Vicente Benigno 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Numbers of Cuban families are already encamped in the hotel which Don Benigno has selected for himself, family and friend, and at the table d'hôte where we take our first American meal, the conversation is held exclusively in the Spanish language. Don Benigno is delighted to find himself among his countrymen again, and as the city is over-run with Cuban refugees, he soon meets many of his old friends. Some of them tell him that, having had their property confiscated, and being too old to take part in the revolution, they intend to remain in America, where they hope to improve their fortunes ”

“ Permission had been granted Humboldt by the court to visit the New World, with the privilege of access to official archives. The result of his sojourn in Mexico was his famous treatise on New Spain, 44 [44] containing abstracts of his political and economical observations. Some new ideas crept in upon the people concerning possibilities. With freedom, what might they not achieve! Such was the prevailing feeling which, mingled with the odium against the home government, increased by late acts of oppression, prepared Creoles and natives alike for revolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, one of the most remarkable dramatic poets of a great dramatic age, was a native of that same country, Mexico. Siguenza, as mathematician, historian, antiquary, and poet, has been well esteemed by Humboldt and the scholars of his own race. It is much to say that the land which produced an artist as great as Cabrera also gave birth to a scholar and poet as renowned in her day and as appreciable in ours as Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. ”

“ Crowds of people await outside and escort us to our studio, where dear old Don Benigno, his amiable señora and family, welcome us with joy. Wherever we go, we are lionised and loaded with congratulations and condolence. A kind of patriotic sentiment is mixed up with the public sympathy; Spanish rule being extremely distasteful to a Cuban, and any opportunity for expressing his disgust of an incompetent ruler being hailed by him with delight. All our Cuban friends—and, to say the truth, many of the Spaniards themselves—are unanimous in their disapproval of the commandant's conduct. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ To bring out this point further, I will venture to question a view put forward by William von Humboldt, that in spite of the obvious superiority of the Mexican to the Peruvian language, the civilization of the Incas was yet far above that of the people of Anahuac. [125]
The Peruvian customs were certainly more gentle than the Mexican; and their religious ideas were as inoffensive as those of Montezuma’s subjects were ferocious. In spite of this, their social condition was marked by far less energy and variety. Their crude despotism never developed into more than a dull kind of communism ”

“ By 1553 foundling half-breeds numbered thousands in Spanish America and the viceroy Mendoza was obliged to establish an orphan school for them. Even at the end of the eighteenth century, when Humboldt visited Mexico City, he remarked that of the European-born Spaniards there, not one-tenth were women. The proportion of women must certainly have been still smaller in the provincial towns and on the frontiers. ”

“ Benigno is getting old enough to marry, and he wants to see all the girls in low neck before he makes up his mind." They all swear like troopers, without a thought of profanity. Their mildest expression of surprise is Jesus Maria! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certainly this had caused a slight coolness between him and Don Segis, the chaplain of the Augustinians, but the latter did not dare to show his resentment because it would not have served his purpose to quarrel with his coadjutor. These insinuations to the young girls were sometimes effectual, sometimes not. Don Benigno rarely made them in the ears of an elderly person. We do not know if he thought that Heaven would rather receive a bride of fifteen than one of thirty, or whether he thought the older people were more obstinate and suspicious than the young girls. ”

“ Everybody takes a deep interest in all that is shown by our amicable cicerone, save, perhaps, Don Manuel and his inamorata, who occasionally loiter behind congenial cogwheels, huge coolers, clarifying pans, and other objects used in the process of sugar-making. The attachment which the lovers conceive for this particular portion of Don Benigno's possessions is so great, that it is with difficulty that they are induced to abandon it. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Humboldt believes him vain enough to accept a ministry. It seems to me that Humboldt is much too familiar with Bunsen, and shows him too much friendship. The Queen, says Humboldt, has no Catholic tendencies; on the contrary, she is an arch-Protestant, and even more of a fanatic than the King himself, whom she is constantly urging in this direction. ”

“ With Humboldt he arranged to establish in Cuba a magnetic observatory in correspondence with like institutions in Germany. In 1831 he returned to Cuba, and devoted all his time and energies to the cause of education, assuming the direction of a college from 1834 till 1839. In 1848 he founded the College el Salvador, where many that have attained reputation in Cuba in literature, science, or politics have been educated. La Luz is by general consent the man who has done most for public education in Cuba. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”