 
led, and so intellectually prepared, = sittin career upon 
. which he was about to enter? Yet he took no royal road to 
his acquisitions, but that hard Sais ai open to all, with work, 
_ ce, energy and love of nature for mile stones, At 
of machineries burnin with an irresistible desire, as he repeat- 
ro a tells us in after life, to travel in distant lands unexplored 
url’ 
peans. 
The next five years, from 1792 to 1797, the young aspirant is 
tracked with some difficulty through a combination of circum- 
stances well calculated to elevate, strengthen and mature him 
for the execution of some grand project. Born and educated 
in central Germany, remote from salt water, with a love of na- 
ture ingrain and strengthening with his knowledge, he longed 
for the sea, as he tells us, and the tropics, and had ad already re- 
solved, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, to go round 
the world, and gratify his enthusiasm for the savage beauties of 
tropical countries guarded by mountains and volcanoes, shaded 
by primeval forests and watered by vast unexplored rivers ; and 
pong or coming, explore that New World where man and his 
psa — ancient ae oda rn civilization had not inter- 
warf the stupen — splay of gigantic nature. All 
his ara eke to q ite ae Hi corer traveler. 
As his j to be the cisle of of the globe, so his study 
