Alexander von Humboldt

“ A single cloud appears in the south, like a distant mountain, rising perpendicularly from the horizon. Gradually the increasing vapours spread like mist over the sky, and now the distant thunder ushers in the life-restoring [20] rain. Hardly has the surface of the earth received the refreshing moisture, before the previously barren Steppe begins to exhale sweet odours, and to clothe itself with Kyllingias, the many panicules of the Paspalum, and a variety of grasses. ”

“ Climbing Bignonias, fragrant Vanillas, and yellow-flowering Banisterias, adorned the entrance of the cave; and the summits of the palms rustled above the graves.
Thus perish the generations of men! Thus do the name and the traces of nations fade and disappear! Yet when each blossom of man’s intellect withers,—when in the storms of time the memorials of his art moulder and decay,—an ever new life springs forth from the bosom of the earth; maternal Nature unfolds unceasingly her germs, her flowers, and her fruits ”

“ On reaching the summit the traveller beholds a wide, diversified, and striking prospect. From the foaming river-bed rise wood-crowned hills, while beyond the western shore of the Orinoco the eye rests on the boundless grassy plain of the Meta, uninterrupted save where at one part of the horizon the Mountain of Uniama rises like a threatening cloud. ”

“ The coast of Terra Firma bears traces of devastation. We recognise everywhere the action of the great current which, sweeping from east to west, formed by disruption the West Indian Islands, and hollowed out the Caribbean gulf. The projecting tongues of land of Araja and Chuparipari, and especially the coast of Cumana and New Barcelona, offer a remarkable spectacle to the geologist. The precipitous Islands of Boracha, Caracas, and Chimanas, rise like towers from the sea, and bear witness to the terrible pressure of the waters against the mountain chain when it was broken by their irruption. ”

“ Continent, while in the Old the desolating strife of nations disturbs the enjoyment of the repose of nature. Perhaps a time is coming when, in this singular contrast between physical and moral forces, the two sides of the Atlantic will change parts. Volcanoes are quiescent for centuries before they burst forth anew; and the idea that in the so-called older countries, a certain peace must prevail in nature, is founded on a mere play of the imagination. ”

“ The pools which the yellow fading branches of the fan palm had protected from evaporation now gradually disappear. As in the icy north the animals become torpid with cold, so here, under the influence of the parching drought, the crocodile and the boa become motionless and fall asleep, deeply buried in the dry mud. Every where the death-threatening drought prevails, and yet, by the play of the refracted rays of light producing the phenomenon of the mirage, the thirsty traveller is every where pursued by the illusive image of a cool rippling watery mirror. ”

“ If we wish to trace, in equally few lines, a sketch of the natural features of North America, let us cast our eyes first on the mountain chain which, running from south-east to north-west, at first low and narrow, and increasing both in breadth and height from Panama to Veragua, Guatimala, and Mexico (where it was the seat of a civilisation which preceded the arrival of Europeans) , arrests the general equatorial current of the waters of the ocean, and opposes a barrier to the more rapid commercial intercourse of Europe and Western Africa with the eastern parts of Asia. ”

“ I have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the region of the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation and extent, it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on the climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south and east. In the extensive continuous plateau, Frémont saw the waters covered with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the elevation of this region less important as respects the social state and progress of the great United States of North America. ”

“ Are we to regard the south of Italy as more modern than its northern portions, because the former is almost incessantly disquieted by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? Besides, what small phenomena are the volcanoes and earthquakes of the present day, in comparison with those revolutions of nature which the geologist must suppose to have accompanied, in the chaotic state of the earth, the elevation, solidification, disruptions, and cleavings of the mountain masses? Diversity of causes must produce diversity in the operations of natural forces, in countries remote as well as near. ”

“ Here no Oasis recalls the memory of earlier inhabitants; no carved stone, [12] no ruined building, no fruit tree once the care of the cultivator but now wild, speaks of the art or industry of former generations. As if estranged from the destinies of mankind, and riveting attention solely to the present moment, this corner of the earth appears as a wild theatre for the free development of animal and vegetable life. ”

“ The horses and cattle now graze in full enjoyment of life. The tall springing grass hides the beautifully spotted jaguar, who lurking in safe concealment, and measuring carefully the distance of a single bound, springs, cat-like, as the Asiatic tiger, on his passing prey.
Sometimes, (so the Aborigines relate) , on the margin of the swamps the moistened clay is seen to blister and rise slowly in a kind of mound; then with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a small mud volcano, the heaped-up earth is cast high into the air. ”

“ Writers generally and justly praised have repeated but too often that America is in every sense of the word a New Continent. Her luxuriance of vegetation, the abundant waters of her enormous rivers, the unrepose of her powerful volcanoes, all (say they) proclaim that the still trembling earth, from the face of which the waters have not yet dried off, is here nearer to the chaotic primordial state than in the Old Continent. ”

“ Rocks and islands are adorned with the luxuriant vegetation of the tropical forest; a perpetual mist hovers over the waters, and the summits of the lofty palms pierce through the cloud of spray and vapour. ”

“ The Steppe extends from the Caraccas coast chain to the forests of Guiana, and from the snowy mountains of Merida (on the slope of which the Natron Lake Urao is an object of superstitious veneration to the natives,) to the great delta formed by the Orinoco at its mouth. To the south-west a branch is prolonged, like an arm of the sea, [13] beyond the banks of the Meta and Vichada to the unvisited sources of the Guaviare, and to the lonely mountain to which the excited fancy of the Spanish soldiery gave the name of Paramo de la Suma Paz—the seat of perfect peace. ”

“ Admiral Wrangell, in describing his perilous expedition to the new Siberian islands so rich in fossil wood, says: “These Tundras accompanied me to the extreme arctic coast. Their soil has been frozen for thousands of years. In the dreary uniformity of landscape, the eye of the traveller, surrounded by rein-deer moss, dwells with pleasure on the smallest patch of green turf showing itself now and then on a moist spot.” ”

“ In every bush, in the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. It is, as it were, one of the many voices of Nature, heard only by the sensitive and reverent ear of her true votaries. ”

“ Fresh from the richest luxuriance of organic life, he treads at once the desolate margin of a treeless desert. Neither hill nor cliff rises, like an island in the ocean, to break the uniformity of the boundless plain; only here and there [2] broken strata of limestone, several hundred square miles in extent, appear sensibly higher than the adjoining parts. “Banks” [2] is the name given to them by the natives; as if language instinctively recalled the more ancient condition of the globe, when those elevations were shoals, and the Steppes themselves were the bottom of a great Mediterranean sea. ”

“ When the long shaken empire of the Hiongnu fell, may we conjecture that the movement of this powerful tribe may also have occasioned in the north-east of China and in Corea a shock and an impulse which may have caused civilized Asiatics to pass over into the new continent? If such a migration had consisted of inhabitants of the Steppes in which agriculture was not pursued, this hazardous hypothesis (which has hitherto been but little favoured by the comparison of languages) would at least explain the striking absence of the Cereals in America. ”

“ What we now term Atlas is a long ridge. How came the Romans to recognise in this long ridge the isolated conical mountain of Herodotus? May not the reason be found in the optical delusion by which every mountain chain seen in profile, in the prolongation of its direction, has the appearance of a narrow cone? I have often seen in this manner, from the sea, the ends of long chains or ridges, which might be taken for isolated mountains. According to Höst the Atlas is covered near Morocco with perpetual snow, which implies an elevation of above 1800 toises, or 11510 English feet. ”

“ Many foals are drowned, and many are surprised by the crocodiles, killed by a stroke of their powerful notched tails, and devoured. It is not a rare thing to see the marks of the pointed teeth of these monsters on the legs of the horses and cattle who have narrowly escaped from their blood-thirsty jaws. Such a sight reminds the thoughtful observer involuntarily of the capability of conforming to the most varied circumstances, with which the all-providing Author of Nature has endowed certain animals and plants. ”

“ In the province of Caraccas the dark shade of the cacao plantations contrasts beautifully with the light green of the Tahitian sugar cane. Few tropical trees have such thick foliage as the Theobroma cacao. It loves hot and humid valleys: great fertility of soil and insalubrity of atmosphere are inseparable from each other in South America as well as in Asia; and it has even been remarked that as increasing cultivation lessens the extent of the forests, and renders the soil and climate less humid, the cacao plantations become less flourishing. ”

“ When the rapidly rising and descending constellations illumine the margin of the plain, or when their trembling image is repeated in the lower stratum of undulating vapour, we seem to see before us a shoreless ocean. [3] Like the ocean, the Steppe fills the mind with the feeling of infinity; and thought, escaping from the visible impressions of space, rises to contemplations of a higher order. ”

“ Our knowledge of the languages of America is still too limited, considering their great variety, for us as yet entirely to relinquish the hope of some day discovering an idiom which may have been spoken, with certain modifications, at once in the interior of South America and in that of Asia; or which may at least indicate an ancient affinity. Such a discovery would certainly be one of the most brilliant which can be expected in reference to the history of mankind. ”

“ But although the South American Steppe is covered with a thin coating of mould or fertile earth, and although it is periodically bathed by rains, and becomes covered at such seasons with luxuriantly sprouting herbage, yet it never could attract the surrounding nations or tribes to forsake the beautiful mountain valleys of Caraccas, the margin of the sea, or the wooded banks of the Orinoco, for the treeless and springless wilderness; and thus, previous to the arrival of European and African settlers, the Steppe was almost entirely devoid of human inhabitants. ”

“ All that determines the character of a landscape,—the outline of the mountains, which, in the far-vanishing distance, bound the horizon,—the dark shade of the pine forests,—the sylvan torrent rushing between overhanging cliffs to its fall,—all are in antecedent mysterious communion with the inner feelings and life of man. ”

“ There is, indeed, a striking similarity between South America and the southern peninsula of the old continent in the form of the outline and in the direction of the coasts; but the nature of the soil, and the relative position of the neighbouring masses of land, produce in Africa that extraordinary aridity which over an immense area checks the development of organic life. ”

“ It is in this region, after receiving the Apure, that the Orinoco leaves the granitic chain of mountains and flows eastward to the Atlantic, dividing the impenetrable forests of Guiana from the grassy plains on which the vault of heaven seems everywhere to rest as on the horizon of the ocean. Thus the elevated cluster of the Parime mountains, which occupies the entire space between the sources of the Jao and the Caura, is surrounded on three sides, to the South, to the West, and to the North, by the Orinoco. ”

“ If the word plateau, so often misemployed in modern works on geography, is to have its use extended to elevations which hardly present any sensible difference in climate and vegetation, the indefiniteness of the expressions “highlands and lowlands,” which are only relative terms, will deprive physical geography of the means of expressing the idea of the connection between elevation and climate, between the profile or relief of the ground and the decrease of temperature. ”

“ In the Raudal of Canucari the rocky dike or weir consists of piled-up granite spheres. We crept into the interior of a grotto the damp walls of which were covered with confervæ and shining Byssus, and where the river rushed high above our heads with deafening noise.
We had accidentally more time than we desired for the enjoyment of this grand scene of nature. The Indians had left us in the middle of the cataract, proposing to take the canoe round a long narrow island below which we were to re-embark. ”

“ Among such phenomena must certainly be classed the vast forest region which, in the tropical portion of South America, fills the great connected basins of the Orinoco and the Amazons. If the name of primeval forest, or “Urwald,” which has of late years been so prodigally bestowed, is to be given to any forests on the face of the earth, none can claim it perhaps so strictly as the region of which we are speaking. ”

“ The distant palm bush apparently raised by the influence of the contact of unequally heated and therefore unequally dense strata of air, hovers above the ground, from which it is separated by a narrow intervening margin. Half concealed by the dark clouds of dust, restless with the pain of thirst and hunger, the horses and cattle roam around, the cattle lowing dismally, and the horses stretching out their long necks and snuffing the wind, if haply a moister current may betray the neighbourhood of a not wholly dried up pool. ”

“ On this communion rests the nobler portion of the enjoyment which nature affords. Nowhere does she penetrate us more deeply with the feeling of her grandeur, nowhere does she speak to us with a more powerful voice, than in the tropical world, under the “Indian sky,” as, in the early middle ages, the climate of the torrid zone was called. ”

“ The knowledge acquired is, indeed, often only that of rivers, their direction, their branches, and the various synonyms by which they are called in dialects belonging to different families of languages; but rivers reveal to us by their course the form of the surface of the earth, and are at once the nourishers of vegetation, the channels of intercourse between men, and pregnant with unknown influences on the future. ”

“ I might here close the hazardous attempt to trace a picture of nature such as she shows herself in the Steppes. But as on the ocean fancy not unwillingly dwells awhile on the image of its distant shores, so, before the wide plain disappears from our view, let us cast a rapid glance at the regions by which the Steppes are bounded. ”