304 FREPARATIONS FOR LEAVING CUBA. 
to make, were on the point of sailing to Vera 
Cruz; but intelligence communicated by means 
of the public papers respecting Captain Baudin’s 
expedition, led them to relinquish the project of 
crossing Mexico in order to proceed to the Philip- 
pine Islands. It had been announced that two 
French vessels, the Geographe and the Naturaliste, 
had sailed for Cape Horn, and that they were to go 
along the coast of Chili and Peru, and from thence 
to New Holland. Humboldt had promised to join 
them wherever he could reach the ships, and M. 
Bonpland resolved to divide their plants into three 
portions, one of which was sent to Germany by way 
of England, another to France by Cadiz, and the 
third left in Cuba. Their friend Fray Juan Gon- 
zales, an estimable young man, who had followed ~ 
them to the Havannah on his way to Spain, car- 
ried part of their collections with him, including the 
insects found on the Orinoco and Rio Negro; but 
the vessel in which he embarked foundered in a 
storm on the coast of Africa. General Don Gonzalo 
O’Farrill being then in Prussia as minister of the 
Spanish court, Humboldt was enabled, through the 
agency of Don Ygnacio, the general’s brother, to 
procure a supply of money; and having made all 
the necessary preparations for the new enterprise, 
freighted a Catalonian sloop for Porto Bello, or Car- 
thagena, according as the weather should permit. 
On the 6th March the travellers, finding that 
the vessel was ready to receive them, set out for 
Batabano, where they arrived on the 8th. This 
is a poor village surrounded by marshes, covered 
with rushes and plants of the Iris family, among 
which appear here and there a few stunted palms. 
2 
