PREFACE. 
Tue celebrity which Baron Humboldt enjoys, and 
which he has earned by a life of laborious investiga-- 
tion and perilous enterprise, renders his name fami- 
liar to every person whose attention has been drawn 
to political statistics or natural philosophy. In the 
estimation of the learned no author of the present 
day occupies a higher place among those who have 
enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge. To 
every one accordingly whose aim is the general culti- 
vation of the mental faculties, his works are recom- 
mended by the splendid pictures of scenery which 
they contain, the diversified information which they 
afford respecting objects of universal interest, and 
the graceful attractions with which he has succeed- 
ed in investing the majesty of science. 
These considerations have induced the Publishers 
to offer a condensed account of his Travels and Re- 
searches, such as, without excluding subjects even 
of laboured investigation, might yet chiefly embrace 
those which are best suited to the purposes of the 
general reader. The public taste has of late years 
gradually inclined towards objects of useful know- 
ledge,—works of imagination have in a great mea- 
