PREFACE TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 
While submitting herewith to the Public the results obtained during 
my stay in a part of South America so important from an ethnographi- 
cal, zoological and botanical point of view, I feel myself forced, both for 
my own and the reader’s sake, to preface them with a few words of in- 
troduction. Herein I would venture to mention most submissively not 
only the debt of gratitude, expressed with the greatest reverence, for 
the high honour whereby, through the support granted by His Majesty, 
Our Most Gracious King, that liberal-minded pation of the sciences, I 
was able to gratify the wish dearest to my heart that I had cherished 
from youth to maturity, but also to indicate the standpoint from which 
my book is to be reviewed, rather than to have it judged on an arbitrary 
basis. 
The results obtained in almost all departments of the several branch- 
es of Natural Science in the course of the travels undertaken by my 
brother, Robert Schomburgk, under the direction of the Royal 
Geographical Society of London during the years 1835-1839, 
in a part of South America, which up to then was as good 
as unknown, — so far as concerned its geographical, ethnograph- 
ical, botanical and zoological relationship with the whole of 
the rest of the Continent, — had attracted the attention of men of 
learning in the homeland. This was particularly the case with one whose 
name like a guiding star will lead the way in Science for all time, and 
through whose friendly consideration I was enabled with my slender 
resources, to add my contribution to the knowledge of the surface- 
structure of our planet, though only as a collector of material for the 
further study of the subject. 
When my brother, entrusted with a, fresh Commission by Her 
Majesty the Queen of England, returned to the field of his former la- 
bours, it was Alexander von Humboldt through whose means I received 
the assistance from Our Most Gracious Sovereign, that enabled me to 
accompany him to Guiana, and there, with its numerous treasures, for 
the most part still undescribed, do the liest T could in the interests of 
our National Scientific Institute. 
And although, conscious of my weakness, and in spite of the want 
of a scientific training, I have ventured to make my observations public, 
the necessary pluck was due to the encouragement and sacrificing sup- 
port rendered me by men of learning, as I realise only too well the 
claims that Science makes on works of this kind, and that I am the last 
person to satisfy them. The fact is, that as a gardener I was not famil- 
iar with every essential scientific problem connected with the branches 
of Natural Knowledge foreign to my' profession, and that whatever 
success T may have achieved was gained as the result of direct expor 
