Vicente Benavides de Humboldt

“ Its military system was far more vigorous; and though the use of writing was equally unknown in both empires, it seems that poetry, history, and ethics, which were extensively studied at the time of Cortes, would have advanced further in Mexico than in Peru, the institutions of which were coloured by an Epicurean indifferentism that was highly unfavourable to intellectual progress. Clearly we must regard the more active people as superior.
Von Humboldt’s view is simply a consequence of the way in which he defines civilization. ”

“ To Humboldt he was guide, teacher, protector and friend. Bonpland was the soul of unselfishness.
Perhaps a certain quality of man attracts a certain quality of friend—I really am not sure. But this I know, that while Alexander von Humboldt had few personal friends, he always had just those which his nature required—his friends were hands, feet, eyes and ears for him, to quote his own words. This voyage on the "Pizarro" occupied five years. The travelers visited Teneriffe, Cuba, Mexico, and skirted the coast of South America, making many little journeys inland. ”

“ Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty tableland of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. ”

“ Now and then an expanse of thin, sky-like vapor would cut the mountain in twain, and the dome, islanded in the deep blue of the upper regions, seemed to belong more to heaven than to earth. We knew that Chimborazo was more than twice the altitude of Etna. We could almost see the great Humboldt struggling up the mountain’s side till he looked like a black speck moving over the mighty white, but giving up in despair four thousand feet below the summit. We see the intrepid Bolivar mounting still higher; but the hero of Spanish-American independence returns a defeated man. ”

“ In remote districts many could not grasp the fact that nations existed beyond the sea who were not Spanish, and where they did understand it such peoples were classed as very low, on the ground that only low strata in New Spain did not know Spanish, as Humboldt observes. ”

“ In 1797, after the death of his mother, who objected to his leaving Europe, he went to Paris, where he became acquainted with Aimé Bonpland, a young botanist, with whom he at once agreed to go on several exploring expeditions.
It had been arranged that Humboldt should accompany Captain Baudin, but the delay in the starting of his expedition exhausted the young enthusiast's patience, and he went to Marseilles with the intention of joining the French army in Egypt. For two whole months he waited for the sailing of the frigate which was to take him ”

“ How, indeed, was it possible," he adds, "to find men to follow the hard profession of the sea, amongst a people who prefer a hunch of beef to all the comforts of life? 'The hope of gain,' Baron Humboldt observes, 'is too weak a stimulus in a climate where bounteous nature offers man a thousand ways of obtaining a comfortable subsistence without the necessity of leaving his native home to go to fight with the monsters of the deep.'"
The Dean was a wise old man, who knew the character of his countrymen thoroughly. Nor are his observations confined to the Spaniards of South America. ”

“ They seem to prefer to such allegiance a return to the wilderness, so that it is said of African travelers that the greatest danger that threatens them is the unconquerable propensity, when they have once escaped the perils of the journey, to try them again. Thus it was with Humboldt's fellow-traveler, Bonpland, who was drawn back to South America, where it was his fate, not to perish, but to be lost to science, a prisoner to Dr. Francia. He left to Humboldt, in whom no trace of such weakness could be found, the fruit of many of their common labors. ”

“ Suffice it that he believed his guests to be the men predicted to come. “As for your great king,” he added, “I hold myself as his lieutenant, and will give him of what I possess.” As a tangible proof thereof, he again before dismissing them distributed presents, consisting of twenty packs of fine robes and some gold-ware worth fully one thousand pesos. [489]
FOOTNOTES
[453] The ruins of the old city, clearly traced by Humboldt, showed that it must have been of far greater extent than the capital raised upon its site by the Spaniards. ”

“ Mexican houses are built to last centuries. It is a common thing to see houses two hundred years old, and they are better than many they are putting up to-day, for they are adopting the American style of building in as small a space as possible, the structures to stand for a few years. The house where Humboldt lived is near the center of the city. It is not kept as a monument to his memory, as one would suppose when they think of the professed love of Mexico for him, but is occupied by a private family. ”

“ Facts like these are vital in the consideration of the future of the Amazon basin and especially its habitability. It was the dream of Humboldt that great cities should arise in the midst of the tropical forests of the Amazon and that the whole lowland plain of that river basin should become the home of happy millions. Humboldt’s vision may have been correct, though a hundred years have brought us but little nearer its realization. Now, as in the past four centuries, man finds his hands too feeble to control the great elemental forces which have shaped history. ”

“ Benavides is a cold man; and to this San Juan owes having been less abused than the other provinces. He has an excellent heart, and is tolerant; envy has little part in his mind; he is patient and tenacious. Afterwards I reflected that reason is impotent in a certain state of culture; its edges are blunted and slip over those smooth and hardened surfaces. Like the generality of men in our countries, he has no clear consciousness of law or of justice. ”

“ Humboldt has somewhere a curious passage; in which, looking on some wretched group of Indians, squatting stupidly round their fires, besmeared with grease and paint, and devouring ants and clay, he somewhat naively remarks, that were it not for science, which teaches us that such is the crude material of humanity, and this the state from which we all have risen, he should have been tempted rather to look upon those hapless beings as the last degraded remnants of some fallen and dying race. ”

“ With this same demon-like tyrant, and the same almost heavenly country, is associated another name, and a reputation as unlike that of José Francia as Hyperion to the Satyr, and which justice to a godlike humanity forbids me to pass over in silence. I speak of Amadé, or, as he is better known, Aimé Bonpland—cognomen appropriate to this most estimable man—known to all the world as the friend and fellow-traveller of Humboldt ”

“ After the long stay made by Humboldt in equinoctial America, the impulse his explorations would doubtless otherwise have given to geographical science was strangely checked by the struggle of the Spanish colonies with the mother country. As soon, however, as the native governments attained to at least a semblance of stability, intrepid explorers rushed to examine this world, so new in the truest sense, for the jealousy of the Spanish had hitherto kept it closed to the investigations of scientific men.
Many naturalists and engineers now travelled or settled in South America. ”

“ Among the scholars who assisted Adelung and Vater in the compilation of the Mithridates, by far the most distinguished was the illustrious Charles William von Humboldt. He was born at Potsdam, in 1767, and received his preliminary education at Berlin. His university studies were made partly at Göttingen, partly at Jena, where he formed the acquaintance and friendship of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and, above all, of Herder, from whose well-known tastes it is highly probable that Humboldt’s mind received the strong philological bias which it exhibited during his life. ”

“ Humboldt breathed the atmosphere of investigation. Old ideas were abandoned; old creeds, hallowed by centuries, were thrown aside; thought became courageous; the athlete, Reason, challenged to mortal combat the monsters of superstition.
333. Humbolt's Travels
Europe becoming too small for his genius, he visited the tropics. He sailed along the gigantic Amazon—the mysterious Orinoco—traversed the Pampas—climbed the Andes until he stood upon the crags of Chimborazo, more than eighteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and climbed on until blood flowed from his eyes and lips. ”

“ The researches of Humboldt which embrace commercial matters may be considered defective and occasionally inaccurate. Embracing in his calculations the commerce of all the Spanish American colonies, and basing them more particularly upon the exports of the precious metals, his deductions are too general to afford information in detail relative to the earlier trade of New Spain. ”

“ It was the laudable ambition of Humboldt,—first entertained at a very early period of life,—to penetrate into distant regions, unknown to the natives of Europe at the time, that he might acquaint himself, in fields of research altogether fresh and new, with men and with nature in their most primitive conditions. In carrying out his design, he journeyed far into the woody wilderness that surrounds the Orinoco, and found [Pg 285] himself among tribes of wild Indians whose very names were unknown to the civilized world. ”

“ After having explored the neighbourhood of Caracas, and ascended the Silla, which, although close to the town, had never been scaled by any native, Humboldt and Bonpland went to Valencia, along the shores of a lake called Tacarigua by the Indians, and exceeding in size that of Neufchâtel in Switzerland. Nothing could give any idea of the richness and variety of the vegetation. But the interest of the lake consists not only in its picturesque and romantic beauty ”

“ At Paris he was well received by Cuvier, Humboldt, and other men of science, attended lectures at the Jardin du Roi, and saw a good deal of society. His letters home often contain interesting references to matters political and social—such as, for example, the following remarks which he heard from the mouth of Humboldt: "You cannot conceive how striking and ludicrous a feature it is in Parisian society at present [Pg 29] that every other man one meets is either minister or ex-minister. ”

“ Humboldt has done much towards correcting the errors which prevailed before his time, but his personal observations were confined to a comparatively small circle, and upon those of others he could not rely. A little time, however, will now add considerably to our stock of information; for amongst the foreigners who are at present exploring the Mexican territory, there are some scientific men, who employ their leisure hours in taking observations, and tracing their route through the various parts of the country, which their avocations oblige them to visit. ”

“ Under an appearance of stupid apathy they veil a great depth of cunning. They are grave and gentle and rather sad in their appearance, when not under the influence of pulque; but when they return to their villages in the evening, and have taken a drop of comfort, their white teeth light up their bronze countenances like lamps, and the girls especially make the air ring with their laughter, which is very musical. I think it is Humboldt who says that their smile is extremely gentle, and the expression of their eyes very severe. ”

“ In this book, which consists of 142 pages, he gives an account of the different coins struck off and the modifications which they experienced at various periods, also of the new system when the administration was assumed by the government. He moreover considers with attention the causes by which the interests of the mining industry suffered and suggests remedies. Being a highly scientific man he did not fail to gain the appreciation of Humboldt, who describes him as 'le savant d'Elhuyar,' and 'Le savant directeur du tribunal de Mineria de Mexico.' Essai Polit, i. ”

“ G. Waldo Erving, formerly American Minister at Madrid, with a preface and notes, under the title of “The Alphabet of the Primitive Language of Spain,” 1829. But Humboldt is to be considered the safe and sufficient authority on the whole subject, for though Astarloa’s work is not without learning and acuteness, yet, as both he and his follower, Erro, labor chiefly to prove, as Larramendi had done long before, that the Basque is the original language of the whole human race, they are led into a great many whimsical absurdities, and must be considered, on the whole, any thing but safe guides. ”

“ Dean Funes, the historian of Buenos Ayres, writing on this subject, cannot suppress his indignation at the apathy of his countrymen, though he attempts, at the same time, to find an excuse for it in an observation of Humboldt's with a simplicity quite worth quoting. He says—"Who doubts that the Spaniards of South America might have carried [Pg 74] on these fisheries at infinitely less cost than the English and North Americans, when their own coasts of Patagonia and round Cape Horn are known to abound in whales, even in the harbours, by all accounts? ”