DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT. 



known to all, and I need not, there- 

 fore, describe his course, or dwell 

 upon the details of his personal ex- 

 perience. No period of his life, how- 

 ever, has had amore powerful influence 

 upon knowledge and education than 

 those five years of travel, and there- 

 fore I will speak at some length of 

 their scientific results. In the very 

 glory of his youth, and yet with an 

 intellectual maturity which belongs to 

 later manhood, his physical activity 

 and endurance kept pace with the 

 fertility and comprehensiveness of his 

 mind. Never was the old proverbial 

 wish, " Sijeunesse savait, si vieillesse 

 pouvait" so near fulfillment ; never 

 were the strength of youth and the 

 knowledge of age so closely com- 

 bined. 



At the first step of the journey, 

 uamely, his pause at the Canary 

 Islands and ascension of the Peak of 

 Teneriffe, he has left us a graphic 

 picture of the place, of its volcanic 

 phenomena, its geological character, 

 and the distribution of its vegetation, 

 in which are foreshadowed all his 

 later generalizations. Landing in 

 Cumana he made his first long station 

 there. His explorations of the 

 mountains, valleys, and sea-shore in 

 that neighbborhood, his geological 

 researches, his astronomical observa- 

 tions by w r hich the exact position of 

 various localities was determined, his 

 meteorological investigations, and his 

 collections of every kind, were of vast 

 scientific importance. He had already 

 begun his studies upon averages of 

 climate, the result of which, known 

 as the " isothermal lines," was one of 

 his most original contributions to 

 science. With the intuition of genius 

 he saw that the distribution of tem- 

 perature obeyed certain laws. He 

 collected, both from his own observa- 

 tion and from report, all that could 

 be learned of the average temperature 

 in various localities, and combining 

 all these facts he first taught geogra- 

 phers how to trace upon their maps 

 those curves which give in one un- 

 dulating line the varying aspects of 

 climate upon the whole globe. His 



physical experiments upon animals 

 and plants, and his collections were 

 also of great value. At Paris he had 

 made the acquaintance of Bonpland, 

 a young botanist, equally determined 

 with himself to see distant lands, who 

 accompanied him in his journey ■ to 

 South America ; and when Hum- 

 boldt was too exclusively engaged in 

 physical experiments to join in the 

 botanical researches, they were never- 

 theless not neglected, for Bonpland 

 was unremitting in the study of plants 

 and in making collections. 



After months thus spent in the 

 neighborhood of the coast, Humboldt 

 crossed the Llanos, the great plains 

 which divide the basin of the Orinoco 

 from the sea shore. Here again every 

 step of his journey is marked by orig- 

 inal research. He has turned those 

 desert plains into enchanted land by 

 the power of his thought, and left us 

 descriptions, as fascinating from their 

 beauty as they are valuable for their 

 novelty and precision. In his long 

 and painful journey through the valley 

 of the Orinoco he traced the singular 

 network of rivers by which this 

 great stream connects, through the 

 Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro, with 

 the Amazons, — a fresh-water route 

 which is, no doubt, yet to become one 

 of the highways of the world. Had 

 it not been for the illiberality of the 

 Portuguese government, he would 

 probably have gone down the Rio 

 Negro to the Amazons, and would 

 perhaps have changed completely the 

 course which he ultimately took. He 

 was, however, turned back from the 

 mighty river by a prohibition which 

 made it dangerous to proceed farther 

 on pain of imprisonment and the 

 possible renunciation of all his cher- 

 ished plans. When, in my late ex- 

 ploration of the Amazonian Valley, I 

 read his narrative again, on the spot, 

 I could not but contrast the cordial 

 liberality which smoothed every dif- 

 ficulty in my path with the dangers, 

 obstacles, and suffering which beset 

 his. I approached, however, so near 

 the scene of his labors that I was 

 constantly able to compare my results 



