boldface refer back to a main entry. The page numbers that
Transcript of boldface refer back to a main entry. The page numbers that
Annotations for Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain
by
Giorleny D. Altamirano Rayos, Tobias Kraft, and Vera M. Kutzinski
Unless context made it more sensible to do otherwise, we have annotated a reference or allusion
at its first occurrence. Entries in boldface refer back to a main entry. The page numbers that
precede each entry refer to the pagination of Alexander von Humboldt’s 1826 French edition;
those page numbers are are printed in the margins of our translation of the Political Essay on the
Kingdom of New Spain. In that edition, the names and concepts that appear in SMALL CAPS in the
annotations are marked with an ▼.
Weights and Measures
What follows are some of the most common weights and measures that Alexander von Humboldt
regularly uses. This is not an exhaustive list.
ACRE: an old English unit of surface area equivalent to 4,840 square yards (or about 4,046.85
square meters) in the USA and Canada. The standard unit of measurement for surface area in the
UK, an acre in its earliest English uses was probably the amount of land that one yoke of oxen
could plow in a day. Its value varied slightly in Ireland, Scotland, and England. In France, the
size of the acre varied depending on region. Humboldt states that an acre is 4,029 square meters.
2
ARPENT: a unit either of length or of land area used in France, Québec, and Louisiana from the sixteenth
to the eighteenth century. The main measurement for land throughout France (sometimes called
the French acre), the arpent varied in value depending on region. When used as a linear
measurement, as was sometimes the case in Québec, it was equivalent to about 192 feet (58.5
meters). An arpent d’ordonnance (also called the arpent des eaux et forêts, grand arpent, arpent
de roi, or legal arpent) equaled 51.07 ares or 1.26 acres (5,107 square meters); the arpent
commun of the provinces, 42.20 ares or 1.04 acres (4,220 square meters); and the arpent de Paris,
34.19 ares or 0.84 acres (3,419 square meters). An arpent of 3,418.89 square meters (36,800.40
square feet) is still used in Québec. Humboldt mostly uses the legal arpent, giving it an
equivalent of 50 ares or 1.23 acres (half hectare, 5,000 square meters).
ARROBA: one fourth of a quintal; an old Spanish unit of weight of 24–36 lbs (11–16 kg), with regional
variations. In Spain, New Spain, Peru, and Chile, an arroba equaled 25 Castilian pounds or 11.50
kg. In Portugal and its territories, an arroba equaled about 32 lbs (14.68 kg); in Argentina, 25.32
lbs (11.485 kg); in New Granada, 27.55 lbs (12.5 kg). Humboldt gives its value at 11.49 kg, that
is, closest to the Castilian pound. As a measure of volume, the arroba equaled 32.33 L for liquids
in Chile; in Spain, 12.56 L for oil, 15.64 L for water, and 16.13 L for wine. The arroba as a
measure of weight is still used in some Latin American countries and in Brazil.
BRASSE: a unit of length used in France to measure the depth of water at sea; originally, it equaled the
greater length of two extended arms. Prior to the eighteenth century, a brasse’s value was
between 1.6 and 1.9 meters (5–6 pieds); thereafter, it became equivalent to 1.624 meters (5
pieds). Also brassée or French fathom.
BURGOS FEET (pies de Burgos): a unit of length of about 10.95 inches (27.83 cm). The vara de Burgos,
also called vara de Castilla, which was 32.87 inches (83.50 cm), became the official length for a
vara in Castilian Spain. A vara de Burgos was divided into three tercias or feet, as well as into
four medias tercias or palmos and two medias or codos.
3
BUSHEL: a British measure of volume for grains equivalent to about 36.37 liters. Identical to the 1697
British Winchester bushel, the bushel in the USA equals about 35.24 liters (2,150.42 cubic
inches). As a unit of mass, the bushel is equal to 60 lbs (about 27.21 kg) for wheat and soybeans
in the USA. Humboldt states that a bushel of wheat weighs 30 kg.
CABALLERÍA: a unit of land area in Spanish-speaking countries in Europe and the Americas, including
Texas and the Caribbean, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The caballería varied in
value in the Americas. In New Spain and Central America, it was equivalent to about 105 acres
(42 hectares); in Cuba, 33.16 acres (13.42 hectares). In Puerto Rico, the caballería was a larger
unit equal to 194 acres (78.51 hectares); in Spain, it equaled about 100 acres (40 hectares).
Humboldt gives 32.15 acres (13.01 hectares) for a caballería de tierra in Havana.
CORDEL (literally: rope): a unit of distance in Spain and its colonies used to measure land. It equaled
about 138.9 feet (42.33 meters) in New Spain; in Cuba it was about 66.80 feet (20.35 meters).
CWT (hundredweight): a unit of weight measurement created by USA merchants in the late 1800s; it
equals 100 pounds (45.35 kg). The “C” represents the Roman numeral for 100, and the letters
“W” and “T” abbreviate weight. Humboldt converts one CWT into 112 lbs (50.80 kg), which is
identical to the British hundredweight.
DUCAT: an ancient trade currency used in Europe. A silver ducat was first minted by Roger II of Sicily,
Duke of Apulia, in the twelfth century. A gold ducat was first minted in the thirteenth century in
Venice (Italy). Officially approved in the sixteenth century, the gold ducat was the standard gold
coin in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century. A gold ducat weighed about 3.4 grams of
0.986 gold. A silver ducat (ducado de plata) was used in Spain and its colonies in the seventeenth
century. Austria (1901–15) and Czechoslovakia (1923–38) issued gold ducats in the twentieth
century.
FANEGA: an old unit of volume, mass, or surface area used in Spain and its territories; its value varied
regionally. As a unit of capacity, the fanega before 1900 oscillated between 50 and 288 liters
4
(Spain, 55 L; Mexico, 90.80 L; Chile, 96.99 L; Argentina: 137.19 L; Paraguay, 288 L). As a unit
of mass, a fanega was equal to 202.4 lbs (92 kg) in Central America before 1912 and 141.7 lbs
(64.41 kg) in Peru before 1869. As a surface area, the fanega equaled 11,183 m2 in Cuba before
1882 and 35,662 m2 in Mexico before 1896. In addition, a fanegada was used to measure surface
area in Spain and Peru; a fanegada was about 3,144m2 in Peru and 6,439m2 in Spain. Humboldt
states that a fanega equals four arrobas or 120 livres (45 kg).
GROS: a French weight unit equal to 3.8242 grams; between 1800 and 1812 it was equal to 10 grams. It
was synonymous with the drachme, a weight unit typically used in medicine.
LIVRE: the principal unit of weight used in French-speaking countries and in Greece, where it was known
as litra. The livre esterlin, equivalent to 367.1 grams, became the first French standard used
between the late eighth century and the middle of the fourteenth. King John II (1319–64) of
France introduced the livre poids de marc or livre de Paris in the 1350s. Equal to 489.506 grams
and divided into 2 marcs (16 ounces), the livre de Paris was used until 1800. During that time,
physicians used the medical livre (equal to the livre esterlin of 367.1 grams), and merchants used
the livre marchande of 15 ounces (or 459 grams) for weighing silk. From 1800 to 1812, the livre
métrique was equal to 1 kg; from 1812 to 1814, however, it was equivalent to 500 grams. The
livre is still used in modern France as an informal metric unit equal to 500 grams, which
corresponds to the traditional Greek litra. Humboldt uses 489 grams for the livre de Paris.
LIVRE TOURNOIS (literally: pound from Tours): a French gold coin introduced in the seventeenth century
and subdivided into 20 sols. It was often referred to as franc, an older French monetary unit from
the fourteenth century. After the French Revolution in 1795, livres tournois were replaced by the
new Franc.
LOT (or LOTH): a unit of weight in German-speaking countries equivalent to about 14.61 grams. In Russia
it equaled 12.79 grams, in Switzerland 15.62 grams. Also a measure of capacity for liquids in
France, a lot had a different value depending on the city and on the liquid being measured.
5
LOUIS (also: Louis d’or): a French gold coin created in 1640 under Louis XIII (1601–43). In 1726, the
Coin Acts, which aimed at monetary stabilization, created a new Louis d’or equivalent to 24
livres tournois. Used widely in Europe, this gold coin was minted up to 1795, when it was
abolished in favor of the decimal system and replaced by the Franc.
MARK: a weight equal to 0.5 livre poids de marc or 8 ounces (244.753 grams). The mark at Paris could
subsequently be subdivided in 64 gros, 160 estelins, 192 deniers, 320 mailles, 640 félins, or 4608
grains. For gold transactions, the mark was equal to 768 grains.
MYRIARE: a metric measure of surface equal to one million square meters (about 247.1 acres). Myria-, a
now-obsolete metric prefix meaning ten thousand (10,000), was used in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century. Myriagrams equal ten thousand grams (10 kg); myriameters 6.21 miles (10
km).
PERTICA (from Lat. perch, round pole): an ancient Roman unit of length. Also called decempeda, it was a
measuring rod two paces (10 feet) in length. The pertica militaris was used to measure plots of
land assigned to veterans in military colonies.
PIASTER: a unit of currency originally equal to one silver dollar or peso. Original French word for the
USAmerican dollar; modern French uses dollar for this unit of currency as well. Slang for USA
dollars in the Francophone Caribbean, especially in Haiti.
PIASTRE FORTE (Spanish dollar): a small silver coin. In Spain and its colonies, it was also known as peso
duro, peso fuerte, or piastra fuerte. From 1730–72, it was equivalent to 4 pesetas or 8 reales de
plata of Mexico, or 11 deniers. After 1772, it was worth 10 reales de plata nueva or 10 deniers.
PICUL: a unit of weight in Southeast Asia and China equivalent to about 133 pounds (60 kg).
PIED DU ROI: a traditional French unit of length equivalent to about 32.48 cm (or 12.79 inches).
PUD (also pood): a Russian unit of weight for 40 Russian pounds (funt). It is equivalent to about 36.113
pounds (16.3805 kg).
6
QUINTAL: also hundredweight, which initially corresponded to about 100 lbs (or 45.35 kg) and later to
112 lbs (c. 50.80 kg). In Spain, New Spain, Peru, and Chile, the quintal equaled 100 Castilian
pounds or four arrobas (46.025 kg). Humboldt gives 45.970 kg as its equivalent in New Spain.
In France, as in Belgium, the national standard quintal poids de marc was 100 livres (48.951 kg)
until the introduction of the 100 kg quintal via the metric system. In Argentina and Paraguay, it
was equal to 45.94 kg; in Portugal and Brazil, 58.75 kg; and in Colombia and Venezuela, 50 kg.
Humboldt states that at Freiberg one quintal equaled 110 livres (53.845 kg). The measure is still
used in some German-speaking countries.
REES: One hundred rees were equivalent to seven pence in English money in 1826.
SÉTIER: an old French unit of capacity typically used for dry goods, equivalent to about 151.68 L.
Although its value varied according to location and goods, a sétier of wine was 7.45 L, of salt
208.13 L, and of oats 312.20 L. Between 1812 and 1840, the sétier was equivalent to 100 L.
Derived from sextarius (sixth part), an antique Roman measure of capacity, one sétier de Paris of
dry goods was equal to 12 boisseau de Paris or 48 quart de Paris.
SOLES: past and present currency in several Latin American countries.
TAEL (Chinese liang): a unit of weight in East Asia equal to about one ounce; its weight and value varied
by region. As a basic unit of currency in China, it was equivalent to about one ounce of silver.
TERCIO: an old measure of weight in parts of Central America and the Caribbean, equal to about 150
pounds; in New Spain it equaled 162 lbs (73.63 kg). As a unit of length, it was equivalent to
27.97 cm.
VARA (stick or pole): a traditional Spanish and Portuguese unit of distance that varied in value depending
on region. In Spanish America, it was typically about 33 inches. Often used in land measurement
in Texas as equal to 33⅓ inches (84.667 cm), 33 inches (83.82 cm) in California, but only 32.993
inches (83.802 cm) in Mexico, and about 34 inches (86.4 cm) in the Southern Cone. The Spanish
vara equaled 32.908 inches (or 83.587 cm), whereas the Portuguese vara equaled 5 palmos
7
(palms), about 43.3 inches (110 cm). The Brazilian vara was 43.7 inches (111 cm). Humboldt
states that the Mexican vara was equal to 83.90 cm, close to the Spanish vara.
VOIE: a measure of volume for transported goods at Paris, which varied in value between goods. For coal,
it was 11.707 hectoliters; for firewood 1.919 m3; for free stone 5.142 decistere; for plaster 3.122
hectoliters; and for quarry stone 6.855 decistere. A voie of charcoal referred to the amount a
person could carry in a sack.
ZOLOTNIK: a Russian measure of mass equal to about 4.25 grams.
Annotations to Volume I
I.xi. Humboldt’s publisher inserted this preface and his own footnotes throughout. The footnotes
are marked as E.—R. and are distinct from Humboldt’s own.
I.xv. British antiques collector and naturalist William BULLOCK (1780s–1849) opened a museum
in Liverpool between 1795 and 1801. A successful and popular cabinet of curiosities, Bullock’s
museum displayed works of art, objects of natural history, arms and armory, as well as
curiosities brought by Captain Cook to England. In 1809, he moved his museum to London.
The Liverpool Museum, as it was called, gained prominence after 1812 when it was housed in
the specially commissioned Egyptian Hall (Piccadilly, London); the museum was auctioned in
1819. Traveling to Mexico in 1822, Bullock collected several artifacts of Middle American
history, including plaster casts of a calendar stone, a sacrificial stone, pyramids of Teotihuacán,
and pictographical manuscripts and maps. Back in England since 1823, Bullock opened an
exhibit of ancient and contemporary Mexican artifacts in the Egyptian Hall in April 1824.
Selling his collection, he traveled to Mexico in 1825 to engage in the mining business. Because
of his failed venture in Mexico, he moved back to Britain (1827–1828), to try his luck in the
8
United States. He moved back to England by 1840. From his first trip to Mexico William
published Six Months’ Residence and Travels in Mexico (London: J. Murray, 1824). His trip to
the USA is recounted in Sketch of a Journey through the Western States of North America
(1827). George Bullock (1778/82–1818), the British cabinetmaker and sculptor, is his brother.
I.2. Humboldt refers to the “Tablas geográfico-políticas del Reino de Nueva España,” in which
he first summarized the results of his research on the country. In 1804, he offered this
preliminary study, which would become the starting point for The Political Essay on the
Kingdom of New Spain and was superseded by it, to viceroy Iturrigaray. Excerpts from the
“Tablas”—the sections about area and population—appeared in the journal El Diario de México
in May 1807. For information on a recent reprint, see Humboldt’s Library.
I.3. In the mid-eighteenth century, provincial INTENDANTS came to replace the earlier district
magistrates. The intendants symbolized Spain’s innovative practice of appointing salaried
military and civilian career officials as colonial administrators. Intendants were effectively
financial commissioners whose main function was to collect revenue for the Spanish Crown. In
New Spain, José de Gálvez y Gallardo set up a system of intendancies in 1768. Approved in
1769, the first interim intendancy was that of Arizpe (or Sonora/Sinaloa). Pedro de Corbalán (r.
1771–1787) served as Arizpe’s interim intendant for sixteen years; he received a permanent
appointment in 1776 and stayed in office until 1787. Although the intendancy system was
initiated in 1771, it was not formalized for all of New Spain until December 1786 in the Real
ordenanza para el establecimiento e instrucción de intendentes de ejército y provincia en el
reino de Nueva España (Royal ordinance for the establishment of military and provincial
intendants in the Kingdom of New Spain). This ordinance led to the creation of twelve
9
intendancies: Mexico City, Puebla de los Ángeles, Nueva Veracruz, Antequera de Oaxaca,
Mérida de Yucatán, Valladolid de Michoacán, Santa Fé de Guanajuato, San Luis de Potosí,
Guadalajara, Zacatecas, Durango, and Arizpe. The intendancy system, which survived the
Mexican Revolution, was not legally abolished until 1824.
I.5. One of four Spanish vice-royalties, New Spain consisted then of the areas of today’s Mexico
(without Chiapas), the captaincies-general of Guatemala (with Chiapas) and Habana, and the
areas of today’s USAmerican states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, and
Florida. Humboldt traveled in parts of today’s Mexican states of Guerrero, Morelos, Mexico,
Hidalgo, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michaocán, Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Veracruz (see Figure 1 in our
Introduction).
I.6. German mathematician and astronomer Jabbo OLTMANNS (1783–1833) played a major role
in assembling and revising the astronomical and barometrical results of Humboldt’s
measurements in the Americas. He held a professorship in Berlin since 1824 and worked closely
with Humboldt on the Recueil d’observations astronomiques (Collection of astronomical
observations).
I.7. Like Humboldt, the Basque chemist, metallurgist, and mineralogist Fausto de ELHUYAR Y DE
ZUBICE (also DELHUYAR or D’Elhuyar, 1755–1833) studied under Abraham Gottlob Werner at
the Freiberg School of Mines in Saxony. Together with his brother, Juan José de Elhuyar,
another Freiberg alumn, Fausto discovered the metal tungsten (wolfram) in 1783. Humboldt did
not meet either at Freiberg, as they had both left when he arrived in 1791. Instead, he made the
acquaintance of another young Spaniard, Andrés del Río. In 1786, Elhuyar led a scientific
expedition to the mines of New Spain, accompanied by eleven German colleagues from
10
Freiberg. His hope was to modernize the mining production in the colony. His brother headed a
similar expedition in New Granada. That same year, Fausto became director of the Real Tribunal
de Minería, the Mining Board in Mexico City, and, four years later, laid out the plan for a
Colegio de Minería, a College of Mines, which would open its doors on January 1, 1792, as the
Royal School of Mines (Real Seminario de Minería). Fausto directed this institution for thirty
years, at the same time that he was also director-general of mines for all of Mexico. Humboldt’s
mineralogical studies benefited significantly from his close collaboration with Fausto de Elhuyar
and the Saxon scholars who gathered large amounts of data during their expeditions. See also
Velázquez, Joaquín; Sonneschmidt.
I.8. Haidar ‘Ali Khan, known as HYDER ALI (1722–82), was the Dalavai (commander-in-chief)
and de facto pādshāh (emperor) of Mysore between 1761 and 1782. A Muslim soldier, he
exercised power during the Hindu Wodeyar Dynasty in the late 1750s, the head of which
remained nominal ruler until Indian independence in 1947. In the second half of the eighteenth
century, during the Carnatic Wars that the French and the British East India Company fought
over territory, Hyder Ali consolidated his power, successfully challenging the expansion of
British power in southern India. With his remarkable grasp of European warfare and politics,
Hyder Ali waged two victorious wars against the British, in 1767–1769 and 1778–1781. His son,
Fath ‘Ali Khan, known as TIPU SULTAN (c. 1753–1799), inherited the kingdom of Mysore in
1782. The British eventually defeated and killed Tipu Sultan in Seringapatam, his capital.
I.11. For lack of reliable geometrical information, most eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
navigators had to establish their own measurements to know the exact course of their travel
11
routes. For CHRONOMETRIC measurements based on the movement of time, a precise and portable
timekeeper was set to a fixed geographical position; the time of this location could then be
compared to the ship’s actual position. The difference between the chronometer’s time and the
ship’s local time, which was established by observing the stars, determined the exact longitude.
By pointing to his method of establishing a “single system of coordinates” with his own
instruments, Humboldt indicates that his American measurements were exact, his methods
modern. Humboldt’s own portable chronometer, which he describes at the beginning of his
Personal Narrative, was built by Pierre-Louis Berthoud (1754–1813), nephew of the famous
French chronometer-maker Ferdinand Berthoud (1727–1807). It was among the most advanced
chronometers of its time and a perfect travel companion resistant to clock drifts caused by
sudden movement or changes in temperature or air humidity. Before Humboldt’s departure, the
instrument had been tested at the French Marine’s Observatory in Marseille for eighteen
consecutive days, where it only differed from the planetary clockwork by a third of a second.
Unmatched in preciseness, this chronometer was also very robust and its mechanics stayed
unaffected even while in a canoe, as Humboldt was to find out on his trip down the Orinoco
River. Because of its unmatched accuracy, this timekeeper was so precious to Humboldt that he
designated one of his indigenous carriers for its transportation alone. When he departed from
Mexico City, Humboldt donated the instrument to Fausto Elhuyar’s Royal School of Mines.
This particular chronometer (model 27) might have been sold or lent to Humboldt by Jean-
Charles Borda himself. As Humboldt enthusiastically points out, his chronometer had once
belonged to the “great Borda,” the famous French mathematician and naval general with whom
Humboldt had specified the magnetic inclination of the Paris Observatory in 1798. Magnetic
inclination (or magnetic dip), which Robert Norman (c. 1550–1600) first described in 1581, is
12
the angle that a compass needle makes with the horizon at any point on the earth’s surface. See
also Observation, astronomical. See also Chronometer.
I.11. Geographer and cartographer Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D’ANVILLE (1697–1782) was the
first geographer of the King of France. He greatly improved the standards of map-making by
revising his 1743 atlas frequently. Humboldt owned D’Anville’s Nouvel Atlas de la Chine (1737;
New atlas of China), his Carte de la Province de Quito au Perou (1751; A map of Quito
province in Peru), which was based on the journals of Charles-Marie de La Condamine, and
his Orbis veteribus notus (1763; A new general atlas of modern geography).
I.12. Explorers, mathematicians, and astronomers, both Pierre BOUGUER (1698–1758) and
Charles-Marie de LA CONDAMINE (1701–1774) were members of the scientific expedition Louis
Godin (1704–60) led to the Province of Quito in the Viceroyalty of Peru (now in Ecuador). In
1735, the French Academy of Sciences dispatched two expeditions, one to South America,
another to Lapland, to settle the question of Earth’s precise shape. Once the scientists, along with
their Spanish colleagues Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilia, reached Quito, they
split the expedition in two, each carrying out geodesic measurements and surveying Ecuador’s
north–south mountain range. During his explorations, La Condamine became fascinated by the
rubber trees, curare poison and its antidote, and quinine made from cinchona bark. Bouguer
made observations in the mountains and discovered that the density of local rocks influenced the
Earth’s gravity (this was later called the Bouguer anomaly). Bouguer returned to Paris in 1743
via Cartagena. La Condamine reached Paris two years later via Pará, after traveling down the
Amazon River with Pedro Maldonado. Once back in Paris, both scientists resumed the rivalry
that had begun during their expedition in the form of a bitter feud over their publications within
13
the Academy of Sciences. Bouguer was the first to present the expedition’s report to the
Academy of Sciences (it appeared in the Memoires in 1744), then published it separately as La
Figure de la Terre (1749; The shape of the Earth). He authored many other works, including
Traité du navire (1746; Treatise on navigation), the first modern text on naval architecture
written by a scientist. La Condamine reported his journey to the Academy a year later, in 1745.
His report included his adventurous trip down the Amazon and his efforts to map the river’s
course and tributaries. In 1751, he published his report separately as Journal du voyage fait par
ordre du Roi, à l’Équateur (Journal of the voyage to the Equator, made on orders of the King). In
addition to several other scientific volumes based on his travels, La Condamine authored
Mésures des trois premiers degrés du Méridien dans l’hémisphère austral (Measurements of the
three first degrees of the meridian in the southern hemisphere) and Histoire des Pyramides de
Quito (History of the pyramids of Quito), both published in 1751.
I.14. Appointed first Surveyor-general of Bengal in 1756, James RENNELL (1742–1830) was also
the first English geographer to establish a scientific approach to the study of geography and
geology based on exploration. Scientific pioneers, such as Rennell and the German naturalist
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), one of Humboldt’s most influential teachers,
instilled in the Prussian the importance of what contemporary scholarship has called experiential
knowledge. Humboldt, in Views of Nature, considered Rennell his “honored friend” and
frequently quoted from his works.
Establishing geographical measurements of a place and, by way of determining latitude and
longitude, the position of that place, was not a trivial exercise in Humboldt’s day. One of
Humboldt’s methods of time keeping was based on astronomical movement: measuring lunar
14
distances (that is, measuring the angles between the moons of Jupiter and fixed stars) and
observing the Galilean Moons of Jupiter. Lunar distances require extremely accurate angular
measurements for which two different instruments were perfected during the eighteenth century:
the reflecting and REPEATING CIRCLE (also known as Borda circle) and the SEXTANT. It usually
took two people to determine the sun’s zenith, in this case, Aimé Bonpland who announced the
local time in intervals of 30 seconds, and Humboldt who determined the sun’s position from just
before until after noon. The highest angle was the point of zenith. Invented by British Admiral
John Campbell (c. 1720–1790) to measure the altitude of celestial bodies, the sextant originally
had an arc of one-sixth of a circle or 60º (hence its name). Humboldt had one of each: a sextant
by Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800) and a Borda repeating circle built by Étienne Lenoir (1744–
1832). The Ramsden sextant was probably Humboldt’s most frequently used instrument, and it
was one of his finest. Humboldt also used a three-foot achromatic telescope by the London
manufacturer Peter Dollond (1735–1820). The movements of celestial bodies were only useful in
combination with complex charts in which their positions relative to the Earth’s surface had been
determined for each hour of the year. These charts had been in use since Jean-Felix Picard’s
(1620–82) annual publication Connaissances des temps of 1679. However, when Captain John
Garnier (d. c. 1801) gave Humboldt the much-needed and most recent edition of the British
Nautical Almanac during their boat trip along the shores of Cumaná in August 1800, the Prussian
was able to take measurements with much greater accuracy. The Almanac, which Humboldt had
tried desperately but unsuccessfully to obtain before his departure, was much more precise than
its French counterpart.
I.14. While sextants, chronometers, and telescopes were helpful for determining longitude while
traveling at sea and on land, BAROMETERS that measured atmospheric pressure were commonly
15
used to predict short-term changes in the local weather. The barometer was also used to ascertain
the leveling of the immediate surroundings, a basic and easy-to-obtain measurement on which
Humboldt relied heavily. This was “a highly precise operation” especially in the tropics, where
the barometer remained unaffected by temperature changes. Together with his chronometrical
and astronomical measurements, these data became indispensable for Humboldt when he drew
up his famous maps—maps prominently displayed in the Atlas géographique et physique des
régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (Geographical and physical atlas of the equinoctial
regions of the New Continent) and in the Atlas géographique et physique du royaume de la
Nouvelle-Espagne (Geographical and physicial atlas of the kingdom of New Spain) that
accompanies this edition.
I.15. Together with Jean Baptiste Joseph DELAMBRE (1749–1822), with whom Humboldt was in
contact during his entire voyage, astronomer and hydrographer Pierre François André Méchain
(1744–1804) had measured the meridian arc from Dunkirk, France, to Barcelona, Spain, in the
mid-1790s. Their aim had been to establish a basis for the units of length in the metric system for
the French national legislature.
I.15. Franz Xaver Freiherr von ZACH (1754–1832) was a German–Hungarian astronomer who
worked under the patronage of Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804). Zach built
an observatory—one of the most important of its time—on the Seeberg near Gotha and directed
it from 1791, when it was completed, until 1806. During this period, Zach enlisted twenty-four
astronomers from across Europe in a systematic search for new comets and for the planet
between Mars and Saturn, expected to be there on the basis of Johann Elert Bode’s (1747–1826)
law (the Titius–Bode law). The main result of this effort was the discovery of several minor
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planets (commonly called asteroids). Zach’s most lasting achievement was editing three
scientific journals from 1798 to 1826.
I.15. Astronomer and physicist Johann Tobias BÜRG (1766–1834) was university professor in
Vienna from 1792 to 1813. Together, Triesnecker and Bürg edited and published the journal
Ephemerides Astronomicae. The “Tabulae Mercurii, Martis, Veneris, Solares” and observational
data on the sun, moon, planets, and positions of stars were printed in this periodical between
1787 and 1806.
I.15. Leipzig-born astronomer and mathematician Johann Karl BURCKHARDT (1773–1825, also
known as Jean Charles) was trained by Zach. Upon moving to Paris in 1797, Burckhardt became
an adjunct member of Bureau des Longitudes. Working with Pierre Simon de Laplace, he
completed 4,000 astronomical observations of the moon to improve the accuracy of Bürg’s lunar
tables. The French Bureau des Longitudes published the tables as Tables astronomiques (1812).
Burckhardt’s lunar tables, which served as the basis for the French and British lunar ephemerides
until 1861, were based on Laplace’s theory of celestial mechanics. In addition to publishing
division tables (Tables des diviseurs, 1814, 1816, 1817), he translated Laplace’s work on
celestial mechanics into German as Mechanik des Himmels (1800). Burckhardt became a French
citizen in 1803 and a full member of the Bureau des Longitudes in 1817.
I.16. Humboldt’s “Chevalier de Croix” was the Spanish general Carlos Francisco DE CROIX,
marquis de Croix (1699–1786), who was the forty-fifth viceroy of New Spain (1766–71). These
were turbulent times for the colony, including Indian revolts and labor unrests in the silver
mines. In 1767, King Charles III of Spain ordered de Croix to expel the Jesuits from New
Spain, among them the distinguished scholar Francisco Javier Clavijero. De Croix
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accomplished this with the help of colonial inspector José de Gálvez y Gallardo. The king’s
support for the Inquisition and resulting acts of censorship fueled the budding tensions between
New Spain’s Criollo elite and the Peninsular colonial regime. De Croix returned to Spain upon
being succeeded as viceroy by Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa.
I.16. Spaniards or Americans of Spanish descent conquered the northern frontier of New Spain
(present-day Florida, Texas, New Mexico, southern Arizona, and the California coast) by
converting the indigenous population to Catholicism. Unlike the British colonizers in New
England, who killed or displaced the indigenous population, Spain established three types of
settlements to transform the indigenous population into subjects of the Spanish Crown: missions,
presidios or forts, and pueblos or towns. Jesuit priest Eusebio Francisco Kino established the
missions of PIMERÍA ALTA (literally: upper Pima land) to convert the local indigenous peoples. In
1687, Kino began baptizing at the village of Cosari. He then established the mission of Dolores,
which served as a headquarters for all of the Pimería Alta in today’s southern Arizona (USA) and
northern Sonora (Mexico). The indigenous peoples who lived in the Pimería Alta, the northern
border of Spanish colonization, were the Pima (Akimel O’odham or “river people”), the Papago
(Babawi O'odham or “tepary bean people”), the Gileño peoples, and the now-extinct Soba and
Sobaipuri.
I.16. Plains peoples of the southwestern United States, the APACHE are an Athabascan-speaking
tribe that lives in present-day Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. At the time of contact with
Spanish missionaries in the late sixteenth century, the Apache were established in present-day
Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico. Apaches split culturally into Western and
Eastern Apache in 1300. The Western Apache, which include the Tonto Apache, lived in a
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territory stretching from San Francisco Peaks into Arizona, bordering the lands of the Pima. The
Apache were successful in fighting off invasions by Spain, Mexico, and the USA until the end of
the nineteenth century.
I.17n. Roger BARRY (1752–1813), a Lazarist priest, became an astronomer at the Mannheim
Observatory in Germany in 1788. Barry had been taught by the Jesuits at Nancy, entered the
Lazarist Order in Paris in 1769, and was trained in astronomy by Joseph-Jérôme Lalande
around 1787. In 1794, when the Napoleonic troops invaded Germany, the French captured
Mannheim. Barry had to flee the French invasion without his instruments. The French arrested
him in 1799 on charges that he had helped French immigrants, but he was exonerated. The small
planet Barry, discovered in 1930, is named after him.
I.17n. Maurice HENRY (1763–1825), Barry’s assistant, was also a Lazarist priest and an
astronomer trained by Lalande. Although Henry had sought to become a missionary in China, he
moved to Mannheim in 1789 to work with Barry.
I.17n. Jesuit astronomer Christian MAYER (1719–83) was a professor for mathematics and
physics at the University of Heidelberg. In 1762, he was appointed Royal Astronomer and built
two observatories, one in Schwetzingen, the other in Mannheim. As the director of the latter,
Mayer pioneered the systematic study of double stars, on which he published his last major
work, Gründliche Vertheidigung neuer Beobachtungen von Fixsterntrabanten (1778;
Comprehensive defense of new observations on fixed star satellites).
I.17n. The QUADRANT mentioned here was manufactured by John Bird (1709–1776) in London
and sold to Humboldt by Pierre Bernard Megnié (1751–1807) during his stay in Madrid prior his
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departure for the Americas in 1799. Quadrants were used for measuring altitude. Typically
consisting of a graduated arc of 90 degrees with an index or vernier, they usually had a plumb
line or spirit level for fixing the vertical and horizontal direction. Yet, while the instrument had
initially appealed to Humboldt, he soon considered it a useless travel burden and sold it to José
Ignacio de Pombo in Cartagena. Pombo later gave it to Francisco Caldas, together with more
than thirty books from Humboldt.
I.17n. Pierre Charles LE MONNIER (also Lemonnier [1715–99]) was a French astronomer from a
distinguished family of natural scientists and philosophers. In 1736, he presented an intricate
lunar map to the French Royal Academy of Sciences, was admitted to it as adjunct geometer, and
then was appointed professor of physics at the Collège de France. His most prominent pupil at
the College was Joseph-Jérôme Lalande. An outstanding observational astronomer who
introduced English astronomical ideas and scientific instruments to France, Le Monnier
significantly advanced the practice and precision of astronomical measurement in France. He is
particularly known for his work on lunar motion, Observations de la lune, du soleil, et des étoiles
fixes (1751–75; Observation of the moon, the sun, and the fixed stars). Worth mentioning is also
his Description et usage des principaux instruments d'astronomie (1774; Description and use of
the major astronomical instruments).
I.18. Commodore Dionisio Alcalá GALIANO (1760–1805, also Galeano) was a Spanish
cartographer and explorer who met Humboldt in Havana. After graduating from the Naval
Academy in 1775, Galiano worked under Vicente Tofiño de San Miguel (1732–95) on a
hydrographic expedition off the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula (1784–85). As junior lieutenant,
Galiano was in charge of astronomical observations and cartography for Antonio de Córdoba’s
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(c. 1740–1811) expedition to chart the Strait of Magellan (1785–86). Because of his scientific
experience, Galiano was recruited as main astronomer for the Malaspina Expedition, during
which he was promoted from senior lieutenant to commander. On the surveying expedition to the
Pacific Northwest in 1792, Galiano commanded the ship Sútil and Antonio Valdés y Fernández
Bazán (1744–1816) the Mexicana. That expedition was the first to complete a detailed survey of
the Strait of Juan de Fuca and to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. After his scientific
expeditions, Galiano was promoted to the rank of commodore. He died in the Battle of Trafalgar
while commanding the Bahama. In addition to the journals of his American expeditions, Galiano
published works on astronomical observation.
I.18. José ESPINOSA y Tello (1763–1815) headed the Depósito Hidrográfico (Hydrographic
Office) in Madrid. He was succeeded in this position by Felipe Bauzá, a former shipmate from
the second Malaspina Expedition. In a letter to Heinrich Berghaus (1797–1884) in early 1828,
Humboldt wrote: “May I ask you please to return the Espinosa to me in a week or two, because I
use this book often. You know that it is old and needs to be handled with care.” The book in
question was Espinosa’s 1809 Memorias sobre las observaciones astronómicas (Report about
astronomical observations).
I.18. The role Felipe BAUZÁ y Cana (1764–1834) played in the Malaspina Expedition exceeded
that of a scientist. A sketcher and naval officer, he was in charge of the maps, hydrographic
charts, and landscape drawings that were to be produced during the voyage and for which
Malaspina had retained several painters. Bauzá kept Humboldt well informed about the details of
Malaspina’s expedition; his letters were an important resource as the Prussian naturalist prepared
for his own voyage to the Americas. Bauzá is frequently mentioned in Humboldt’s Political
21
Essay of the Island of Cuba in connection with the hydrographic measurements that both
scientists exchanged over the years. Bauzá shared data from the Malaspina Expedition and
from his work as director of the Depósito Hidrográfico in Madrid.
I.18. Placed in charge of the astronomical and geodetic observations on the vessel Santa Eulalia
during Antonio de Córdoba’s second voyage to the Strait of Magellan (1788–89), Spanish naval
officer, mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer Ciriaco CEVALLOS y de Bustillo (1764–
1816) gained significant experience in astronomical work. Promoted to senior lieutenant in 1789,
he joined the Malaspina Expedition in Acapulco in 1791. Four years later, Cevallos advanced
to the rank of commander, and in 1795 he was appointed military attaché to the Spanish
Ambassador in Paris. As post-captain in Veracruz, Cevallos carried out cartographic surveys of
the Yucatán peninsula. He retired from the navy in 1809 and died in New Orleans seven years
later.
I.18. Mexican astronomer and archeologist Antonio León y GAMA (1735–1802) published the
first exact observation of the longitude of Mexico, which the astronomer Joseph-Jérôme
Lalande, one of Humboldt’s close contacts, brought to wider attention.
I.18. After his ship’s capture by the British, Spanish astronomer José Joaquín FERRER y Cafranga
(1763–1818) was imprisoned in England from 1780–86. Thanks to his family’s influence, he was
able to use his prison time for studies and discovered his aptitude for mathematics and
astronomy. Once freed, he traveled first to Peru and then to Mexico. The astronomical
measurements he took in the Americas, including on the Island of Cuba, earned him the
recognition of the American Philosophical Society, of which he became a member in 1801.
Having lived in the USA for some time, from where he corresponded with Humboldt and Franz
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Xaver Zach, Ferrer returned to Europe in 1814 to work at Greenwich and at the Cádiz
observatory. He died in Bilbao.
I.18. In 1802, Spanish military officer Manuel Díaz DE HERRERA explored the Yucatán peninsula
with Ciriaco Cevallos, then naval commander at Veracruz. Both Cevallos and Herrera had left
Cádiz for the Yucatán on the Santo Domingo in May 1802. When he took part in the
cartographic surveys of the peninsula and the Bay of Campeche, senior lieutenant Herrera
commanded the Saeta; Cevallos was on board the Volador. As a result of the survey expedition,
they drew a detailed and accurate map of the Yucatán peninsula and the Bay of Campeche in the
Gulf of Mexico.
I.20. Spanish naval officer Joaquín Francisco FIDALGO (1758–1820) was commander of a
hydrographic expedition to chart the coastal areas of Venezuela and the Antilles, which produced
several important maps. Fidalgo began his career at the Coast Guard Academy of Cartagena de
Indias in 1773 and later became a professor at and director of that academy. In 1791, he was
recruited for the second division of a Spanish hydrographic expedition to chart the southern
coasts of the Caribbean Sea. Cosme Damián de Churruca was the commander of the first
division. The expedition departed Cádiz for South America on July 4, 1792, charting until 1797
the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama (then part of New Granada). The expedition’s
travel narrative was published by the Dirección de Trabajos Hidrográficos as Derrotero de las
islas Antillas, de las costas de Tierra Firme y de las del Seno Mexicano (1810; Tour of the
Antillean islands, the coasts of the mainland provinces, and the Gulf of Mexico). Fidalgo’s
expedition resulted in the publication of several important maps (see Humboldt’s Library).
Having advanced to interim commander of the Cartagena Navy and the Coast Guards (1796–98),
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Fidalgo returned to Spain, where he was named interim director of the Depósito Hidrográfico
under Felipe Bauzá. Once he reached the rank of commodore, Fidalgo directed the College of
San Telmo in Seville (1812–20) and served as interim director of the Cádiz astronomical
observatory (1813). Humboldt established contact with him by letter while in Cartagena.
I.20. Cosme Damián CHURRUCA y Elorza (1761–1805) led a geographical expedition to map the
Straits of Magellan together with Dionisio Alcalá Galiano. Churruca spent some time at the
Cádiz observatory, and, in 1792, signed on to Joaquín Francisco Fidalgo’s expedition to the
Americas, during which he drew valuable maps (see Humboldt Library). By the time the Franco-
Spanish war interrupted his work, he had completed twenty-four charts, including maps of the
coastlines of Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. He died in the Battle of Trafalgar.
I.22n. GEODESIC LEVELING is used for wide-range geometric surveying. Yet, it is “a slow and
costly process” when compared to barometric and hypsometric measuring, as Humboldt points
out in his Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (II.306). While barometric leveling only takes
into account one specific location at a time, geodesic leveling is based on the method of
triangulation. Triangulation links together a series of triangles and quadrilaterals formed between
several suitable reference points across the area to be mapped. Because they needed to be visible
over large distances, these sites were usually mountain peaks, church towers, or similarly
prominent places. This is one of the reasons why Humboldt frequently mentions New Spain’s
eye-catching volcanoes: they were important for the elaboration of his maps of New Spain. Once
the two pinpoints of the triangle were defined, their connecting line—called the baseline—had to
be calculated by demarcating the pinpoints’ geographical positions. The angles between these
two and the remaining third reference point were usually measured either with theodolites or
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with a sextant and an artificial horizon. This allowed the calculation of the lengths of the
remaining two sides of the triangle by means of simple trigonometry. The meshes of this weave
were then filled in through first- and second-order areal triangulation, as Humboldt mentions in
this footnote. If possible, the framework’s baselines were established along meridians and
parallels. Large-scale arc measurements started in France under the direction of Cassini de
Thury in the 1780s and were soon extended from the Paris Observatory to Greenwich and the
Shetland Islands. In 1792, the French National Assembly commissioned the measurement of the
meridian through Paris, between Barcelona and Dunkirk (see also Delambre), which was
completed in Humboldt’s presence in Lieusaint near Paris on June 2, 1798. These observations
not only contributed to the establishment of the metric system, but they also showed that degrees
of terrestrial latitude increased in length toward the poles, implying a model of the Earth’s
surface as a rotational ellipsoid. This insight was crucial since any given length between two
terrestrial positions had to take into account the Earth’s curvature to be accurate. Further studies,
however, proved that the large-scale arc measurements contradicted the ellipsoidal model. Works
by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) and Friedrich-Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846), both
connected with Humboldt through years of collaboration and epistolary exchanges, improved the
existing methods for triangulation, distinguishing, for the first time, between the physical surface
of the Earth, the geoid as the mathematical surface, and the ellipsoid as a reference surface
approximating it. Until the introduction of electromagnetic distance measurements, triangulation
continued to be the method for establishing horizontal control networks in the nineteenth and
twentieth century.
I.22n. Resting on a socle with three adjustable legs, the THEODOLITE had to be put in a stable
horizontal position in order to function properly. Equipped with an azimuthal circle and a
25
rotating telescope, the instrument was used to determine horizontal and vertical angles, mainly
for astral observations and geodesic surface measurements. Compared to most other optical
instruments Humboldt discusses, the theodolite, with its complex mechanics, was bulky and
unreliable when taken on overland journeys. Consequently, Humboldt left his own theodolite,
which had been manufactured by Johann Heinrich Hurter (1734–1799), in France.
I.23. Humboldt visited the PYRAMID OF CHOLULA outside the city of Puebla, Mexico, and wrote
extensively about it in his Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Americas (Plate VII).
I.23. Originally a device for ascertaining elevation above sea level, a HYPSOMETER also indicates
with precision the boiling point of water, which, in turn, yields atmospheric pressure (there is a
relationship in which boiling point depends on atmospheric pressure, which, in turn, depends on
elevation above sea level). The hypsometer can thus determine differences in barometric
pressure between two locations. Hypsometry was an important part of Humboldtian science in
the field. Humboldt constantly used his hypsometer, which was important to his plant geography,
together with his barometers and with Jean-Charles Borda’s inclination compass, to measure
checkpoints on his travel routes, the precise altitude of mountain peaks, and the leveling of
different vegetative spheres. This inclination compass, designed by Borda and manufactured by
Étienne Lenoir (1744–1832), was a gift to Humboldt from the Parisian Bureau des Longitudes.
I.23. Spanish naval officer and cartographer Mariano ISASBIRIVIL (also Isasbiribil, d. c. 1811)
entered the Spanish navy in 1786. He traveled to the Americas in 1793, where he stayed for
almost six years. In 1802, Isasbirivil reached Lima aboard the ship Rufina. On November 19 of
that year, he, together with Humboldt, observed the passing of Mercury before the sun at El
26
Callao (Peru) and determined the precise geographic location of Lima. Part of a reconnaissance
mission to Peru and Guatemala, Isasbirivil mapped the coastlines of these territories, the port of
Valparaíso, and Mocha Island. Because his ship was captured by the British, he had to return to
Lima, resuming his hydrographic works around 1806, when he traveled again to Chile, Peru,
Chocó, and up to Veragua. In 1808, Isasbirivil sailed once more to the Americas, this time to
Buenos Aires. The British once again intercepted his ship, and he died a prisoner of war around
1811.
I.24. Best known as a cartographer, César-François CASSINI DE THURY (1714–84), also known as
Cassini III, belonged to the Cassini dynasty of French–Italian geographers. Like the Buaches,
another such dynasty, the Cassinis had close ties to the centralized French state. The Cassinis had
played a key role in the development of astronomy and geodesy in France and Europe since the
works of Cassini’s grandfather, Giovanni Domenico Cassini (Cassini I, 1625–1712). In 1745,
after expeditions to Lapland and Peru had failed to support the Cartesian position that the Earth
is elongated along the lines of its poles, Cassini de Thury created a representation of the map of
the world known as the Cassini projection. It differed from the more familiar equirectangular
Mercator projection in that it took the central meridian as an equator of sorts, which created
significant distortions on the north–south axis. Cassini III established triangulation (see I.22n) as
part of a national geodetic survey in France. The great topographical map of France that he
began in 1744—Description géometrique de la France—would be completed by his son Jean-
Dominique, count of CASSINI (1748–1845, aka Cassini IV), more than forty years later, in 1793.
I.24. A protégé and collaborator of Jacques Cassini’s (Cassini II, 1677–1756), with whom he
worked at the Paris Observatory and under whose name some of his early work is published,
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French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de LACAILLE (1713–62) is known for his efforts to remeasure
the French arc of the meridian through Paris, between Barcelona and Dunkirk, in 1739. This was
his first important astronomical feat, in which he collaborated with his son Cassini III. Both
astronomers applied the method of measuring distances for geodetic survey with the help of light
signals. If executed properly, this method was, as Humboldt mentions, among the most accurate,
cost-efficient, and time-efficient of its day. It was usually done at night with two geodesists, each
of whom installed himself at an exposed triangulation point (e.g., mountain peaks), using a
lantern with an optical reflector to project the light into the right direction along the baseline of
the triangle to be measured. Night observation was easier especially for long-distance
measurements because the atmosphere was more settled than during the heat of the day, and thus
the angles could be measured more precisely. In 1750, Lacaille proposed an astronomical
expedition to the Cape of Good Hope (via Rio de Janeiro) to test Isaac Newton’s (1643–1727)
theory of gravity and confirm the shape of the southern hemisphere. During this journey, he
observed and catalogued nearly 9,800 southern stars, including nebulae and new constellations.
He was the first to measure a South African arc of the meridian. Lacaille was also the author of
the first solar tables to come into general use next to Tobias Mayer’s lunar tables. After their
initial publication in 1759, Lacaille’s tables became the basis for the solar ephemerides of the
annual Connaissance des temps, first published by Jean-Felix Picard (1620–1682) in 1679 (see
also annotation for I.14). Named to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1754, Lacaille
largely withdrew from public life to work at his private observatory at Mazarin College in Paris,
where he had been appointed professor of mathematics after having been elected to the Royal
Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1741.
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I.24. POPOCATÉPETL and IZTACCÍHUATL are the two highest peaks in the Sierra Nevada mountain
range and two of the three highest peaks in Mexico. Iztaccíhuatl (also spelled Ixtaccihuatl, from
the Nahuatl for “white woman”) is a dormant volcano situated on the México–Puebla state line
in central Mexico. It lies 10 miles (16 km) north of its twin, Popocatépetl, and 40 miles (65 km)
south-southeast of Mexico City. Iztaccíhuatl has three summits, the highest one reaching 17,159
feet (5,230 m), but no crater. As seen from the federal capital, the snow-covered peaks resemble
the head, breast, and feet of a recumbent woman—hence the popular designation of sleeping
woman. Iztaccíhuatl last erupted in 1868.
I.25. The DEPÓSITO HIDROGRÁFICO (Hydrographic Office) became Spain’s official cartographic
publishing office in 1797. First created in 1770, the Depósito moved its offices to Madrid in
1789. Initially, the office served as an archive of maritime charts derived from Spanish
expeditions overseas. In December 1797, the office’s charge included creating, correcting, and
publishing charts for navigation and trade, as well as disseminating all other useful knowledge
about naval expeditions, such as travelogs and reports. The sole repository of cartographic
knowledge of the Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Philippines in the eighteenth
century, the Depósito also ordered surveying and hydrographic expeditions to improve
cartographic knowledge of Spain and its territories. Most of the Depósito’s archives are currently
at the Spanish Naval Museum.
I.25. Criollo mathematician, astronomer, topographer, and geographer Pedro Vicente
MALDONADO (1704–48) collaborated with the French Academy of Science’s 1735 expedition to
the then-viceroyalty of Peru to determine the shape of the Earth. A member of a wealthy, well-
connected family from Riobamba (present-day Ecuador), he was trained as a teacher in the
29
Universidad Gregoriana in 1721 and was later appointed governor of the province of Esmeraldas
(1737–43). During his tenure as governor, Maldonado had a road built from Esmeraldas to Quito
and explored the northen part of the region to establish new settlements. The members of the
French scientific expedition, notably Louis Godin (1704–60) and La Condamine, established
friendly relations with the Maldonado family. In 1743, Maldonado met La Condamine at the
Spanish mission of Lagunas on the eastern slope of the Andes. They sailed down the Amazon
River to the Portuguese-American city of Pará (today Belém, Brazil), then crossed the Atlantic
for Europe. In Spain, Maldonado had hoped to collect instruments and purchase books and other
supplies to establish a scientific laboratory in his home country. He also wanted to gain support
for an overland route from Quito to Panama and request city status for Riobamba, his home
town. After spending two years in Madrid, Maldonado embarked on a scientific tour through
Paris, London, and the Netherlands, gaining entry into prestigious scientific circles, including the
French Academy of Sciences. He died shortly after having been nominated as member of the
Royal Society of London. Supported by the French Academy of Sciences, Maldonado’s Carta de
la Provincia de Quito y de sus adjacentes (Map of the province of Quito and its surrounds), to
which Humboldt refers, was published posthumously in 1750.
I.26. What is known as the MERCATOR PROJECTION began when, in 1569, Gerard(us) Mercator
(Gerhard Kremers, 1512–1594) published his famous map of the world as a set of eighteen
sheets that form a wall-size 48 x 80 inch mosaic. Most of today’s wall maps follow this early
example, including its controversial distortions that resulted in representing as smaller the
landmasses of the so-called developing world. Originally a student of the humanities, Mercator
came under the influence of mathematician and astronomer Gemma Frisius (1508–55) at the
University of Louvain, where he enrolled in 1530. After receiving his master’s degree, Mercator
30
convinced Frisius to continue to tutor him. Meanwhile, Mercator also acquired skills as an
engraver, calligrapher, and maker of scientific instruments at the shop of a local goldsmith. He
soon began to collaborate with his academic mentor on globe making and map making,
publishing his first map (of Palestine) in 1537. The following year, he issued his famous world
map, laid down on the double heart-shaped projection that he had borrowed from the French
mathematician Oronce Fine (1494–1555), who had pioneered it in 1531. When the violent
suppression of Protestantism gained ground in Flanders, Mercator, because of his contacts
among alleged heretics, was jailed for seven months. After he was freed for lack of evidence,
Mercator moved to Protestant Duisburg, Germany, to take a position with the Duke of Cleves.
There, he continued to produce many outstanding wall maps of Europe and of Britain. The way
in which Mercator projected the world on his 1569 map revolutionized navigation by
straightening out rhumb lines on a flat map. To do so, Mercator progressively increased the
separation of the parallels. Humboldt adopted this method.
I.26. Patrick MURDOCH (c. 1700–1774) was a British parson and mathematician to whom his
friend, the Scottish poet James Thomson (1700-–1748), fondly but unflatteringly, referred as the
“little round, fat, oily man of God.” Following the attention that his English translation of
Johann Büsching’s Eine neue Erdbeschreibung (A New System of Geography, 1762) garnered,
Murdoch was appointed, in 1767, to the Royal Society’s committee that planned what became
Captain James Cook’s first voyage two years later. The conical projections of the spheroid of
the Earth that are named after Murdoch date from 1758, when an account of his paper “On the
Best Form of Geographical Maps” was published in London. They antedate almost all
recognized conical projections of the figure of the Earth. Humboldt’s reference point here is
likely the Third Projection, also known as Murdoch III.
31
I.26. Spanish naval officer and mathematician Jorge JUAN y Santacilia (1713–1773) was one of
the representatives of the Spanish Crown on the famous scientific expedition led by Louis Godin
(1704–1760), which reached Cartagena in 1735. Together with his Spanish colleague Antonio
de Ulloa, Juan wrote a separate account of the expedition. A more balanced and cartographically
ambitious report, the five-volume Relación histórica del viaje a la américa meridional (1748; A
Voyage to South America) contained an original series of maps and plans of cities in South
America. In addition to several other works published with Ulloa, Juan, who became Spanish
ambassador to Morocco, authored Estado de la Astronomía en Europa (1774; The state of
astronomy in Europe) and Compendio de navegación (1757; Compendium of navigation).
I.26. The Spanish mathematician and astronomer José de MENDOZA Y RÍOS (1762–1816), who
began his career as a naval officer in 1776, served as a sort of science attaché of the Spanish
monarchy, securing the latest publications and training for his countrymen. A member of the
Académie des Sciences in Paris and the Royal Society in London, he had access to state-of-the-
art knowledge about navigation. By 1791, Mendoza y Ríos had acquired fifty-four boxes with
instruments, books, and charts in Paris, Holland, and London. For the Malespina Expedition, he
obtained several tools with which to measure the force of gravity at different locations, mainly a
specially designed pendulum used to determine the true figure of the Earth. In 1796, his good
offices secured a Herschel telescope, one of the world’s best optical telescopes and the second
largest of its time, for the Royal Observatory in Madrid. He was also a prolific writer on
navigation. The leading expert in mathematical and astronomical applications for navigation, he
published several navigation tables (see Humboldt’s Library). Another of his lasting
recommendations was the creation of a maritime library in 1788, which eventually became the
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Depósito Hidrográfico in Madrid. In 1816, Mendoza y Ríos committed suicide in his Brighton
country home.
I.27. British navigator, explorer, and cartographer George VANCOUVER (1757–1793) surveyed
the northwest coast of the Americas between 1791 and 1795. Vancouver Island (Canada) was
named by and after him. In 1772 and 1776, Vancouver accompanied James Cook on his second
and third voyages to the Pacific. In 1789, Vancouver was given command of the Discovery, a
330-ton vessel built for a surveying expedition to the south Atlantic, which was canceled.
Instead, Vancouver was to sail as part of a fleet to prevent the Spanish from securing the fur-
trading port of Nootka. Because of the signing of the first Nootka Convention on October 28,
1790, Vancouver was recommissioned again as commander of the Discovery to take charge of
the restitution of British property that had been taken by Spain in 1789. In addition to
implementing the Nootka Convention, Vancouver was also to conduct detailed surveys of the
American northwest up to latitude 60º N and explore the west coast in search of the entrance to
the mythical Northwest Passage (not the modern-day passage via Canada’s north coast). With
three ships under his command, Vancouver sailed for the Americas in April 1791 via the Cape of
Good Hope. He explored King George’s Sound (Australia), Dusky Sound (New Zealand), and
the Hawaiian Islands along the way, landing near Cape Mendocino in 1792 to commence the
first of three survey seasons in present-day British Columbia and Alaska (1792–1794). In 1792,
Vancouver encountered Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Antonio Valdés y Fernández Bazán
(1744–1816) in the Sútil and the Mexicana and met with Juan Francisco de la Bodega y
Quadra, the Spanish representative, to interpret the terms of the Nootka Convention. They did
not reach an agreement. During his return voyage to England in 1795, Vancouver mapped the
northwest coast of the Americas from Baja California to Alaska, completed his survey of the
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Pacific, and eliminated the possibility of a Northwest Passage. He settled in Surrey to revise his
travel journal for publication but died without finishing it, leaving his brother John to complete
the editing. The journal was published in 1798 in three volumes and two atlases (see Humboldt’s
Library).
I.29. ERRAMANGO (also Erromango, Erromanga, or Eromanga) is one of eighty islands in the
Vanuatu archipelago (New Hebrides until independence in 1980). Vanuatu has an area of 4,707
square miles and lies 1,000 miles east of Australia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Sixty-five
of its islands are inhabited by about 200,000 people. At present, the language of about 1,200
people in Erromango is Sye; another language is Ura, a distinct pre-European contact language
with only a handful of speakers. James Cook had landed on the northeast coast of the Vanuatu
island of Tanna in 1774.
I.29. Phillip V of Spain (1683–1746) created the Real Seminario de Nobles de Madrid (Royal
COLLEGE OF NOBLES of Madrid) in 1725. Directed by the Society of Jesus and modeled after
French Seminaries established by Louis XIV (1638–1715), the college opened its doors in 1727
to educate the young nobility who did not normally attend universities but were nevertheless
employed in local and national government. The students were trained in Latin, French, or
Italian; philosophy; physics; mathematics; and other subjects, such as dance, music, and art. In
the 1750s, the Jesuits incorporated the teaching of experimental physics and Isaac Newton’s
(1643–1727) theories into the established curriculum for mathematics, descriptive geography,
astronomy, and military arts. In 1746, the Jesuit Andrés Marcos Burriel y López (1719–62)
became director of the Seminary. A close friend of Jorge Juan y Santacilia’s, Burriel
introduced the question of the true shape of the Earth and modernized the course offerings to
34
include logic, metaphysics, general and experimental physics, astronomy, moral philosophy, and
navigation, among other subjects. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territory in
1767, military officers ran the college. Jorge Juan y Santacilia directed the Seminary from
1770 until his death in 1773. In 1794, the directorship reverted to the clergy, notably the Seville
Inquisitor and later archivist Antonio de Lara y Zúñiga. After five years, it was returned to the
military under the directorship of Andrés López de Sagastizabal (b. 1752). In 1808, the functions
of the college were suspended because of the Napoleonic wars. Beginning in 1835, its name was
changed to Seminario Cristiano (Christian Seminary).
I.29. Isidoro de ANTILLÓN y Marzo (1778–1814) was a Spanish geographer and liberal politician.
As chair of the prestigious Royal College of the Nobles, a position he held in his early twenties,
Antillón published widely on Spanish and American geography. Even though his most
influential work, Geografía astronómica, natural y política de España y Portugal (Astronomical,
natural, and political geography of Spain and Portugal), was published posthumously in 1824,
significant portions of his studies had been printed as Elementos since 1808. A second edition of
Elementos from 1815 is dedicated to Humboldt, showing the respect Antillón, who had fought
early for the abolition of slavery in the Spanish Courts, had for the liberal ideas and scientific
achievements of his Prussian colleague. By contrast, Humboldt, who repeatedly refers to
Antillón’s studies and maps, often mentions the unreliability of Antillón’s work, however
respectfully. For instance, Antillón had misinterpreted the geological shape of Spain’s highland
plateau as an extension of the Pyrenees. Humboldt corrected this error with data he had collected
during his five-month stay in Spain in 1799. His astronomical recordings and measurements of
the barometric levels on the elevations around Madrid were first published in 1825. More than
three decades after his records were thought to have been lost, they appeared in his article “Über
35
die Gestalt und das Klima des Hochlandes in der Iberischen Halbinsel” (On the shape and
climate of the highland on the Iberian Peninsula). In this article, Humboldt showed for the first
time that the Iberian Peninsula actually had one consistent high plateau: the Spanish Meseta
Central.
I.29. On July 31, 1498, during Columbus’s third voyage (1498–1500), the sailor Alonso Pérez
spotted three hillocks in the distance, which led to Columbus naming the island Trinidad. That
same day, he named a cape located on the southeast corner of the island “Cabo de la Galera”
because of a large rock that looked like a galley under sail. The toponym used since the late
eighteenth century for the southeasternmost corner of Trinidad is Galeota Point. GALERA POINT
is currently used for the northeastern most point of the island.
I.30. FERRO ISLAND (El Hierro) is an island in the Canaries archipelago off the northwest coast of
Africa. Part of an autonomous region of Spain, this island is the westernmost and smallest of the
Canary Islands. It was known to ancient geographers as the westernmost location of the known
world. In Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis (Outline of geography), the Egyptian astronomer,
mathematician, and geographer Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus, c. 100—70 CE) chose Ferro
Island as the prime meridian of longitude for navigational charts (locating the Canaries 7º east of
their true position). Ptolemy used the westernmost island of the archipelago, known as Fortunate
Isles, so that all longitudes for the known inhabited world would be east of the meridian. During
the Middle Ages, the Canary Islands were identified with the Fortunate Isles of the ancient
Greeks and Egyptians, and the prime meridian was usually that of Ferro. After the European
discovery of America, Philip II ordered all maps to use Ferro Island as a reference point for
36
westward locations; this decision was internationally ratified in 1634. Ferro was used as the
north–south reference line until 1884 when the Greenwich meridian was chosen in its place.
I.30. In addition to being a naval officer, Charles Pierre Claret, Comte de FLEURIEU (1738–1810)
was an impassioned navigator revered for the precision of his research. At the end of the Seven-
Year War (1756–63), he left the navy to study horology with Ferdinand Berthoud (1727–1807).
He participated in one-year sea voyage dedicated to testing Bertoud’s first marine chronometer
in an attempt to beat Britain in the race for a reliable way to calculate longitude. Together with
his mentor, who was refining his instrument, Fleurieu prepared for another expedition (1868–
1869), the results of which were published in 1773 under the title Voyage fait par ordre du roi,
… pour éprouver les horloges marines (Voyage made by order of the king . . . to test marine
chronometers). In 1770, Fleurieu returned to the navy until 1783, when he helped prepare the
voyage of La Pérouse. Fleurieu was appointed secretary of the navy by Louis XVI of France
(1754–1793) in 1790, but, lacking the support of the Assembly, he had to retire a year later.
After having being jailed for fourteen months during the Reign of Terror, he resumed his
scientific work upon being set free, working with the Institut de France and the Bureau of
Longitudes. He also edited the Voyage autour du monde (Voyage around the world) that Étienne
Marchand had written in 1790 and 1792. During the course of his career, Fleurieu amassed a
significant collection of maps of different parts of the world.
I.30. Many of Humboldt’s “TABLEAUX” are hybrid forms of representation. They often resemble
mixed-genre painting in that they seek to combine scientific information (tables) with visual art
(drawings and paintings). This blend of seemingly unrelated categories of experience and
representation is characteristic of Humboldtian writing. We have retained the French “tableau/x”
37
(rather than translating it as the more familiar “table/s”) in contexts where visuality has at least
metaphorical importance. Ludwig von Eschwege, for one, similarly used the term Gemälde
(painting) to describe his geognostic studies.
I.33. Together with José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Antonio de León y Gama, and José
Ignacio Bartolache y Díaz de Posada (1739–90), lawyer, astronomer, geometer and
mathematician Joaquín VELÁZQUEZ y Cardenas de León (1732–86) is considered one of the four
Criollo scholars to shape the scientific renaissance of New Spain during the eighteenth century.
Humboldt calls Velázquez “the most remarkable geometrician that New Spain has seen since
Siguënza’s day” (I.430). In 1773, Velázquez determined the longitude and latitude of Mexico
and, for the first time, corrected New Spain’s position on maps. A year later, he led topographic
and geodesic surveys of the valley of Mexico. Following his initiative, a mining report was
submitted to Charles III in 1774, which led to a new mining code and the founding of the Real
Tribunal de Minería (Royal Mining Board) in 1777. The board would later become the Real
Seminario de Minería (Royal School of Mines), a project Velázquez had initiated and
successfully promoted. He served as the school’s director until his death.
I.33. Swedish astronomer and demographer Pehr Wilhelm WARGENTIN (1717–83) was the first
director of the Stockholm Observatory, founded by the Academy of Sciences and completed in
1753. Wargentin studied the movement of the moons of Jupiter and published his first paper on
the topic in the Acta of the Royal Society of Sciences. Humboldt is likely referring to the tables
in Wargentin’s Tabulae pro eclipsibus satellytism lovis (Tables for the eclipse of Jupiter’s
satellites), an elaborate chart for finding the moons of Jupiter. Tabulae was part of Wargentin’s
1841 master’s thesis at Uppsala University, where he had studied with Anders Celsius (1702–
38
44). Secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for thirty-four years,
Wargentin was one of the major scientists of his time in the fields of astronomy and
meteorology. He is also known as the forerunner of Swedish population statistics. See also
Henrik Nicander..
I.33. Spanish military engineer Miguel COSTANZÓ (1741–1814, also Constanzó and Costansó)
was admitted to the Royal Corps of Engineers in 1762. After working in Catalonia and Granada,
he was transferred to New Spain, where he arrived in 1764. During his time in Veracruz,
Costanzó worked under Miguel del Corral, drawing charts of the Gulf of Mexico. In 1768,
Costanzó was instructed to rendezvous with colonial inspector-general José de Gálvez y
Gallardo at the port of San Blas to plan an expedition to Monterey (Upper California) and to
accompany Gálvez to Baja California. Working with Gálvez’s detailed instructions, Costanzó
wrote two travel journals, drew four maps, and informed the viceroy and inspector of the
activities in Upper California. Costanzó’s official diary about the expedition was published as
Diario Histórico de los Viages de Mar y Tierra hechos al Norte de la California (An historical
journal of the expeditions, by sea and land, to the north of California) in 1770. Back in Mexico
City in 1771, Costanzó was promoted to colonel and began working on expanding and
repurposing important public buildings, such as the Real Casa de Moneda (the mint) and the San
Andrés General Hospital. Costanzó also was in charge of constructing roads for defense
purposes. Stationed in Veracruz in 1797, he explored the area with Diego García Conde to
determine the feasibility of a better road to link Veracruz and Mexico City. The result was a
report and a map from 1797, which Humboldt used (see Humboldt’s Library). In 1799, Costanzó
also wrote a report about the fortifications of the port of Veracruz, which John S. Leiby
published in English in 2005 as “Miguel Costansó and his 1799 report on the defenses of
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Veracruz” (Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de Historia de América Latina 42:
33–46). Besides working on numerous cartographic, architectural, and hydrographic projects,
Costanzó taught architecture and geometry at the prestigious Royal Academy of San Carlos
(1782–86).
I.34. To improve the hydrographic maps of the west coast of North and South America, report on
the political situation of Spain’s overseas possessions, and undertake scientific explorations,
Charles III of Spain and naval minister Antonio Valdés Fernández y Bazán (1744–1816)
approved a voyage proposed by the Italian commander Alessandro Malaspina and José de
Bustamante y Guerra. For this scientific and political voyage, known as the MALASPINA
EXPEDITION (1789–1794), Spain prepared for eight months and furnished the fleet with state-of-
the-art equipment to determine the longitude and latitude of landmarks in its passage. The
Descubierta, commanded by Malaspina, and the Atrevida, captained by Bustamante, sailed to
eastern South America, rounded present-day Argentina and Chile, and traveled northward along
the coast as far northwest as Prince William Sound (Alaska). They continued on to Manila (the
Philippines), New Zealand, New Holland (present-day Australia), the Tonga archipelago (in the
South Pacific), finally returning to Cádiz via Cape Horn. Most of the crew members had been
chosen according to their scientific training in astronomy, cartography, hydrography, and natural
science. The Descubierta’s crew of 102 included three senior officers: Cayetano Valdés y Flores
(1767–1835), second-in-command Manuel Novales (1757–1816), and Fernando Quintano
(1759–97); and three junior officers: Francisco Javier de Viana y Alzaybar (1763–1820), Juan
Vernaci, and Secundino Salamanca. The Atrevida, also with a crew of 102, had as senior
officers Antonio Tova y Arredondo (1760–1825), Dionisio Alcalá Galiano, and Juan Gutiérrez
de la Concha; junior officers were José Robredo (1761–1800), Arcadio de Pineda y Ramírez
40
(1765–c. 1826), and Martín de Olavide (1762–1821). Two botanists and an equal number of
artists who were to sketch plants were also part of the original crews. On the Descubierta,
Antonio de Pineda y Ramírez (1751–1792), Arcadio’s brother, was the botanist; Felipe Bauzá y
Cañas the cartographer; and José del Pozo Ximénez (c. 1757–1821) the sketch artist. On the
Atrevida, Louis Neé (1734–1807) served as the botanist and José Guio y Sánchez as artist. The
botanist Tadeo Haenke (1761–1810) joined the expedition in Chile. José Espinosa y Tello,
Ciriaco Cevallos, Fernando Brambila y Ferrari (1763–1834, painter), and Juan Francisco
Ravenet y Bunel (1766–after 1821, painter) came on board in Acapulco. Finally, Tomás de Suria
Lozano (1761–c .1835) joined up for six months to work with Pineda as painting instructor while
the expedition was on the northwest coast of America. In 1792, while on New Spain’s west coast
and upon Malaspina’s suggestion, four members detached from the main expedition to set out on
a secondary voyage to survey the Strait of Juan de Fuca: Valdés and Vernaci on the Mexicana;
Alcalá Galiano and Salamanca on the Sútil. Although the monarch received Malaspina well
upon his return, Manuel Godoy managed to strip Malaspina of his rank. In 1795, Malaspina was
imprisoned and only released in 1803 because of Napoleon’s (1769–1821) intervention. As
Malaspina was in charge of gathering and editing the expedition’s accounts for publication,
many of the records and collections were scattered and remained unpublished until 1885. The
only account to escape obscurity was that of the voyage of the Sútil and Mexicana to the Strait of
Juan de Fuca, which José Espinosa y Tello edited and published in 1802. He never mentioned
Malaspina by name.
I.34. Alessandro (or Alejandro) MALASPINA Meli Lupi (1754–1810) was educated at the
Pontificio Collegio Pio Clementino in Rome (1765–1773). His naval career began in Malta in
1773 on the San Zacarria as a member of the order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. A
41
year later, he joined the Naval Academy of Cartagena (Spain) and participated in several military
campaigns when Spain declared war against England during the USAmerican War of
Independence (1775–1783). In early 1783, Malaspina, then second-in-command of the Asunción,
took to Manila the news of the Treaty of Paris. In 1784, he was appointed to the Naval Academy
at Cádiz to take courses in astronomy and other advanced subjects under the famed naval
hydrographer Vicente Tofiño de San Miguel (1732–1795). As Tofiño’s apprentice, Malaspina
gained experience in survey methods while working to create the first official maritime charts of
the Iberian Peninsula (see his Atlas marítimo de España, 1789). Between September 1786 and
May 1788, he circumnavigated the globe in command of the vessel Astrea. Upon his return, he
conceptualized and proposed the political and scientific expedition that came to be known as the
Malaspina Expedition. Malaspina was in charge of preparing the manuscript from the materials
gathered during the expedition for publication and moved to Madrid for that purpose. Because he
proposed the dismissal of Manuel de Godoy, the prime minister and favorite of Queen María
Luisa (1751–1819), he was arrested, stripped of his rank and benefits, and tried. By Royal Order
from November 22, 1795, Malaspina was sentenced to ten years and a day in the Castillo de San
Antón in La Coruña, Spain. After Napoleon (1769–1821) intervened on his behalf, Malaspina
was freed and exiled from Spain in the spring of 1803.
I.35. British engraver, cartographer, and map seller Thomas JEFFERYS (c. 1719–1771) became
Geographer to the King in 1760. Having begun his map-making career in 1744, he produced his
first atlas, The Small English Atlas (1748–1749), with fellow cartographer and engraver Thomas
Kitchin (1719–84). Jefferys ultimately became known for his maps of the Americas, especially
for A General Topography of North America (1768), on which he collaborated with publisher
Robert Sayer (c. 1725–1794). Together with the engraver and cartographer William Faden
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(1749–1836), Sayer published multiple posthumous editions of Jefferys’s maps of the Americas.
In addition to printing important British maps and collecting the most up-to-date cartography of
his time, Jefferys also published geographical material from Spanish sources, including A
Description of the Spanish Islands and Settlements on the Coast of the West Indies (1762). His
older son, Thomas (b. 1755), who had begun working with his father in 1769, continued the
business in partnership with Faden.
I.35. Aaron ARROWSMITH (1750–1823) was a British geographer and cartographer, who
established his reputation in 1790 with a large map of the world based on the best sources
available in his day. After Arrowsmith’s death, his business was carried on by his sons and a
nephew. In mentioning these three cartographers in one breath, Humboldt combined
representatives of the French, Spanish, and British empires and their successive visions of
various parts of the Americas. There is also an interesting subplot regarding Arrowsmith’s
connection to Humboldt: in a December 20, 1811, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Humboldt accused
Arrowsmith of having stolen his map of Mexico. See also Wilkinson, James.
I.35. Novo–Spanish mathematician, astronomer, and clergyman Diego RODRÍGUEZ (1596–1668)
was admitted to the Mercedarian Order in 1613. Trained in grammar, philosophy, and
mathematics, he was appointed abbot of the Veracruz convent in 1623. More than a decade later,
in 1637, he was chosen as professor of mathematics at the Royal University, where, in addition
to being an administrator, he taught astronomy, trigonometry, geometry, algebra, cosmography,
and mathematics for over three decades. Besides writing Discurso etheorologico del Nuevo
Cometa (1652; Etheorological discourse about the new comet), Rodríguez authored several
works about mathematics and astronomy, six of which survive in manuscript form.
43
I.36. After studying in Salmanca, Spanish medical doctor Gabriel LÓPEZ DE BONILLA (c.
1600/05–1668) arrived in New Spain in 1628 to pursue a scientific career. In 1632, he began
publishing a series of essays on calendrics, astronomy, and weather prognostics. A friend and
brother-in-law of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, López de Bonilla predicted two eclipses in
his Diario y Discurso astrológico… para el año de 1667 (Journal and astrological discourse . . .
for the year 1667). In 1654, López de Bonilla wrote a book on comets.
I.36. URANIENBORG, on the small Baltic island of Hven, was the Danish astronomical
observatory founded and operated by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), arguably the most famous
observational astronomer of the sixteenth century.
I.36. One of the most prominent scholars of baroque Mexico, Carlos de SIGÜENZA y Góngora
(1645–1700) was renowned as historian, mathematician, and astronomer throughout America
and Europe. Sigüenza, a native of New Spain, promoted an outspoken Creole perspective on
precolonial and colonial history. An unrivaled expert on Mexico’s pre-Columbian civilizations,
Sigüenza authored numerous historiographical studies, such as the Historia del Imperio de los
Chichimecas (History of the Chichimec empire). Some of Sigüenza’s work as a historian and
collector of ancient Mexican codices endures in the Giro del Mondo (1699–1700; Voyage
around the world) by Italian adventurer and traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri (1651–
1725). Careri received copies of some of Sigüenza’s manuscripts while visiting the Mexican
scholar in 1697.
I.36. The invention of the first TELESCOPE, an optical instrument that collects light from faint and
distant objects and magnifies their images, is usually attributed to the German-Dutch lens
manufacturer Hans Lippersheim (1517–1619, also Lippershey or Laprey). Lippersheim’s
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telescope was unveiled in 1608, prompting other engineers to improve on this first model. It was,
however, not until Isaac Newton (1643–1727) designed a lighter and more practical version in
1668 that the telescope started to be applied to astronomical observation. It can be assumed, then,
that, even though Enrico Martínez most likely knew about Lippersheim’s invention in 1608, the
telescope was probably not available when he made his measurements in 1619. He had to rely on
his eyes only.
I.36n. A geographer and mathematician at Mexico City’s Real Seminario de Minería (Royal
Seminar for Mining), Juan José de OTEYZA (1777–1810, also Oteiza) was one of Humboldt’s key
academic informants in New Spain. Humboldt used Oteyza’s studies on Teotihuacán (which
Humboldt never visited himself) and his data on Zacatecas, Durango, and the Toluca area for
Views of the Cordilleras and his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. Oteyza had
conducted thorough research at the pyramid district in 1803, the same year that both scientists
completed their calculations of the surface area of Mexico.
I.37. For COVENS, see annotation for I.49.
I.37. The Jesuit Maximilian HELL (also Höll, 1720–92) was a Hungarian astronomer who
became director of the Vienna Observatory in 1756. In 1769, Hell and his assistant János
Sajnovics traveled to Vardo in the far north of Norway (then part of Denmark–Norway) to
observe the transit of Venus. His account of the passage of Venus, Observatio transitus Veneris
ante discum Solis die 3. Junii anno 1769, was published in 1770 by the Royal Danish Academy
of Sciences, which had elected him as a foreign member the previous year. The publication of
Hell’s findings was delayed because he stayed in Vardo for an additional eight months,
collecting non-astronomical scientific data about the arctic regions for an encyclopedia that never
45
materialized, in part because the Jesuits suppressed it. This delay caused some—among them
fellow astronomers Jérôme Lalande and the Austrian Joseph Johann von Littrow (1781–
1840)—to suspect Hell of having falsified his data. Canadian-American astronomer and
mathematician Simon Newcomb (1835–1909) ultimately exonerated Hell. Hell published a new
volume of his astronomical tables, Ephemerides astronomicae ad meridianum
Vindobonemsem (Ephemerides for the Meridian of Vienna), each year between 1757 and 1786.
For several years, Hell’s Ephemerides were the only astronomical tables available besides those
from the Paris Observatory. Hell fell ill with pneumonia in 1792 and died in Vienna. The crater
“Hell” on the moon is named after him.
I.37n. Franz de Paula TRIESNECKER (1745–1817) was a Jesuit astronomer, mathematician, and
surveyor in Vienna, Austria, where he headed the observatory. Astronomer and physicist Johann
Tobias Bürg was university professor in Vienna from 1792 to 1813. Together, Triesnecker and
Bürg succeeded Maximilian Hell in editing and publishing the journal Ephemerides
Astronomicae. The “Tabulae Mercurii, Martis, Veneris, Solares” and observations of the sun,
moon, planets, and positions of stars were printed in this periodical between 1787 and 1806.
I.38. In 1760, the French Academy of Sciences sent one of its members, the astronomer Jean
CHAPPE d’Auteroche (1722–1769), to Tobolsk, Russia, to observe the passage of Venus across
the sun. During that voyage, he also collected minerals and returned with 160 specimens. In
1771, Chappe d’Auteroche published Voyage en Sibérie fait en 1761 (Travels in Siberia in
1761). Several years later, he was chosen for another observatory excursion, this time to
California, where he died of dysentery. His Voyage en Californie pour l’observation du passage
de Venus in 1772 (Travels in California to observe the passage of Venus in 1772) was published
46
posthumously by Jean-Dominique Cassini (1748-1845), the son of Cassini de Thury. See also
Cassini de Thury and Cassini, Jacques.
I.38. The polymath José Antonio de ALZATE y Ramírez (1737–1799) played a pivotal role in
disseminating and popularizing scientific knowledge in New Spain. Born in Ozumba, Chalco
(present-day State of Mexico), Alzate moved to Mexico City in 1747 to attend the Jesuit College
of San Ildefonso. He also studied at the University of Mexico and was ordained a priest. Between
1767 and 1795, he edited and published the four scientific periodicals: the Diario Literario de
México (8 issues, 1768; Literary magazine of Mexico); Asuntos varios sobre ciencias y artes (13
issues, 1772–1773; Miscellaneous science and art subjects); Observaciones sobre la física,
historia natural y artes útiles (1787–1788; Observations on physics, natural history, and useful
arts); and the Gaceta de literatura de México (1788–1795; Mexican literary gazette). Carlos
Francisco de Croix, marquis of Croix (1699–1786), then viceroy of New Spain (1766–1771),
had the Diario Literario de México closed by decree of May 1768 because of an article
criticizing the theater in Spain. Asuntos and Diario Literario de México met with the same fate.
Alzate also suffered setbacks in publishing Observaciones. Its first issue was delayed because
viceregal authorization was still pending, and the journal ended up appearing at irregular
intervals as a result. All these journals touched upon a variety of topics, ranging from philosophy
to medicine, chemistry to geography, and archeology to zoology. Like Humboldt, Alzate used
his inheritance to publish his own work at different points in his career. Alzate’s descriptions of
the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Xochicalco, which he had visited in 1777, were
published in a supplement to the Gazeta de Literatura de México in 1791 and inspired numerous
studies of the pre-Hispanic cultures of Meso-America. Alzate was a member of the Royal
Botanical Garden at Madrid, the Real Sociedad Bascongada de los Amigos del País (Vitoria-
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Gasteiz, Spain) and a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. The genus Alzatea
(Alzateaceae) is partly named after him.
I.38. In 1801, Jesuit-trained French astronomer Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de LALANDE (1732–
1807) published the Histoire céleste française (French astronomic history), which contained a
catalogue of over 47,000 stars, including one that is still identified as Lalande 21185. His work
was reputedly based on observations made by his nephew Michel Lalande (1766–1839). In 1760,
Lalande became professor of astronomy in the Collège de France, a post he held for forty-six
years. In 1768, he was appointed director of the Paris Observatory. Among his disciples were
Pierre Méchain and Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre. Humboldt knew all of them well from
his Paris years. See also León y Gama, Antonio.
I.38. French astronomer and Catholic priest Alexandre Guy PINGRÉ (1711–96) embarked on
several long exploratory voyages in the 1760s and 1770s. In 1769, he accompanied Charles
Pierre Claret de Fleurieu on the Isis to study the behavior of marine chronometers, using the
journeys for astronomical observations. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
I.40. Cuban librarian, editor, and astronomer Antonio ROBREDO (d. c. 1830) was among the
founding editors of Havana’s first newspaper, the Papel Periódico (October 1790). In 1800, he
started the journal Aurora: Correo político-económico de La Habana. Robredo, who met
Humboldt in Havana, was also the first librarian of the Biblioteca Pública de la Habana (1792),
which improved considerably when he donated 300 books and moved it to his own house. In
1792, Robredo also edited the Calendario Manual y Guía de Forasteros de la Isla de Cuba,
which had begun in 1791. In 1796 and 1806, he made metrological and astronomical
observations in Cuba.
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I.40. Domingo de CASTILLO (fl. 1540s) was a pilot in Hernando de Alarcón’s (b. 1500) maritime
expedition in search of Fray Marcos de Niza’s famous Seven Cities of Cíbola. The San Pedro
and Santa Catalina departed from Acapulco in May 1540, sailed north on the western coast of
present-day Mexico, reached the mouth of the Colorado River in August 1540, and returned
sometime in November. In 1541, Castillo drew a map of Alarcón’s expedition—a manuscript
that Humboldt consulted in New Spain—which was published in Lorenzana’s Historia de
Nueva España (History of New Spain, 1770). Engraved by José Mariano Navarro (1742–c.
1809), the map as published by Lorenzana shows the name “California” and locates the sought-
after city as “La Ciudad de Cíbora” in the interior of the continent.
I.40. Hernán (or Fernando) CORTÉS de Monroy y Pizarro (1485–1547) was a Spanish hidalgo
(low gentry) and adventurer. Sent in 1519 by the colonizer and first governor of Cuba, Diego
Velázquez de Cuéllar, to pillage the eastern coasts of Mexico, Cortés instead organized a small
expedition of 600 men to conquer and colonize the new land. With the help of his native
interpreter and mistress Malintzín (also known as Malinche, c. 1501–1550) and the allied
Tlaxcaltecas, Cortés and his men rapidly gained control of the Mexican heartland. In 1521, they
overthrew the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, where they captured and killed Moctezuma as well
as his successor, Cauhtemoc (c. 1495–1522), the last kings of the Aztec Empire. Cortés’s first
marriage, in Cuba, was to Catalina Xuárez Marcaida (d. 1522). Because she was rumored to have
been killed by her husband, an investigation was started against Cortés but never led to any
charges. He did not have any children from his first marriage. In 1528, Cortés traveled to Spain
to request in person the governorship of New Spain from Charles V. Instead, Charles V
confirmed him as captain-general and named him Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca. Cortés
remarried, this time to Juana Ramírez de Arellano Zúñiga, with whom he had several children,
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including his heir Martín and three daughters named María, Catalina, and Juana. He also had five
children out of wedlock, notably Martín (from Malintzín) and Leonor (from Isabel Moctezuma, a
close relative of Moctezuma II). Cortés’s descendants were married to the Dukes of Monteleone
from Italy.
I.40. Spanish naval officer Vicente DOZ y Funes (c. 1734–81) took part in an international
scientific mission to observe the transit of Venus in 1769 in Baja California, then Spanish
domain, with Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche and Salvador de Medina. A cartographer
and hydrographer who had begun his naval career in Cádiz, Doz had taken part in an expedition
that Spain’s foreign minister José de Carvajal y Lancaster (1698–1754) had organized to
demarcate the borders between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in South America. Part
of the scientific expedition to New Spain, the party arrived at Veracruz on March 1769;
continued on to Mexico City (March 26), Guadalajara (April 7), and San Blas (April 15); and
crossed the Pacific Ocean on La Concepción to the site of the observation at San José del Cabo
(Baja California). Six of the seventeen members of the expedition died of epidemic typhus at the
observation site, including Chappe. Doz, however, escaped that fate and managed to return to
Europe. Arriving in Madrid in the summer of 1770, an abridged version of his observations was
published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and in the Mémoires
of the Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences. Acquiring scientific standing after the transit of
Venus expedition, Doz became director of the Colegio de Madrid and reached the rank of rear
admiral in the Spanish Navy. Doz’s observations of the transit of Venus, currently at the Museo
Naval at Madrid (MS 314, f. 155), were first published in English and edited by Doyce B. Nunis
in The 1769 Transit of Venus (1982), together with those by Chappe d’Auteroche and Joaquín
Velázquez Cárdenas de León.
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I.41. Spanish merchant José Ignacio DE LA TORRE (fl.1797–1821) operated a commercial
establishment in Veracruz, trading in silver, textiles, and wine. One of the wealthiest and most
powerful businessmen in Veracruz, he received merchandise from several important ports,
including Philadelphia, Hamburg, Havana, and New York. Serving in different positions in the
merchant guild of Veracruz from 1799 to 1814, he became counsellor of the constitutional
ayuntamiento (town council) in 1812.
I.41n. Humboldt’s references, here and elsewhere, to Vicente Doz (Gazeta de Mexico, 1772, p.
56) are really references to José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez’s “Estado de la geografía de la
Nueva España y modo de perfeccionarla,” Asuntos Varios sobre Ciencias y Artes No. 7 (1772),
p. 56. Doz’s observations appeared in a different publication, including the Gazeta de Madrid
(Oct. 26, 1770). Humboldt must also have known the reports by Joseph-Jerôme Lalande and
Alexandre Pingré published in the Mémoires de Mathématique et de Physique of the French
Royal Academy of Sciences (see Humboldt’s Library).
I.42. Brigadier Tomás de UGARTE y Liaño (1754–1804) was one of several officers of the
Spanish Royal Navy whom Humboldt met in Lima and Callao. In 1799, Ugarte was in charge of
designing the ports of the South Sea from Chile to the north coast of the Province Veraguas. In
1802, he became chief of the entire Spanish fleet but retired a year later. Humboldt was familiar
with Ugarte’s maps, several of which can be found in the Karpinski Collection of the Library of
Congress.
I.42. Hydrographer and naval engineer Rigobert BONNE (1727–1794) was one of the most
important geographers of his age, widely admired for the precision and accuracy of his work. In
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1773, he succeeded Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703–1772) as Royal Cartographer of France. Bonne
supplied the maps for Guillaume Raynal’s History of the Two Indies.
I.43. A popular teacher of navigation, John Hamilton MOORE (1738–1807) was born in
Edinburgh, educated in Ireland, and subsequently joined the Royal Navy at Plymouth, England.
Around 1770, Moore established a nautical academy in Brentford, Middlesex. In 1772, he
published his popular manual of navigation, The New Practical Navigator and Daily Assistant,
which was appeared in twenty editions between 1772 and 1828.
I.44. Father José Antonio PICHARDO (1748–1812) of the Monastery of San Felipe Neri was a
linguist and antiquarian from New Spain. He met and collaborated with Humboldt on issues of
Mesoamerican historiography, and Humboldt made extensive use of his library. The Tira de
Tepechpan, the Cozcatzin Codex, and the Codex en Cruz are among the numerous manuscripts
and books Pichardo had collected. Executor of the will of Antonio de León y Gama, Pichardo
safeguarded the documents that were part of Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci’s collection. Father
Pichardo made a copy of the Tira, the original and copy of which is housed in the French
National Library. He authored a treatise entitled Informe Pichardo sobre los Límites de Luisiana
y Texas (Pichardo’s report on the borders of Louisiana and Texas) to disprove the USA’s claim
that Texas was part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Part of the treatise, currently at the Archivo
General de la Nación in Mexico, was edited and published by Charles Wilson Hackett (1888–
1951) from 1931 to 1946. It is likely that Pichardo facilitated Humboldt’s purchase of part of
Leon y Gama’s library.
I.44. Spanish rear admiral Francisco de MONTÉS y Pérez (1753–1817) commanded the Santo
Ángel de la Guarda stationed at Havana from 1797–1799. In 1799, he carried out astronomical
52
observations later used by Humboldt. Admitted to the Spanish navy in 1768, Montés became
commodore in 1794 and was appointed commander of the ports of San Blas the following year.
Because he moved the naval department from San Blas to Acapulco without viceregal approval,
Montés was transferred to Havana in 1796. During his long career, Montés served in Spain, the
Philippines, the Caribbean, and New Spain.
I.45. After returning from his American voyage, Humboldt lived mainly in Paris between 1804
and 1827. There he collaborated with many of the most renowned French scientists of the time.
In 1798, the year prior to his departure, Humboldt had already given lectures at the Parisian
Academy of Sciences, where he had met the mathematician, astronomer, and naval officer Jean-
Charles de BORDA (1733–1799). With Borda, Humboldt conducted observations on the magnetic
inclination on top of the Paris Observatory. Borda’s vast experience in geodesic, trigonometric,
and barometric measuring must have been an important source of knowledge for Humboldt, who
frequently refers to the French captain. During his years as a naval engineer, Borda undertook
two marine expeditions, both commissioned by the Academy of Sciences. The first one, to the
North Atlantic (1771–1772), was to test the accuracy of different naval chronometers designed
by Pierre Le Roy (1717–1785) and Ferdinand Berthoud (1727–1807). After that expedition,
Borda kept the best timepiece for himself. The goal of the second expedition in 1774–76 was to
test two Berthoud chronometers and undertake hydrographical surveys. Together with José
Varela y Ulloa (1739–1794), Borda determined the longitude of Pico de Teide and surveyed the
Azores, the Canaries, and the adjacent coast of Africa. In 1756, Borda was elected a member of
the Academy.
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I.45. Naval officer Antoine Hyacinth Anne de Chastenet, Count of PUYSÉGUR (1752–1809), was
the second of three sons from an illustrious family of French nobility. He suffered from dry
asthma and sought the help of Anton Frederick Mesmer (1723–1815), who had explored the idea
of the physiological influences of the planets in an attempt to harmonize astronomy and
medicine. The count himself started to experiment with animal magnetism, introducing it aboard
the ship under his command, the Frédéric-Guillaume. He also founded a magnetic society in
Saint-Domingue in 1784.
I.46. Frigate captain Baltasar Alvarez ORDOÑO y Rebin (b.1768) entered the Spanish navy in
1783, together with his brothers Fermín and José.
I.46. In 1756 British astronomer and surveyor Charles MASON (1728–86) worked at the Royal
Greenwich Observatory under James Bradley (1693–1762). In his Lunar Tables in Longitude
and Latitude according to the Newtonian Laws of Gravity (1778), Mason published, for the first
time, 1,200 of Bradley’s observations. Mason’s own observations of the transits of Venus across
the sun from the Cape of Good Hope (in 1761 and 1769) became the basis for the Nautical
Almanac (1773). Mason is famous for working with Jeremiah Dixon (1733–1779), who also
accompanied him on the survey voyage that defined the Pennsylvania–Maryland border, still
known as the Mason–Dixon Line. Mason and Dixon were the first British scientists to measure a
meridian arc; they also took the first gravity measurements in North America. After Mason’s
death, the British Commission of Longitude published his revisions to lunar observations as
Mayer’s Lunar Tables, improved by Mr. Charles Mason (1787).
I.47. The ACTIVA was originally built as a 200-ton schooner to expand Juan Francisco de la
Bodega y Quadra’s fleet at the Pacific base of the Spanish navy in San Blas. Bodega used the
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ship for his 1792 expedition to resolve the Spainsh and British claims to Nootka Sound. In 1793
or 1794, the ship was reconfigured as a brigantine and renamed Activo, staying in service until at
least 1808, when she was still listed in the inventory of San Blas ships.
I.47. Son of the geologist and chemist Sir James Hall (1761–1832), Scottish naval officer Basil
HALL (1788–1844) traveled to the Orient, South America, and the United States. Having joined
the navy in 1802, Hall accompanied British ambassador William Pitt (1773–1857) to China in
1815. Hall’s Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-
Choo Island was published in 1818. Two years later, he set sail for South America, relating his
experiences in Extracts from a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru and Mexico (1824).
During that voyage, he conducted a series of geophysical pendulum experiments, which were
published in the 1823 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society; they also appeared as a
separate publication in 1824. Hall subsequently left the navy, moved to the USA, and eventually
returned to England, where he published his Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and
1828 (1829), a piece of candid criticism that was not appreciated in the land of the free.
I.47. In 1823, British geophysicist and naval officer Henry FOSTER (bap.1796–1831) was asked
to participate in Edward Sabine’s (1761–1800) voyage to Greenland and Norway. Afterwards,
Foster sailed with Sir William Edward Parry (1790–1855) in search of a north-west passage
(1824–1825) and, again in 1827, to the North Pole. He received the Copley Medal for his reports
on the series of geomagnetic and astronomical observations he published in the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society in 1826. In early 1831, Foster, who led a British naval
expedition to the South Atlantic, drowned on a canoe return trip down the River Chagres after
having measured differences in longitude across the Isthmus of Panama by means of rockets.
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I.48. Malaspina arrived at Acapulco on March 27, 1791, and departed on May 1 of that same
year. Seeking to better determine the meridians of Acapulco, Mexico City, and San Blas relative
to one another, he left Acapulco for Mexico City to observe satellites that would be visible in
each city on April 12, 1791. The ASTRONONMERS in the Descubierta in Acapulco, the Atrevida in
San Blas, and Malaspina himself in Mexico City would make the observations to determine the
position of each place. Dioniso Alcalá Galiano, the main astronomer of the expedition and in
charge of the Descubierta at that moment, made the observations together with Juan Vernacci.
In Mexico City, Antonio de León y Gama helped Malaspina. At San Blas, Ciriaco Cevallos
made the observations with the assistance of Juan Gutiérrez de la Concha (1760–1810), who had
trained in Cartagena under Gabriel de Ciscar. In December 1788, Gutiérrez was appointed to
the Malaspina Expedition to undertake hydrographic work aboard the Atrevida. After being
promoted to commander, he joined a border commission (1795–1802) in Paraguay to survey
Spanish and Brazilian territory. He also commanded a naval station in Río de la Plata in 1805
and was governor of Córdoba de Tucumán a year later. Defending Spanish interests in the former
viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, Gutiérrez was taken prisoner and shot in 1810.
I.49. Jean or Johannes COVENS (1697–1794) and Cornelis MORTIER (1699–1783), his brother-in-
law, were the Dutch cartographers responsible for founding Covens and Mortier, one of the most
prolific map-making and publishing endeavors during the second and third quarters of the
eighteenth century. Relatives continued the firm until 1866. Covens and Mortier worked from
Amsterdam where they were well situated to acquire the plates and rights to many earlier atlases.
They reissued atlases, wall maps, and town plans by many well-known mapmakers, such as
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Guillaume de L’Isle (1675–1726), Pieter van der Aa (1659–1733), and Frederick de Wit (1630–
1706).
I.49. Abbot Guillaume Thomas François RAYNAL (1713–1796) was a French Jesuit historian
who contributed extensively to preparing the intellectual climate for the French Revolution. His
most important work was the Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes (History of the
East and West Indies), which appeared in several editions between 1770 and 1789. The Histoire
was a very popular work whose revolutionary tone became more noticeable in its later editions.
In 1774, the Histoire was placed on the Roman Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books,
and Raynal was banished from Paris in 1781. His property having been confiscated, he died
penniless.
I.50. Chevalier Lorenzo BOTURINI Benaducci (1702–1755) was an Italian historian,
ethnographer, and collector of Mesoamerican antiquities. During seven years in New Spain
(1736–1743), Boturini sought to write a “History of America,” which was to culminate with the
appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. In the process of collecting evidence for the
historical credibility of the virgin’s miracles, he amassed the largest collection of rare
pictographs, linens, codices, maps, and other Mesoamerican artifacts. He copied, traded, and
bought ancient indigenous documents from a variety of sources, including Carlos de Sigüenza y
Góngora’s private library, the archives of the Chapter House of the Cathedral of Mexico, the
Royal Tribunal, and the library of the University of Mexico. Then-viceroy Pedro Cebrián y
Agustín, Count of Fuenclara eventually arrested Boturini, confiscated his collection, and
expelled him from New Spain. The charge was that Boturini had requested funds without proper
authority from the crown. Once back in Spain (after being captured and released by pirates) and
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with the support of his friend Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia (1718–1780), Boturini
was able to argue his case successfully before the Council of the Indies. The council authorized
him to publish a fifteen-volume treatise on Mesoamerican calendrics and chronology. But he had
to make haste to publish Idea de una nueva historia general de la America Septentrional (Idea of
a new general history of South America), which included a catalogue of his collection in New
Spain, in 1746 because the council was about to withdraw its support; it did so days after the
book appeared in print. In 1747, King Ferdinand VI (1713–1759) himself ordered the collection
to be returned to Boturini immediately. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the chevalier never saw it again.
Although he was unable to rely on his collection, Boturini was among the first Europeans to
propose a new interpretation of the indigenous documents and a reevaluation of pre-Hispanic
history. In addition to recognizing the value of the different ways in which the Aztecs recorded
history—that is, putting pictorials and songs on par with written accounts—Boturini also studied
the metaphorics of the Nahuatl language.
I.51. Cornelius DOUWES (1712–1773) was an examiner of naval officers and pilots for the
College of Admiralty at Amsterdam. He is best known for his method of calculating longitude by
using two timed observations of the meridian altitude of a celestial body, one before and one
after the sun’s meridian passage. This method was known as “double elevations.” It was
revolutionary in that navigators did not have to rely on the sun’s passage alone, something that
could be quite difficult under cloudy conditions. Douwe’s method also vastly reduced the
number of calculations needed to determine the altitude of a celestial body because he
formulated tables containing logarithms for the sine, cosecant, and versed sine of an angle in
temporal measurements of hours and minutes rather than in angular measure of degrees and
minutes. Douwes first described his method in a 1754 report in the Actes de l’Academie de
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Haarlem of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. The accompanying tables
were initially available only in manuscript but were finally included in 1761 by Van Keulen in
Amsterdam (the final edition was printed in 1858). Douwes’s method quickly gained popularity
throughout Europe and eventually in the USA. Thomas Jefferson, for one, used Douwes’s
method as simplified by Nevil Maskelyne’s (1732–1811) tables.
I.55. Director of the Paris Observatory and a member of the Bureau of Longitudes, the French
physicist and astronomer Dominique-François-Jean ARAGO (1786–1853) succeeded Georges
Cuvier as permanent secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. A member of the first
graduate class of the École Polytechnique, a leading institution that fostered the disciplinary
specialization in the natural sciences, the young Arago and his fellow student Jean Baptiste Biot
(1774–1862) were selected in 1804 to continue the meridional survey Delambre and Méchain
had begun. After Biot’s early return to Paris, Arago continued his journey to the Balearic Islands.
The Napoleonic troops’ invasion of Spain, however, impeded his research. He was imprisoned
under charges of espionage, escaped, was recaptured and then released, only to be captured again
in the Mediterranean and imprisoned in Algiers. After his final release, the twenty-three-year-old
Arago made his way back to Paris where his bravery and scientific achievements were honored
with a membership in the French Academy of Sciences. That same year, he was also appointed
astronomer at the Paris Observatory, a post he held for the rest of his life. Arago conducted
research on a variety of topics, including magnetism, sound, and meteorology. His preferred field
of study, however, was optics. Arago specialized in studying the properties of light and in 1811
invented an instrument that measured the angle of polarized light. It was in this area, and less in
astronomy, that he made his most significant contributions to science. A brilliant networker, an
eloquent advocate of science, and a passionate politician, he vigorously promoted scientific
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research for nonspecialist audiences. As minister of state in the 1840s, he advanced many liberal
reforms, including universal suffrage (for men) and the abolition of slavery in the French
colonies. A member of Parisian society, Arago forged particularly close friendships with Joseph-
Louis Gay-Lussac and with Humboldt with whom he would maintain close contact for his entire
scientific career. To Arago, Humboldt’s letters meant a constant flow of new scientific
dispatches to present during the Academy’s public sessions, a task at which Arago excelled. For
Humboldt, Arago’s reports guaranteed continuous access to the French scientific establishment
and allowed him to promote many of his fellow Prussian colleagues, among them Carl Friedrich
Gauss (1777–1855), Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876), and Karl Sigismund Kunth.
I.60. MORÁN is a mine located in the Sierra of Pachuca near the mine of Real del Monte in the
present-day state of Hidalgo (Mexico). In pre-Columbian times, this mining district had been the
primary source of green obsidian. In 1552, Alonso Pérez de Zamora (b. 1492), son of a
conquistador and himself holder of an encomienda, founded several mines in the Pachuca
district, including those of Real del Monte, Santa Brígida, and San Andrés. In the eighteenth
century, that mining district had at least fifteen mines, including that of Regla, which was owned
by Pedro Romero de Terreros, the first Count of Santa María de Regla. Before 1749, the
Morán mine had not operated due to its high water level. José Alejandro Bustamante y Bustillo
and his associate, Romero de Terreros, however, succeeded in draining and working it after more
than a decade. Because the water level and cost of drainage increased over time, the mine fell
again into disuse in 1770. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Morán mine became one of many
that the British Real del Monte Company rehabilitated and operated until the company went
bankrupt in 1849.
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I.63. NEW ALBION, as Humboldt uses the name here, designates the area between 43° and 48°
northern latitude (later, Oregon and Washington). Sir Francis Drake used the same name to
refer to the entire West Coast of North America. See also II.274.
I.63. Born in Lima, Juan Francisco de la BODEGA Y QUADRA (1744–1794, also Cuadra) began
his career in 1762 at the Cádiz Naval Academy. A year after arriving in New Spain (1774), he
commanded the Sonora on a reconnaissance mission to the northwest coast of America ordered
by then-viceroy Bucareli. Piloted by the Galician Francisco Antonio Mourelle, the Sonora was
part of a fleet headed by Bruno de Heceta. It was to travel between 42º and 65º northern latitude
to reassert Spanish territorial rights north of Alta California. At about 47º latitude, Bodega y
Quadra’s ship became separated from the rest of the fleet; he continued northward and
successfully reached 58º 30′northern latitude. The northwestern landmarks he located include
present-day Mount Edgecumbe in Alaska (which he named San Jacinto); the entrance to Sitka
Sound (“Susto” for him); and Bucarely Bay (in Alaska), which he named Puerto y Entrada de
Bucareli (Bucareli’s door and entrance) after the Novo–Spanish viceroy. Bodega y Quadra
rejoined Heceta’s fleet at Monterey in October 1775. Bodega y Quadra’s 1775 mission to the
Northwest coast of America preceded that of Captain Cook. In 1779, Bodega y Quadra sailed
again to the northern borders of New Spain, this time under Ignacio de Arteaga and in search of
the mythical Straits of Anian, a navigable northwest passage that supposedly had an entrance on
the west coast of North America. Two 300-ton vessels made up the fleet, the Nuestra Señora del
Rosario (commonly known as the Princesa) under the command of Arteaga and the Nuestra
Señora del Remedio (known as the Favorita) under Bodega y Quadra. Mourelle piloted the
Favorita as second-in-command, this time aiming for 70º northern latitude; they made it as far as
60º. In 1789, Bodega y Quadra was posted as commandant of the department of San Blas
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(Nayarit, Mexico). To carry out the terms of the Nootka Convention (October 28, 1790), Bodega
y Quadra, together with Alonso de Torres, sailed to Nootka on the Santa Gertrudis to meet with
the British envoy Captain George Vancouver in 1792. In addition to settling British and
Spanish territorial claims, this expedition had the goal of exploring and surveying the
northwestern coast between San Francisco and 56º northern latitude, with special attention to the
Strait of Juan de Fuca and the imagined Northwest Passage. Responsible for the scientific
component of the expedition were José Mariano Moziño, José Maldonado, and Anastasio
Echeverría y Godoy. From the Malaspina Expedition, with which they met up at San Blas,
Dionisio Alcalá Galiano, Cayetano Valdés y Flores (1767–1835), Juan Vernacci, and
Secundino Salamanca joined to explore the Strait of Juan de Fuca and beyond in search of a
navigable passage to Hudson Bay. Departing in Feburary 1792, Bodega y Quadra arrived at
Nootka Sound in April 1792. An agreement was not reached, and Bodega y Quadra had to return
to Monterey. The Spanish occupation at Nootka continued.
I.63. Diego HURTADO DE MENDOZA (d.1532) was the commander of a reconnaissance mission to
the Pacific Northwest ordered by Cortés. Cortés’s cousin, Hurtado de Mendoza, was originally
from Extremedura (Spain) and was part Cristóbal de Olid’s army sent to Honduras in 1524 to
explore the Central American coast in search of an interoceanic waterway. On June 30, 1532,
Hurtado de Mendoza sailed westward from Acapulco along the coast of Mexico with Juan de
Mazuela (d. c. 1532). Their ships, the San Miguel and the San Marcos, became separated after
some of the crew mutinied. Hurtado de Mendoza continued northwestward on the San Miguel.
The mutineers returned to Jalisco on the San Marcos, but most were killed. The few who
survived informed Cortés that together the vessels had reached as far as the Fuerte River area.
Hurtado de Mendoza’s ship was lost somewhere around 24º northern latitude on the west coast
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of Sinaloa. He is not to be confused with his namesake, the humanist writer, book collector, and
Ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504–1575).
I.63. After learning of the fate that had befallen the mutineers aboard the San Marcos upon their
return, Cortés sent Diego BECERRA de Mendoza from Mérida, Extremedura (d. c. 1533, alternate
spelling Bezerra) and Hernando de GRIJALVA (d. 1537) from Cuellar in search of Diego Hurtado
de Mendoza. On October 30, 1533, Becerra and Grijalva sailed together aboard La Concepción
and the San Lázaro, but the ships were soon separated at sea. Grijalva sailed westward on the
San Lázaro. He reached the Revillagigedo Islands and eventually landed on an island he named
Santo Tomás (present-day Socorro); nine days later he discovered the Isla de los Inocentes for
the Spaniards (present-day San Benedicto). Grijalva returned to Cortés with a report of his
voyage. In 1536, Cortés sent Grijalva to the aid of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1470s–1541) in Peru,
with secret instructions to explore the western islands on the Pacific on his return trip. After
sailing in 1537, probably up to 29º southern latitude, Grijalva perished in a mutiny. Grijalva’s
report of the voyage to Socorro and San Benedicto is titled Relación y derrotero del navío San
Lázaro al mando de Hernando de Grijalva y su piloto Martín de Acosta, portugués, 30 de
octubre de 1533-febrero de 1534 (published in vol. 4 of Hernán Cortés, Documentos
Cortesianos, edited by José Luis Martínez. Mexico: UNAM, 1990.) Becerra sailed westward.
Upon reaching the coast of Colima, he, too, was killed during a mutiny led by his pilot Fortún
Jiménez de Bertadoña (also Fortún Ximénez, Ortuño or Ortún Ximénez de Bertadoña; d. c.
1534). Jiménez, who took command of the ship, succeeded in reaching as far north as the east
coast of present-day Baja California. Upon landing around present-day La Paz, most of his crew
members were killed by the Pericú; those who escaped were captured by Nuño de Guzmán,
Cortés’s rival. A few returned to Cortés with news of pearls in the California peninsula.
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I.63. To establish his claims to the northern coastal regions of New Spain and take possession of
these pearl-filled lands, Cortés personally headed an expedition of the northern Pacific. In the
San Lázaro, Santa Agueda, and Santo Tomás, Cortés sailed westward, reaching the California
peninsula on May 3, 1535. He took possession of the peninsula for Charles V and established a
settlement, naming the land Terra de Santa Cruz (present-day La Paz, Baja California) and
returned to Acapulco in 1537. A manuscript map of the Gulf of California, “Mapa de la Nueva
tierra de Santa Cruz, extremo meridional de la California descubierta por Hernan Cortés el 3 de
Mayo de 1535,” survives in the Archivo General de Indias (Seville).
I.63. European pilot Juan RODRÍGUEZ CABRILLO (b. c. 1500–43) led an expedition to the shores
of Upper California in 1542. Stationed in Jamaica and Cuba, he arrived in America around 1510.
A merchant-adventurer trained as a crossbowman, mariner, and shipbuilder, he participated in
the conquests of Tenochtitlán and Guatemala. Rodríguez Cabrillo settled in Guatemala until the
infamous Pedro de Alvarado ordered him to build a fleet destined for the Moluccas (1536–40).
After Alvarado’s death, Rodríguez Cabrillo lived in present-day Antigua (then Santiago,
Guatemala), until he was stationed at port Navidad in western Mexico in 1542. Commissioned
by Antonio Pacheco de Mendoza (1495–1552), the first viceroy of New Spain, to command an
expedition to explore Upper California, Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed on the San Salvador (also
known as the Juan Rodríguez), in the company of Bartolomé Ferrer as pilot of La Victoria and
others, from Navidad on June 1542. The expedition headed north to Baja California, passed
present-day Ensenada, and reached San Diego, Point Sal, Point Reyes, and the Russian River. It
then turned south to Santa Catalina Island, where Rodríguez Cabrillo, before dying in January
1543, handed over the captaincy of the expedition to Bartolomé Ferrer. Rodríguez Cabrillo’s
1542–43 expedition journal was first published as a facsimile copy with an English translation by
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Henry R. Wagner in the California Historical Society Quarterly (7 [March, 1928]: 20–54). It
also appears in Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth
Century (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1929). An account of the September 11,
1541, earthquake of Antigua (Guatemala) titled Relación del espantable terremoto que agora
nuevamente acontecido en las yndias en uan ciudad llamada Guatemala (Mexico, 1541; 2nd ed.
Madrid, 1543) is also attributed to Rodríguez Cabrillo. The text is reproduced in volume 1
ofColección de incunables Americanos siglo XVI (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1944).
I.63. The Spanish-employed sailor Juan GAËTAN (alternate spellings include Gaetano, Caetani,
Gaitan, Gaytano, or Gaytan, also Ivan Gaetan) was a member of the 1542 Ruy López de
Villalobos exploratory expedition to the Pacific Islands. Gaëtan was the pilot aboard the San
Juan and a chronicler of that expedition. Before joining López de Villalobos, Gaëtan had sailed
to the western coast of Mexico as part of Hernando de Grijalva’s expedition, and he also
participated in Francisco de Ulloa’s 1539 expedition to survey Mexico and Baja California. The
Italian historical geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485–1577) published Gaëtan’s report
of the Villalobos voyage as part of the three-volume Delle navigationi et viaggi (1550–1559).
Gaetan’s report was written around 1557. Lapérouse believed that Gaëtan had discovered the
Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i) before Captain Cook and had named them “la Mesa,” “los Majos,”
and “la Disgraciada.”
I.63. Captain Francisco GALI (also Galli, Gualli, or Gualle, 1539–1591) was a navigator who
crossed the Pacific Ocean several times when the Manila Galleon route and the Spanish trans-
Pacific trade routes to Asia were first established. In March 1582, Gali sailed from Acapulco to
the Philippines; from there, he continued on to Macao. In transit the crew spotted Taiwan, then
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known as Formosa. Gali returned to Acapulco in December 1584. His report of the voyage
stirred interest in the coasts of northern California where one might establish a port as a way
station for trade ships headed to Asia. Gali died in the Philippines on another voyage to Asia, but
not before drafting a report of his voyages to Asia, which states that there was an ocean of about
1,200 leagues between Asia and California at the 38º northern latitude. Gali’s accounts of the
voyage were translated into Dutch and published by the Dutch geographer and explorer Jan
Huygen van Linschoten (1563–1611) as part of his Itinerario (Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz,
1595–96). The English edition of Gali’s voyage was published by John Wolfe in Richard
Hakluyt’s (1552–1616) expanded edition of Principal Navigations (vol. 3, London: Bishop,
1598–1600). The first separate printing of Gali’s travel narrative was published as Viaje y
descubrimientos y observaciones desde Acapulco a Filipinas, desde Filipinas a Macao y desde
Macao a Acapulco (Voyage, discoveries, and observations from Acapulco to the Philippines, and
from the Philippines to Macao, and back from Macao to Acapulco, 1638). Gali is also
responsible for the story of the fabulous Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata (gold and silver) islands.
Gali heard and spread the story of a Portuguese vessel that, driven off course by a storm on its
way to Japan, reached an island inhabited by wealthy people; eventually one island became two.
Sebastian Vizcaíno and other explorers sought in vain for these fables islands. Gali is not to be
confused with the painter Francisco Galí (1880–1965).
I.64. British explorer, navigator, and cartographer Captain James COOK (1728–1779) joined the
British Merchant Navy as a teenager and the Royal Navy in 1755. After participating in the
Seven Years’ War, Cook surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence
River during the siege of Québec. His work caught the attention of the Admiralty and Royal
Society, prompting his commission as commander of the HMS Endeavor for the first of three
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scientific expeditions around the world (1768–1771, 1772–1775, and 1776–1779). Their purpose
was to measure the transit of Venus in Tahiti and to explore the southern Pacific hemisphere in
search of the much speculated upon terra australis. As Humboldt indicates, Cook’s expeditions
were by far not the first European advancements into the Pacific. Nevertheless, his scientific
explorations and published accounts made Cook an international celebrity at a time that one
might call the second period of accelerated globalization (1750-–1800). During that time, the
European hunger, scientifically and financially motivated, for exploring the world spawned
scores of expeditions around the globe. A skillful cartographer, Cook charted the coasts of New
Zealand, part of the eastern coast of Australia and southern New Guinea during his first trip. This
allowed him to confirm the existence of the famous Torres Strait. Alexander Dalrymple had
discussed this sea passage between Australia and New Guinea in 1769 in connection with his
rediscovery of an account by the sixteenth-century Portuguese pilot Luis Váez de Torres (b. c.
1565–d. c. 1615) of the Quirós expedition. That expedition had claimed to have passed the
narrow corridor between the two shores and sighted Australia for the first time in 1606. During
his second voyage, Cook followed the edge of the Antarctic ice cap and found Norfolk Island
and several Polynesian archipelagos. During his third voyage, he charted the Pacific Coast of
North America and landed on the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands which, as Humboldt points out,
Cook only “rediscovered.” Humboldt is alluding here to Lapérouse’s thesis that the sailor Juan
Gaëtan of the Villalobos expedition (1542) had already set foot on the same islands where Cook
became the victim of his own ambitions. In 1779, Cook was attacked and killed by Hawaiian
natives after a dispute with the island’s king. In reaction to his death, Georg Forster, a member
of Cook’s second expedition, published a literary portrait of the famous captain whom he praised
as a charismatic leader, an enthusiastic naturalist, and a logistical mastermind. In the years to
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follow, Cook’s achievements and the circumstances of his death were immortalized in numerous
poems, plays, and paintings.
I.64. VOYAGE DE MARCHAND is Humboldt’s short title for the travel log edited by French
politician and scientist Charles Pierre Claret, which narrates the second successful French
circumnavigation led by Étienne MARCHAND de la Ciotat (1755–1793) and includes journals and
maps along with detailed descriptions of the Haida and Tlingit peoples and the Pacific islands.
Marchand was the captain of La Solide, a 300-ton French ship that sailed around the world on a
fur trading expedition. The vessel departed Marseilles in 1790, sailed around Cape Horn, touched
the Marquesas Islands, and visited part of the northwest coast of America. In 1791, while
anchored at Sitka Bay, Marchand traded with the Tlingit peoples and made a chart of Sitka
Sound, entitled Plan de la Baie Tchinkitáné. He used the Tlingit language ethnonym of the
Tlingit Nation for the first time: Lingít Aaní (“Tlingit territory”). Thereafter, Marchand traveled
southward and stayed briefly in the area bordering Parry passage on the northern part of Queen
Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), British Columbia. From America’s northwest coast, the
expedition sailed to Hawaii, Macao, Mauritius, around Africa, and finally reached Marseilles in
August 1792. Claret’s introduction includes an overview of early European navigations to the
North Pacific from 1537 to 1791.
I.64. The 1792 Spanish expedition to survey the STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA—the middle of which
is now part of the USA–Canada international boundary—and determine the existence of a
supposed western entrance to the Northwest Passage was commanded by Dionisio Alcalá
Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores (1767–1835), both members of the Malaspina
Expedition. The expedition made a complete survey of the continental shore at the eastern end
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of the strait. Alcalá Galiano’s second in command on the Sútil was Secundino Salamanca;
Valdés’s on the Mexicana was Juan Vernaci. These were the first European ships to
circumnavigate Vancouver Island and to spot and enter present-day Fraser River (British
Columbia, Canada). The accounts of the expedition escaped the fate of Malaspina’s. This
expedition’s results were published as Relacion del viage hecho por las goletas Sútil y Mexicana
en el año de 1792, para reconocer el estrecho de Fuca (Account of the voyage made by the
schooners Sútil and Mexicana in the year 1792 to find the Strait of Fuca) in 1802. The
introduction by famed naval historian Martín Fernández de Navarrete (1765–1844) offers a
thorough review of Spanish voyages to the Northwest Coast of America up to 1792. Included
was also an atlas (17 plates) with a general map of the northwest coast of America in three parts.
The publication also featured a report on astronomical observations by another member of the
Malaspina Expedition, José Espinosa y Tello. While the narrative was based on Dionisio
Alcalá Galiano’s travel journal, the compiler and editor of the information was most likely
Espinosa y Tello. Vernaci has also been credited with editing the 1802 publication. See also
Malaspina Expedition.
I.64. XALTOCAN was a town located in the middle of a salt lake of the same name in the northern
basin of Mexico. Part of a system of lakes, Xaltocan, the lake, was located to the north of Lake
Texcoco. In pre-Columbian times, Xaltocan was an Otomí polity that controlled the north of the
basin. Now part of Mexico City, the city was linked to the mainland by causeways.
I.64. Discussing Miguel Costanzó’s methods for determining the latitude of San José and Cape
San Lucas, Humboldt briefly mentions two optical instruments of very distinct ages. The
GNOMON, in its mobile version basically a straight wooden stick, is the projecting piece on a
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sundial that indicates the time by the position of its shadow. Even though the first use of the
gnomon has not been determined exactly, an ancient book on Chinese mathematics reveals that a
gnomon was used as early as the eleventh century BCE. A considerable advancement over this
method was the reflecting OCTANT invented by the British mathematician and naturalist John
Hadley (1662–1744) in 1731. Designed specifically for portable use, the octant measured angles
by means of two mirrors that made the reflecting objects appear to coincide, which then
produced a specific angle between them to be read on the octant’s scale. The arc of the
instrument was one-eighth of a circle, hence the name octant. The practical octant soon became a
sextant, enhancing the range of measurements from 90 to 120 degrees. Humboldt himself owned
a 14-inch Hadley sextant manufactured by Thomas Wright (1711–1786) but left it in Europe
because of its substantial size.
I.66. Miguel José de AZANZA Navarlaz y Alegría (1746–1826) became viceroy of New Spain at
the turn of the century (1798–1800). He held several titles: knight of Santiago (1796), Ordre de
la Toison d’Or (1810), and Duke of Santa Fé (1810). Azanza was born in Aoiz (Navarra, Spain)
and first traveled to New Spain at the age of seventeen with his maternal uncle, Martín José de
Alegría y Egües (b. 1723). In 1768, he was attached to the office of the inspector-general of New
Spain, José de Gálvez y Galladro. A year later, he participated in Gálvez’s expedition to
California. Back in Spain, Azanza joined the armed forces in 1771, served in Havana, and
participated in the siege of Gibraltar (1779–1780). He also held several high-ranking offices in
the civil service, including that of diplomat to St. Petersburg and Berlin. After serving as
Secretary of War for Spain, he was appointed viceroy of New Spain, a position he assumed in
May 1798. During his administration, Azanza secured New Spain’s ports, including those of San
Blas and Veracruz, against British naval forces. Because of his affiliation with Joseph-Napoleon
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Bonaparte’s (1786–1844) government, during whose reign he held key offices, Azanza lost most
of his titles and his fortune when Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) was reinstated. Azanza died in
France.
I.66n. Humboldt cited the journal as Periodico de México, which is incorrect.
I.66n. Humboldt credits CASASOLA, a frigate lieutenant in the Spanish Royal Navy, with
compiling the Compendio histórico de las navegaciones… sobre las costas septentrionales de
California (Historical compendium of sea voyages concerning the northern coasts of California).
Completed in Mexico and dated 1799, this manuscript is a chronological account of the
explorations of the Spanish navy along the Pacific west and northwest coast of America up to
Alaska between 1768 and 1796. It includes a brief history of the California peninsula; the early
missionary work of Kino; the expedition from San Blas (Mexico) by Bucareli commissioned in
1773, 1775, and 1776; and a rough sketch map of Nootka Sound, British Columbia. See also
bibliography under Mexico, 1948.
I.66n. Antonio María de BUCARELI y Ursúa (1771–1779) was the forty-sixth viceroy of New
Spain, from 1771 to 1779. Prior to that, he had served as governor and captain-general of Cuba
(1766–71). His early career in Europe had been in the military. He participated in campaigns in
Italy and Portugal, became a lieutenant-general, and he also served as inspector of coastal
fortifications in Granada. As viceroy, he sent an expedition to explore and settle coastal
California, then a Spanish possession, and took steps to prevent Russia from invading North
America. See also Cramer y Mañenas, Agustín.
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I.66n. Naval commander Manuel Antonio FLORES Maldonado (c. 1722–1799, alternate spelling
Florez) was viceroy of New Spain from 1787–89. Before settling into the viceregal office in New
Spain, Flores served in the Spanish navy in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean Seas, having
enlisted in 1736. He also served as viceroy of New Granada (1776-–82). Under his orders,
Esteban José Martínez (on the Princesa) and Gonzalo López de Haro (on the San Carlos)
sailed to Nootka Sound (present-day Vancouver Island) in 1789 to set up a Spanish settlement
there and secure Spain’s interest in the northwest against British and Russian merchants and
officials. Martínez’s actions at Nootka resulted in an international crisis that ended in Spain
acceding to British demands in the Nootka Convention. Flores returned to Spain in 1789 where
he was named honorary captain-general of the Spanish Navy.
I.66n. Havana-born Juan Vicente Güemes Pacheco de Padilla, second Count of REVILLAGIGEDO
(1740–1799), succeeded Flores as viceroy of New Spain (1789–1794). Revillagigedo was
effective in improving living conditions in Mexico City; he also founded the Archivo General
(general archives) and, in 1793, the Museum of National History. His father, Juan Francisco de
Güemes y Horcasitas, first Count of Revillagigedo (c. 1682–1766), was a Spanish colonial
administrator and a former viceroy of New Spain (1746–1755).
I.66n. José de CAÑIZARES Rojas (fl. 1769–96) was a Spanish naval pilot who came to America in
the late 1760s after having graduated from the Cádiz Academy in 1765. In 1768, he was posted
to the port of San Blas (Nayarit, Mexico), where he was stationed for twenty-five years,
participating in several expeditions to the west and northwest of America. Cañizares was part of
José de Gálves’s staff (as was the later viceroy Azanza) when the latter served as visitador to
New Spain (1765-–70). As royal envoys, visitadores reported in the form of secret missives to
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the Spanish king and to the head of the Council of the Indies. Cañizares served as master’s mate
on the San Carlos, also known as the Toisón de Oro in the 1769–70 exploratory missions to San
Diego and Monterey. Following Gálves’s orders to reach the port at San Diego, Cañizares
traveled north along the coast of Baja California and California up to present-day Santa Barbara.
In 1769, the expedition reached San Diego where they joined the San Antonio commanded by
Juan Pérez. In July of that year, Junípero Serra gave mass and established the mission of San
Diego. Cañizares kept the logs of astronomical observations for that expedition. In 1775,
Cañizares sailed to San Francisco Bay with Juan Manuel de Ayala on the San Carlos. While
the ship was anchored at Angel Island, Cañizares was the first to enter and make a chart of the
bay (currently at the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Mexico, 305). A close collaborator of
Bodega y Quadra’s, Cañizares served as a pilot for the Arteaga-Bodega expedition of 1779 to
the Northwest of America and for the 1792 Bodega Expedition during the Nootka Crisis. For his
services, Cañizares was promoted to midshipman (1776), sublieutenant (1781), and junior
lieutenant (1791) of the Spanish Royal Navy. His son, Francisco Antonio de Cañizares, also
became a naval pilot. Cañizares is not to be confused with his namesake, the Spanish playwright
José de Cañizares (1676–1750).
I.66n. In 1772, colonial administrator Antonio BONILLA (fl. 1772–1784) compiled a summary
account of the province of Texas commissioned by viceroy Bucareli. Based on archival material
and official and ecclesiastical reports about the region, this account summarizes major events in
Texas from 1685–1772. It also includes recommendations on how to improve the province’s
administrative system. In 1773, Bonilla, who held the rank of infantry lieutenant, was transferred
to the Interior Provinces as assistant inspector and secretary of the commander-general. In that
position, he drafted reports on the state of defense of the presidios. In addition to writing reports
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about Sonora (1774) and Chihuahua (1774, 1778), he prepared a report about New Mexico
known as “Apuntes Históricos sobre el Nuevo Mexico” (Historical notes on New Mexico, 1776).
By 1784, Bonilla had reached the rank of secretary of the viceroyalty and had drafted reports
about each presidio and mission in the province. He was responsible for archiving most of what
was to become the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City.
I.69. French naval officer and explorer Jean-François de Galaup, Count of LAPÉROUSE (also La
Pérouse [1741–c. 1788]) inexplicably vanished, along with his entire crew, after his two ships,
the Astrolabe and the Boussole, had set out from the British colony of Botany Bay to explore the
southern and western coasts of Australia and other parts of Oceania. In 1785, Louis XVI of
France (1754–93) had appointed Lapérouse to embark on a voyage around the world that would
complete the Pacific discoveries of James Cook. It was not until a 2008 French expedition (the
latest of four over time) retraced Lapérouse’s course that clear evidence came to light of the
shipwreck of both vessels on the coral reefs of the island of Vanikoro. What happened to
Lapérouse and his crew, some of whom were believed to have survived the shipwreck, remains a
mystery that has captured the fancy of many, Jules Verne (1828–1905) prominent among them.
Lapérouse had sent his journals and other materials back to France before he disappeared; the
Voyage de Lapérouse autour du monde (La Perouse’s voyage around the world, 1797) is based
on them. An English translation, The Journal of Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse 1785–
1788 (2 vols), dates back to 1799.
I.72. Father Eusebio Francisco KINO (bap. 1645–1711) was a Jesuit missionary, cosmographer,
astronomer, cartographer, historian, and explorer of present-day northwest Mexico, Lower
California, and the southwest USA. Born in Segno, Val de Non, Italy, his last name was Chini or
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Chino, spelled Kino in New Spain as it was pronounced. As his origins were unclear (German or
Italian), his last name was also sometimes spelled Kühn. An excellent student at the University
of Ingolstadt, Kino turned down a professorship at the Royal University of Bavaria to become a
missionary to serve in the Far East. Instead, he arrived in New Spain in 1681 and spearheaded
the Society of Jesus’s efforts to evangelize the people of the east coast of Baja California (then
called Antigua California). In 1683, Kino arrived in the Bay of La Paz and founded a short-lived
mission at San Bruno. With the financial support of María Guadalupe de Lencastre (1630–1715),
Duchess of Abeiro y Arcos, Kino extended the Jesuit mission’s frontier of Sonora into the land
of the upper Pimas, or Pimería Alta. In 1691, he established missions among the O’odham,
Sobaipuris, Sobas, and Primas in present-day Sonora and Arizona, including the Missions of San
Xavier del Bac, Guévavi, and San José de Tumacácori. A trained mathematician and
cartographer, Kino was the first to assert that Baja California was not an island, as it was thought
to be, but a peninsula that could be reached by land. Well documented is his dispute with
Sigüenza y Góngora between 1681 and 1690 over the nature of comets. In his Exposición
Astronómica (1681), Kino argued that the 1680 comet was a harbinger of future disasters, a
theory that Sigüenza opposed in his Libra Astronómica y Philosóphica written at the end of
1681. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–1695) dedicated a poem (“Soneto”) to Kino with the
caption, “Aplaude la ciencia astronómica del padre Eusebio Francisco Kino, de la Compañía de
Jesús, que escribió del cometa que el año de ochenta apareció, absolviéndole de ominoso” (I
applaud the astonomic science of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino of the Society of Jesus who
wrote about the comet that appeared in 1680, forgiving it for its gloom).
I.73. Father Pedro NADAL was one of the first Franciscan missionaries in what is now Arizona.
Together with the Franciscan friar Juan de la Asunción, Nadal left New Spain in 1538 under
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orders of the viceroy. They followed in the footsteps of earlier explorers, notably the Spanish
conquistador Nuño de Guzmán in 1529. The fathers came as far as what would later be called
the Río Colorado, where Nadal measured the latitude. In 1539, Father Marcos de NIZA (c. 1495–
1558), a French Franciscan who served in Central America and Peru and was stationed at New
Spain in 1537, followed Nadal. A year later, the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio Pacheco de
Mendoza, sent Niza to the then-known northern borders of New Spain to investigate and report
on stories of wealth. Accompanied by Esteban (c. 1503–1539), a native of Azemmour
(Morocco), Niza left Sinaloa in 1539. Heading north, he reached the Sonora River, crossed the
the San Pedro River, and entered Arizona. When he arrived at Chichilticalo (near Benson), he
learned that Esteban, who had been sent ahead to survey the terrain, had died in Hawikuh (a Zuni
pueblo in New Mexico). Upon his return to Mexico, Niza told wondrous stories of the fabled
Seven Cities of Cíbola. In 1540, he accompanied Francisco Vazquez de Coronado’s (1510–1554)
expedition to the southwest of the present-day USA in search of the mythical golden cities
(Quivira, Cíbola). Niza went as far north as Hawikuh and returned in disgrace; he reached
Mexico in July 1540. Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548) wrote a Relación (account) with the
details of Niza’s expedition, a copy of which was presented to Viceroy Mendoza in September
1540. This Relación is currently at the Archivo General de Indias (Seville).
I.73. Joseph-Nicolas DELISLE (1688–1768) is chiefly remembered for his method for observing
the transits of Venus and Mercury by instants of contacts. As a preliminary to the transit of
Mercury in 1743, which he personally observed, he issued a map of the world showing the varied
circumstances of the transit’s occurrence. Besides the many papers Delisle sent to the French
Academy of Sciences, of which he became a member in 1714, he published Mémoires pour
servir à l'histoire et au progrès de l'astronomie (Contribution to the history and advancement of
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astronomy, 1738) after having taught in St. Petersburg for more than twenty years (1725–47).
Among his students in France, where Delisle had been appointed chair of mathematics in 1718,
were Joseph de Lalande and Charles Messier (1730–1817). Humboldt’s reference is to Delisle’s
most important geographical work, his Mémoire sur les nouvelles découvertes au nord de la mer
du sud (Account of the new discoveries in the northern South Sea, 752).
I.73. Spanish missionary Juan DÍAZ (1736–81) was a member of the 1774 exploratory mission to
California under Juan Bautista de Anza (1736–88). Ordained in 1707, Díaz arrived in New Spain
in 1763. For five years he was a missionary in Sonora at the mission of Purísima Concepción de
Caborca (1768–73). Following Father Francisco Garcés, who had explored the Colorado Desert
and crossed the Colorado River in 1771, Díaz helped establish a feasible land route to California.
Stationed at the recently founded mission of San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuñer on the Colorado
River, Díaz died during an attack of the Yumas. After this attack, the land route the first Anza
expedition had set up was abandoned. Díaz’s travel journal of the expedition, titled “Diario que
forma el p. pred. fr. Juan Díaz missionero apostólico de la Santa Cruz de Querétaro en el viaje
que hace en compañía del r. p. fr. Francisco Garcés . . .,” is housed at the University of Arizona.
I.73. Spanish missionary Pedro FONT (1738–1781) was a member of the 1775–1776 Anza
exploratory mission to California. Admitted to the Franciscan Order in Spain, Font embarked to
New Spain in 1763. He was stationed at Querétaro until 1773, when he was transferred to the
San José de Pimas mission in Sonora. There, he was appointed chaplain, diarist, and cartographer
to the second Anza expedition. Other members of that expedition included Francisco Garcés.
After the expedition, Font was stationed at the missions of Santa María de Magdalena (1776–
1777) and Pitiquito (1780–1781). Giving graphic accounts of the expedition to California and the
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entry to San Francisco, Font wrote a journal. There are at least three versions of the diary, a draft
travelog, an abridged version submitted to the viceregal authorities, and a longer version. The
abridged version was printed in Spanish and translated into English by Frederick John Teggart
(1870–1946) in 1913 as “The Anza Expedition of 1775–1776; diary of Pedro Font”
(Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, vol. 3, pp. 1–131). The longer version,
called Diario Largo, was translated into English and published by Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870–
1953) in Anza’s California Expedition (vol. 4, University of California Press, 1930). Julio César
Montané Martí published the Spanish version of the Diario Largo as Diario Íntimo in 2000
(Hermosillo: Universidad de Sonora; Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés Editores). See also Arricivita,
Juan Domingo.
I.74. Praising Pierre BOUGUER’s accomplishments in accurate measuring, Humboldt not only
compares his own practical conditions of scientific field work with those of his French
predecessor but also gives an account of the quantum leap in astronomical observation during the
sixty years between Bouguer’s travels and his own. While the Frenchman’s method of using a
gnomon had been standard practice, Humboldt’s reflection instruments for optical
measurements, such as the Ramsden sextant, were the finest of his day. Instead of scaling his
instrument with “a few strips of reeds,” as Bouguer had done, Humboldt used a chain of ten-
centimeter metal sticks. This difference reflected the new standard in metrical measurements
established in Paris in 1799.
I.75. Jesuit missionary and explorer Juan de UGARTE (1662–1730) worked in Baja California and
explored the Gulf of California. Born in Tegucigalpa (Honduras) and educated in Guatemala, he
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entered the Society of Jesus in 1679 in Mexico City. A prominent clergyman recruited by Juan
María Salvatierra, Ugarte left a professorship of philosophy at the prestigious Colegio Máximo
of Mexico City to become a missionary in Baja California. He arrived in Baja California in 1701
after having served as fundraiser and overseer of finances for the California missions’ fund
(Pious Fund for the Californias of the Society of Jesus) since 1696. Ugarte became the head of
Jesuit missions Salvatierra had founded when the latter died on his way to Mexico City in 1717.
At the missions of Loreto and San Javier, Ugarte introduced cattle breeding and developed local
agriculture of European crops. In an effort to ascertain whether California was indeed a
peninsula, Ugarte supervised the building of the first ships constructed in California. He sailed
through the Gulf of California (also known as Mar de Cortés, Mar Lauretano, or Mar Bermejo)
and traveled as far as the mouth of the Colorado River in 1721. A year later, he explored the
Pacific in the northwest of Baja California. In his “Relación del descubrimiento del Golfo de
California o Mar Lauretano” (Account of the discovery of the Gulf of California or the
Lauretano Sea) from 1722, Ugarte describes the places he had explored and the construction of
El Triunfo de la Cruz and Santa Bárbara. Jesuit author Miguel Venegas used Ugarte’s reports
and maps to compile Noticia de la California (1757; see Humboldt’s Library). Many
geographers (Humboldt mentions Antillón), used Ugarte’s findings to improve their maps of the
coast of western North America. Ugarte’s writings were also published in Roberto Ramos’s Tres
documentos sobre el descubrimiento y exploración de Baja California (Three documents about
the discovery and exploration of Baja California; Mexico: Editorial Jus, 1958) and Miguel León
Portilla’s Testimonios sudcalifornianos; nueva entrada y establecimiento en el puerto de La Paz
1720 (Testimonials from Southern California; return to and settlement in the port of La Paz,
1720; Mexico: UNAM, 1969).
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I.75. Born in Antequera (Spain), brigadier-general Pedro de RIVERA y Villalón (c. 1664–1744)
served as governor of Veracruz, Tlaxcala, and Yucatán. In 1724, he was commissioned to survey
the entire presidial system, an inspection of the northern frontiers of New Spain that lasted for
four years. Accompanied by engineer and cartographer Francisco Álvarez Barreiro, Francisco
de Sánchez, and two clerical assistants, Rivera was to determine the efficiency of fortifications in
the north. His expedition traveled about 7,500 miles and about three years and seven months and
visited all the key settlements from the Gulf of California to present-day western Louisiana,
including Santa Fé, Sinaloa, and Nagadoches. Rivera’s journal is a daily logbook in which he
recorded the geographical location, demography, and ethnology en route. After inspecting
twenty-three presidios, Rivera completed a report of the expedition (with seven detailed maps)
and drafted new regulations for the territory he had visited. Advisor to the viceroy upon
concluding the inspection, Rivera became governor of Veracruz (1731) and president, governor,
and captain-general of the Audiencia of Guatemala (1732–1742). Rivera’s manuscript journal
from the archives in Mexico City, together with his official report and the drafted regulations,
was published in 1736.
I.75. Spanish cartographer, engineer, and soldier Nicolás de LAFORA (c. 1730–after 1788) began
his military career in the infantry regiment of Galicia in 1746. He served in this regiment for
more than ten years and was stationed in Italy, North Africa, and Portugal. From 1752 to 1755,
he studied at the Royal Academy of Mathematics in Barcelona. In early 1757, Lafora was
admitted to the Royal Corps of Engineers as second lieutenant and draftsman engineer; he
reached the rank of captain in 1763. Shortly after his arrival in New Spain in 1764, Lafora was
appointed to the expedition of the MARQUIS DE RUBI to survey the northern territories of New
Spain. Lafora was the expedition’s recordkeeper and also assisted in mapmaking. His writings
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about the provinces of New Vizcaya, New Mexico, Sonora, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Texas, New
Galicia, and Nayarit included descriptions of geographical features, population statistics, frontier
conditions, and suggestions to improve the defense of the presidios. He also wrote an “Opinion”
(Dictamen) in 1766 (at the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Audiencia de Guadalajara, 511),
in which he recommended changes to improve the defense of the province of New Vizcaya.
Humboldt used Lafora’s Mapa de la Frontera del Vireinato de Nueva España (Map of the
border of the viceroyality of New Spain, 1771), which traces Rubi’s route and covers the areas
just south of Taos in the north, Nayarit in the southwest, Tampico in the southeast, and from the
Gulf of California in the west to Louisiana in the east. Despite his repeated request to be
promoted to lieutenant-colonel, Lafora was relieved of duty in America in 1770. Upon his return
to Spain in 1772, he served as commandant of harbor fortifications in hometown Alicante. In
1775, Lafora returned to New Spain as district magistrate of Oaxaca and was finally promoted.
Vito Alessio Robles (1879–1957) first published Lafora’s diary in 1939.
I.75. The Spanish inspector of New Spain and field marshal, Cayetano Maria Pignatelli Rubi
Corbera y San Climent, Baron de Llinas, better known as MARQUÉS DE RUBI (b. c. 1725–c.
1788), led an expedition to present-day northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas
(1766–1767). Rubi first arrived in Veracruz in late 1764. Rubi’s inspection of the presidios was
to assess the military organization and state of defense of the northern borderlands. His report
was to aid colonial inspector-general José de Gálvez y Gallardo (who later became Spain’s
Minister of the Indies) in recommending major financial and administrative reforms in the
viceroyalty. Rubi traveled from Mexico City to Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, El Paso
(Texas), and Santa Fé (New Mexico). He inspected the missions of the Pimería Alta and
traveled as far east as Los Adaes at the edge of Louisiana. Rubi covered nearly 7,600 miles in
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twenty-three months and inspected twenty-three presidios. He recommended closing several
presidios in the northern frontier area in his 1768 Opinion (Archivo General de Indias, Seville,
Audiencia de Guadalajara, 273, 511), and most of his recommendations were implemented in
regulations issued in 1772. In 1768, Rubi departed for Spain. By 1788, the year Charles III died,
Rubi had reached the rank of lieutenant-general, served as a counselor of war, and was
commander-general and governor of the military district of Madrid. In addition to Lafora’s
diary, Rubi kept a travel journal that was discovered in 1989; it is housed at the Center for
American History of the University of Texas at Austin.
I.75. Engineer Manuel Agustín MASCARÓ (1747–d. c. 1809) entered the military at a young age
and was trained in mathematics for five years at the Military Academy in Barcelona. In 1769, he
was admitted to the Royal Corps of Engineers. In 1777, he was chosen to draw maps and
supervise the construction of a mint at Arispe, the designated capital of the Pimería Alta
(Provincias Internas, New Spain). Together with Spanish engineer Gerónimo de la Rocha y
Figueroa (1750–c. 1796), Mascaró embarked for New Spain in 1778. In Arispe, Sonora, Mascaró
was in charge of civil architecture and engineering for five years. In addition to his journal of
travels from Chihuahua to Arispe (1780), Mascaró also wrote a description of Arispe and its
surrounds in 1781. Two years later, Mascaró was promoted to captain and transfered to Mexico
City where he continued to work as an engineer.
I.75n. Following Cortés’s orders, Francisco de ULLOA (fl. 1535–40), his lieutenant, explored the
gulf coast of the California peninsula. Originally from Mérida, Extremedura (Spain), Ulloa
arrived in the Americas in 1528. After participating in the conquest of New Galicia, Ulloa
traveled to present-day Baja California with Cortés in 1535 and became captain of the Santa
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Cruz settlement near present-day La Paz, Baja California. Ulloa sailed northwestward from
Acapulco on July 8, 1539. Soon, one of his ships, the Santo Tomás, separated from the rest of the
fleet. Ulloa continued northward with the other two vessels, crossed the Gulf of California, and
reached the head of the gulf up to the Colorado River; there he took possession of the area in the
name of Charles V. Because of the red waters from the Colorado River, Ulloa named that part of
the Gulf of California “Mar Bermejo” (Vermillion Sea). On his return trip, he rounded Cabo San
Lucas into the Pacific Ocean and sailed northward. He reached the Isla de Cedros in 1540,
continued on northward and sailed as far as 30º and probably 33º northern latitude. The vessel
Santa Agueda returned from the Isla de Cedros to Acapulco with Ulloa’s account of the voyage
and a short travel journal by the ship’s captain, Francisco Preciado. Preciado’s account was
published in 1565. Although Ulloa proved that California was a peninsula, the idea that
California was an island persisted well into the eighteenth century. A facsimile of Ulloa’s
account of his voyage, written at the Isla de Cedros on April 5, 1540, was translated into English
by Irene A. Wright (1879–1972) and published in Henry R. Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the
Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century (San Francisco: California Historical
Society, 1929). Nieves del Olmo García’s Cartas de Francisco de Ulloa a Costanza Villalobos
(Mérida: Editorial Regional de Extremedura, 2007), a collection of recently discovered letters
(1528–1542) from the Archivo Histórico Nacional of Madrid, includes one by Francisco de
Ulloa, which states that Ulloa survived the California expedition and returned to Spain, where he
lived from 1541–1544. But the letter may also be from Ulloa’s namesake (d. 1571), a captain in
the Spanish navy who explored the Strait of Magellan in 1553–1554, proving that a west–east
passage of the Strait was possible. See also Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego; Becerra de Mendoza;
and Kino.
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I.77. In addition to being an author of the USAmerican Declaration of Independence and the
third president of the United States, Thomas JEFFERSON (1743–1826) was an architect as well as
an accomplished scholar and naturalist. After their meeting in 1804, Humboldt and Jefferson
became longtime correspondents.
I.77. Born in Treceño, Santander (Spain), Silvestre VÉLEZ DE ESCALANTE (c. 1750–1792), a
Franciscan missionary and explorer, arrived in New Spain around 1767, where he entered the
Franciscan Order at the Convento Grande in Mexico City at age seventeen. Commissioned to
travel to New Mexico, he arrived at Laguna pueblo in 1774 and was transferred to Zuni pueblo
the following year. From 1776–1777, Vélez de Escalante was part of a pathfinding expedition to
northern California led by Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez (c. 1740–1805) to find a direct
passage between New Mexico and Monterey. Vélez de Escalante was the expedition’s journal
keeper. Although the party could not reach Monterey in their five-month travels, they were the
first Europeans to explore the area. In 1778, the cartographer of the expedition, Bernardo de
Miera y Pachecho (fl. 1743–1778), drew a map of the country they explored, which is now in the
British Library. Upon his return, Vélez de Escalante resumed his missionary work in New
Mexico. Herbert E. Bolton’s Pageant in the Wilderness: The Story of the Escalante Expedition to
the Interior Basin, 1776, includes Vélez devEscalante’s diary and itinerary in an annotated
translation (Salt Lake City: Utah Historical Society, 1950, pp. 133–239). The latest English
edition of Vélez de Escalante’s journal is Ted J. Warner’s The Domínguez-Escalante Journal
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995).
I.79. José de Rivera (or Ribera) Bernárdez, second count of SANTIAGO DE LA LAGUNA (fl. 1710–
30), was born in Zacatecas (Mexico). Upon the death of his uncle, José de Urquiola (d. 1726),
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the first count of Santiago de la Laguna, the title transferred to Rivera. A wealthy mine owner
who went bankrupt, Rivera, a patron of the arts and the Catholic Church, is remembered for his
writings about his hometown. He designed the retablo-façade of the Cathedral of Zacatecas in
1745.
I.79. Spanish scientist Francisco Javier de SARRÍA is best remembered as the founding director of
the Royal Lottery in New Spain (1770). An advocate of Lavoisier’s chemical theories, he
published the Ensayo de metalurgia (Essay on metallurgy, 1784) with a supplement (1791).
I.79. Novo–Spanish mathematician and instrument-maker Diego de GUADALAJARA Y TELLO
(1742–1801) was a professor of mathematics at the prestigious Academy of San Carlos in
Mexico City. In 1791, he collaborated in designing and building a chronometer; he also repaired
instruments for the Malaspina Expedition. To replace Costanzó, the Tribunal de Minería
awarded Guadalajara y Tello the directorship of mathematics of the Academy in 1789, a position
he held until his death. In addition to teaching mathematics, building mathematical instruments,
and conducting astronomical observations, he took part in public works, such as building roads
and drafting plans for the construction of the drainage system of the Valley of Mexico (1796). A
clockmaker, Guadalajara y Tello edited the first American journal that specialized in clocks:
Advertencias y reflexiones varias conducentes al buen uso de relojes grandes y pequeños y su
regulación (Miscellaneous warnings and reflections on the proper use of large and small clocks
and their regulation, 1777).
I.81. Spanish cartographer, surveyor, and engineer Francisco ÁLVAREZ BARREIRO (fl. 1716–
1729) accompanied Pedro de Rivera on the 1724–1728 inspection of New Spain’s northern
frontiers. Álvarez Barreiro’s charge was to describe and map twenty-three presidios; his survey
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of the presidios’ surroundings resulted in seven detailed maps, along with descriptions that
accompanied Rivera’s report. Before joining the Rivera inspection, he had already had
considerable experience in northern expeditions. Shortly after arriving in New Spain in 1716, he
was appointed military engineer of the 1717–18 expedition to Texas under Martín de Alarcón (c.
1691–c. 1721), who had recently been named captain-general and governor of Texas. A member
of the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers, Álvarez wrote descriptions and drew maps that were
published in Thomas H. Naylor and Charles W. Polzer’s Pedro de Rivera and the Military
Regulations for Northern New Spain, 1724–1729: A Documentary History of His Frontier
Inspection and the Reglamento De 1729 (1988, pp. 209–34). Álvarez’s 1722 Relación de
Servicios is available online at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville.
I.81. Zebulon Montgomery PIKE (1779–1813) was a USAmerican army officer and explorer.
Pike’s Peak in Colorado, which he tried (and failed) to climb, is named after him. In 1806, in the
wake of the Louisiana Purchase, Pike led an exploration party that traveled 2,000 miles by boat
on the Mississippi River, from St. Louis, Missouri, to Minnesota. In 1806, Thomas Jefferson
commissioned him to explore the Arkansas and Red Rivers and to acquire intelligence about the
neighboring Spanish territory. Pike’s report noted military weaknesses and pointed out the
possibilities of overland trade with Mexico, thus feeding the dream of westward expansion into
Texas. In 1810, Pike published a Mexico map plagiarized from Humboldt; it was based on the
illicitly obtained copy that Wilkinson had given him (see also Arrowsmith). Pike died in battle
during the War of 1812, a war that, in spite of its name, actually lasted until 1815.
I.82. Dartmouth-educated topographical and railroad engineer Major Stephen Harriman LONG
(1784–1864) of the USAmerican Army Corps of Engineers led the first scientific expedition up
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the Platte River, in 1820. After the failure of the 1819 Yellowstone expedition under the
command of Henry Atkinson (1782–1842), also known as the Atkinson–Long expedition, which
was to explore the upper Missouri River, James Monroe (1748–1831) gave Long orders to find
the sources of the Platte, Arkansas, and Red Rivers and explore the new USAmerican borders
with the Spanish colonies that John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) had negotiated in his treaty with
Spain. The results of this expedition—reported in Edwin James’s 1822 Account of an
Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains—were very detailed accounts of the customs
of the Otoes and Pawnees whom the party had met as well as thorough descriptions and
measurements of the land west of the Missouri River. Edwin James’s account was rather critical
of westward expansion. Major Long’s 1823 expedition to the Red River led him up the
Minnesota River (then the St. Peter River) into Canada. While the purposes of this voyage were
scientific research and an assessment of trade possibilities, military reconnaissance may also
have been a motive. Long’s Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter’s River was
published in 1824. During all his expeditions, he covered about 26,000 miles.
I.82. Lieutenant James Duncan GRAHAM (1799–1865), whom Humboldt also mentions here, was
one of Long’s two assistant topographers on his trek to the Rocky Mountains. During and after
the Mexican War, the USAmerican government regularly employed Graham to conduct border
surveys. For example, in 1839–40 he was the astronomer of the surveying party that established
the border between the USA and the then new Republic of Texas.
I.82. New York–born Henry Schenck TANNER (1786–1858) was a distinguished and prolific
engraver and mapmaker. The first person in the USA to publish a map of Texas, Tanner is best
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known for his New American Atlas, published in five parts from 1818 to 1823, with a last edition
published in 1839.
I.85. Military officer Pedro de LAGUNA Calderón (c. 1755–c. 1813) had a career in the Royal
Artillery Corps. As a lieutenant-colonel, Laguna was appointed by then-viceroy of New Spain
Miguel la Grúa Talamanca y Branciforte to the intendancy of Oaxaca to oversee the
establishment of the artillery division of the Spanish military. From Oaxaca, Laguna Calderón
was transferred to Veracruz as inspector of artillery. In 1802, he submitted a report about the
artillery; an illustration from that report depicting an artillery horserider can be found at the
Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City, No. 0525; Classification, 977/0687). By 1811,
Laguna Calderón had earned the rank of brigadier. He died at Veracruz, where his widow, María
Micaela Medina, remained until around 1813.
I.89. GRAPHOMETERS, also known as semicircles, were widely used for angle measurement
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they satisfied the need for a simple, strong,
and portable instrument that was also inexpensive and accurate. Invented by Philippe Danfrie
(1572–1604) of Paris in 1597 and first introduced in his Déclaration de l’usage du graphomètre
(On the use of the graphometer), the graphometer consists of two alidades, or sighting rules, one
fixed to a semicircle divided into degrees and the other movable across the scale of degrees. The
instrument had a ball and socket joint that allowed it to be mounted on a tripod or Jacob’s staff.
Many graphometers had an inset magnetic compass so that they could be used for measuring
magnetic azimuths (horizontal angles of a compass bearing). A graphometer is closely related to
a circumferentor, the difference being that the former has a half-circle scale instead of the latter’s
full-circle. By the early nineteenth century, graphometers and circumferentors went out of favor
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in Europe, but they remained important for taking surveys in forests and on uncleared grounds,
as was the case in the Americas. Graphometers and circumferentors were typically made in Italy,
France, Holland, and England. The ADAMS GRAPHOMETER Humboldt mentions refers to George
Adams, Jr. (1750–1795), whose instruments would have been marked with his signature.
Because of its ease in handling and its robust structure, Humboldt used the instrument frequently
during his travels, often as a substitute for the more delicate sextant.
I.90. The MOQUI peoples (also Hopi or Moki) live mainly in the mesas of northeastern present-
day Arizona, formally the province of New Mexico in northern New Spain. In pre-Columbian
times, the Moqui were horticulturalists who lived in villages. They have maintained their culture
despite the onslaught of foreign influence. Between 1629 and 1700, missionaries tried
unsuccessfully to convert the Moqui people, who had been initially contacted by Spaniards in
1540, to Catholicism. After the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Moqui villages moved to the more
protected mesas to ward off foreign attacks. A matrilineal society, the Moqui are especially noted
for their mythology and ceremonial dances. The Moqui creation myth centers on Hurúing Wuhti
(deity of hard substances), a female deity associated with the Earth Mother. The Moqui language
belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family; also called Hopi, it has about several thousand speakers in
the USA. A dictionary of Hopi with about 3,000 entries was compiled by The Hope Dictionary
Project and published by Kenneth Cushman Hill et al. as Hopi Dictionary: A Hopi-English
Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect: With an English-Hopi Finder List and a Sketch of Hopi
Grammar in 1998.
I.91. Humboldt refers here to Nicolas DE FER (1646–1720), one of the most prolific and
influential French cartographers of his time. The youngest son of Parisian print and mapseller
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Antoine de Fer (d. 1673), Nicolas inherited his father’s mapselling business, which was in
decline in the late 1670s. In 1690, de Fer had the good fortune of becoming official geographer
to the French Dauphin, and he published his first atlas of the coasts of France in 1705 after
having become official geographer to the Spanish King (in 1702). After the death of the Dauphin
in 1711, de Fer advanced to official geographer to both Spanish and French kings. De Fer’s maps
reflected the power of his royal patrons, emphasizing the power and benefits of Bourbon rule and
endorsing political and territorial imperialism. The first of de Fer’s many atlases, his Atlas
Curieux (1700–1705), included a 1705 map entitled “Le Vieux Mexique ou Nouvelle Espagne
avec les costes de la Floride” (Old Mexico or New Spain with the Florida coasts). It seems likely
that 1765 is a typographical error.
I.91. Pownall’s map is A New and Correct Map of North America (1777). Its creator, Thomas
POWNALL (1722–1805) was governor of colonial Massachusetts from 1757 to 1760 and a
member of the English House of Commons. He was promoted to the governorship of South
Carolina in 1760 but decided to accept a position in Europe instead. In 1764, he published The
Administration of the Colonies, which is probably the work to which Humboldt refers here. In
the 1770s, Pownall also contributed to the journal Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts
Relating to Antiquity, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London.
I.91. Sigüenza y Góngora’s map is likely the Plano de las cercanías de México from 1786.
I.91. Cuban-born military officer, colonial administrator, and author Carlos de URRUTIA y
Montoya (1750–1825) served as governor of Veracruz from 1810 to 1812), as captain-general of
Santo Domingo from 1812 to 1817, and as the last president and captain-general of the
Audiencia of Guatemala from 1818 to 1821. In 1790, viceroy Revillagigedo ordered Urrutia and
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Fabián de Fonseca (d. 1813) to gather and edit documents that would help the financial
management of the viceroyalty. Urrutia and Fonseca collaborated with Joaquín Maniau
Torquemada to produce the fifteen-volume Libro de la razón general de la Real Hacienda en
Nueva España. Completed in 1793 and now at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (MSS. 10355–
69), the Libro—an inventory of the treasury of New Spain—was published as Historia general
del Real Hacienda (6 vols., 1845–53). Urrutia’s Noticia geográfica del reino de Nueva España y
estado de su población, agricultura, artes y comercio (Geographical report on the kingdom of
New Spain and the state of its population, agriculture, arts, and trade, 1794) was the first
statistical and demographic text to reflect the new intendancy system that redefined New
Spain’s administrative organization. The Noticia geográfica included a map that illustrated the
new divisions. Humboldt used this map, titled “Plano Geográfico de la Mayor Parte del
Virreynato de Nueva España” (1793).
I.93. Juan LÓPEZ de Vargas Machuca’s map is the “Mapa de las cercanías de México que
comprehende todos sus lugares y ríos; las lagunas de Tescuco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Sn.
Christóbal, Zumpango y Oculma.”
I.93. Antonio FORCADA (also Forcado) y la Plaza (d. 1818) established a drawing school in
Guadalajara in 1788. His drawing school was modeled after and approved by the famous Royal
Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. He also worked as an assayer and was in charge of the
city’s treasury. As chief assayer of Mexico City from 1790 to 1818, Forcada tested and
guaranteed the quality of silver used by silversmiths; his marks were “FRDA” and
“FOR/CADA.” In November 1814, the administration granted him and his family permission to
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return to Spain for two years; he had requested that leave the previous year. Humboldt used
Forcada’s manuscript maps drawn during his visit to Guadalajara.
I.93. A military engineer from Barcelona (Spain), Diego GARCÍA CONDE (1760–1825) began his
career in the Spanish Royal Guard in 1772. In New Spain, he worked as a volunteer in the Royal
Corps of Engineers for two decades (1790–1810). Initially an assistant to Manuel Agustín
Mascaró from 1793–1796, García Conde worked with chief engineer Miguel Costanzó at a
military base at Orizaba (Veracruz) in 1797. It was among his duties at Orizaba to survey and
improve the roads between Veracruz and Mexico City. García Conde wrote a geographical
survey of these roads entitled Reconocimiento geográfico con fines estratégicos de la zona
comprendida entre las costas de Veracruz y la ciudad de Orizaba (at the Archivo Histórico,
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Manuscripts, 2a., 43-1.). He also helped draft a
map attached to the Reconocimiento, the “Mapa general de los terrenos que se comprenden entre
el río de La Antigua y la Barra de Álvarado, hasta la Sierra de Orizaba y Xalapa” (MS. IX-A-14.
Museo Naval, Madrid). Humboldt used this map. In 1798, García Conde was appointed director
of the construction of a road between Mexico City and Jalapa. Because of his support for the
Spanish Crown during the wars of independence, he was appointed governor and military
commander of Zacatecas (1814–1816) and later replaced his brother, Alejo García Conde (1751–
1826), as governor of the intendancy of Durango at New Vizcaya (1818). Captured during the
wars, García Conde became a Mexican citizen after independence. Promoted to major-general in
the new republic, he became general director of the Corps of Engineers and the founding director
of the Military Academy. In 1798, García Conde drew the map Plano en el que se representa la
dirección de los dos caminos que bajan de México para Veracruz, por los distintos rumbos de
Orizaba y Xalapa, en la parte que media entre la Sierra a la Costa (Archivo General de la
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Nación). A year later, he worked on the Plano topográphico nuevamente descubierto que
saliendo de la Villa de Orizaba con dirección a la Ciudad de México, encumbra la Sierra del
Volcán, por el paraje nombrado Lomaverde (Archivo General de la Nación, Fomento Caminos).
I.94. A Spanish military officer of Italian origin, Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca de Carini y
BRANCIFORTE (1755–1812), the first Marquis of Branciforte, was captain-general of the Canary
Islands from 1784 to1790. Charles IV named Grúa viceroy of the Kingdom of New Spain,
where he stayed in power from 1794 to 1798. Considered one of the most corrupt rulers in
Spanish colonial history, Grúa is also responsible for El Caballito, the famous equestrian statue
of Charles IV, which he commissioned in 1796 from Valencian architect and sculptor Manuel
Tolsá.
I.94. Following orders of Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli, Agustín CRAMER y Mañenas (d.
1780) explored the Isthmus of Tehuantepec for the possibility of an interoceanic waterway. A
talented member of the Royal Corps of Engineers, Cramer was named extraordinary engineer
around 1750. After teaching mathematics at the Mathematics Academy in Barcelona and
working as an engineer in Spain, he was transferred to the Americas. By 1766, Cramer was
working in Cuba, analyzing the state of the military infrastructure and drawing several plans of
the forts and the island. Cramer became governor of the fort of San Juan de Ulua (Veracruz) in
1771. Promoted to brigadier by 1777, he worked in Cumaná, Guyana, and Colombia. As chief
engineer, a position he achieved in 1779, he worked in Campeche (Mexico), Nicaragua, and
Honduras. In 1780, Cramer was named governor of Havana, where he died.
I.94. Spanish military engineer Miguel DEL CORRAL (fl. 1746–1794) worked with Cramer on
ascertaining the feasibility of an interoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Corral
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began a military career as a cadet of the cavalry regiment of Barcelona in 1746. Already member
of the Royal Corps of Engineers in 1753, he was quickly promoted to lieutenant and
extraordinary engineer. He arrived in New Spain in 1764 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and
as second engineer. Corral was first stationed in Veracruz, then in Mexico City and Perote. In
1773, Corral was promoted to colonel and was stationed at the Pacific Coast ports of San Blas,
Matanchel, and Chacala. In 1780, Corral advanced to chief engineer and served as interim
governor of Veracruz, a post he occupied on several occasions. His son, Manuel del Corral, was
also an engineer. Cramer and Corral’s writings on the forts of New Spain appears in José
Antonio Calderón Quijano’s Historia de las Fortificaciones en Nueva España (History of the the
strongholds of New Spain, 1984).
I.95. A double agent for the Spanish, General James WILKINSON (1757–1825) procured an
unauthorized copy of Humboldt’s New Spain map in 1804, which he then passed on to Zebulon
Pike. As a result of the theft, versions of this map appeared in print before Humboldt himself
could publish it in 1811. Wilkinson possibly shared with Humboldt his own sketch maps of the
area, and Humboldt might have incorporated data from these inaccurate sketches into his own
maps. See also Humboldt’s footnotes on I.65 and 68 in this edition.
I.95. Juan José de PAGAZAURTUNDUA (1755–c. 1817) was born in Mexico City and trained as a
military engineer in Spain. He joined the Royal Corps of Engineers of Spain in 1785 after having
graduated from the Mathematics Academy at Barcelona and having served as a volunteer
engineer. He had entered the military service at Soria (Spain) and accumulated twelve years of
military experience before being admitted to the Corps. Pagazaurtundúa returned to his native
New Spain in 1786. The following year, he was stationed in the Western Interior Provinces, and,
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a year later, he was promoted to lieutenant and extraordinary engineer. In 1793, Pagazaurtundúa
was sent to Guadalajara and remained there until his return to Spain in 1796. While in Cádiz in
1797, he wrote the “Succinta Descripción de las provincias internas,” an English translation of
which was published in Janet R. Fireman’s The Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers in the Western
Borderlands: Instrument of Bourbon Reform, 1764 to 1815 (pp. 227–29) in 1977. After being
captured by the English and spending three years as a prisoner of war, Pagazaurtundúa returned
once again to New Spain in 1802.
I.95. Spanish military officer José Tienda DE CUERVO (d. 1763) led an inspection to Nuevo
Santander, parts of present-day Tamaulipas and Texas. He arrived in the Americas in 1740 and
was stationed in New Granada until 1749. In 1757, Tienda de Cuervo left Mexico City for Nuevo
Santander to conduct a six-month inspection, writing a comprehensive report of that province to
supplement that of its founder, José de Escandón y Elguera (1700–1770). The success of the
inspection earned Tienda de Cuervo a promotion to lieutenant colonel. From 1761 to 1762, he
served as interim governor and captain-general of the province of Sonora and Sinaloa. Tienda de
Cuervo’s 1757 report was published in 1929/30 by the Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico)
as part of Estado General de las Fundaciones hechas por D. José de Escandón en la Colonia del
Nuevo Santander Costa del Seno Mexicano (2 vols.).
I.96. Novo–Spanish engraver Manuel (or Emmanuel) Galicia de VILLAVICENCIO (1730–c. 1788)
owned a printing business in Mexico City. His work was extensive and included some of the
most important colonial publications of his time. Villavicencio engraved illustrations for Carlos
Tapia Zenteno’s Noticia de la lengua huasteca (Note on the Aztec language, 1767) and
Francisco Antonio Lorenzana’s Concilios Provinciales (Provincial councils, 1769).
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Lorenzana’s Historia de Nueva España escrita por su esclarecido conquistador Hernán Cortés
(1770) also features Villavicencio’s work on its cover and in its illustrations. In addition,
Villavicencio engraved Los Meses de el Año Mexicano (The months of the Mexican year) and
thirty-two plates in Cordilleras de los Pueblos que antes de la Conquista pagaban tributo á el
emperador Muctezuma (Cordilleras of the peoples who paid tribute to the emperor Moctezuma
prior to the conquest). Both are stylized reproductions of the important pictorial manuscript
Matrícula de Tributos (Register of tributes) copied from a source in the Boturini collection.
Villavicencio also created a portrait of viceroy Bucareli for Breve descripción de las solemnes
exequias que en los días 25 y 26 de este año de 1779 se celebraron en la Santa Iglesia Catedral
de México al Exmo. Señor Baylio Fr. Don Antonio Maria de Bucareli y Ursúa (Brief description
of the solemn funeral rites held on the 25th and 26th days of this year of 1779 in the Cathedral of
Santa Iglesia in honor of Don Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa). In 1773 appeared his
illustrations for Tomas Cayetano de Ochoa’s Tabla Ecclesiástica Astronómica (Liturgical
astronomic table, reprinted in 2001). The Biblioteca Nacional de España (Madrid) houses several
engravings by Villavicencio in the Sala Goya Bellas Artes, including “Virgen de Guadalupe”—a
copy of José de Alcíbar’s (1730–1803) painting of the virgin of Guadalupe with Saint John and
Juan Diego—and “San Felipe de Jesús.” In addition to drawing illustrations, Villavicencio also
worked on maps and charts, among them the “Plano de la ciudad de México dividido en
cuarteles. Diciembre 12 de 1782” published in Ordenanzas de la División de la Novilísima
Ciudad de México en Quarteles… mandada a observar por el Virrey Don Martín de Mayorga
(1782). Villavicencio’s “Mapa de la ciudad de Mexico dividido en Quarteles,” together with two
religious engravings, is reproduced in Roberto L. Mayer’s México ilustrado: mapas, planos
grabados e ilustraciones de los siglos XVI al XIX (1994). For a list of Villavicencio’s work, see
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Manuel Romero y Terreros’s Grabados y Grabadores en la Nueva España (Mexico: Ediciones
Arte Mexicano, 1948).
I.96. Puebla-born Jesuit Miguel VENEGAS (1680–1764) wrote one of the most complete general
histories of the Jesuit missions in California, from the time of their founding in 1697 to 1739.
One of the best sources of the Spanish exploration and conquest of California, especially Lower
California, the manuscript of Empresas apostólicas de los padres misioneros de la Compañía de
Jesús de la Provincia de Nueva España (683 pp.) was completed in 1739. Working from Mexico
City, Venegas relied on historical documentation from the Jesuit archives. The manuscript was
sent to Spain and remained unpublished for several years until another Jesuit priest and historian,
Andrés Marcos Burriel y López (1719–62), who believed that the manuscript was too long and
cumbersome, edited, updated, and added other reports to it. Venegas’s work saw print as Noticia
de la California y de su conquista temporal y espiritual hasta el tiempo presente (Information
about California and its historical and spiritual conquest until the present) in 1757. The Noticia
contains several maps of California, including a folding map and appendices that critically
assessed the accuracy of Bartolomé de Fonte claims to having discovered a Northwest Passage.
Around 1780, Jesuit missionary Miguel del Barco completed his Historia natural y crónica de
la Antigua California, in which he added to and revised Venegas’s Noticia. Also in response to
the Noticia, Jacobo (or Johann Jakob) Baegert (1717–1772), a Jesuit missionary in Lower
California from 1751 to 1768, wrote Nachrichten von der Amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien
(Accounts of the American peninsula California, 1772), a major work on the Guaicura people of
southern Baja California. Venegas also wrote the biography of the Italian Jesuit Juan María de
Salvatierra, a missionary to California and Arizona, entitled El apóstol mariano; vida admirable
del V. P. Juan María Salvatierra, conquistador apostólico de las Californias (MSS, Archivo
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General de la Nacion, Mexico, Historia 300). Venegasia, a sunflower native to the Californias
and northwestern Mexico, is named after Venegas.
I.96. Franciscan priest JUNÍPERO SERRA (1713–1784) was a missionary in the area that comprises
present-day Mexico and the USAmerican state of California. Born in Petra (Majorca, Spain),
José Miguel Serre (Serra in Catalán) studied in a Franciscan Convent from an early age. In 1731,
he joined the Order of Friars Minor and took the name Junípero. Ordained as a priest in 1737,
Serra became a professor of philosophy at the University of Palma until 1743. Arriving at the
College of San Fernando in Mexico City in early 1750, Serra performed missionary work in
Sierra Gorda from 1750 to 1758. While assigned at the College of San Fernando in Mexico City
(1758–67) and serving as a commissioner of the Inquisition, Serra was placed in charge of the
Jesuit missions in Lower California that had fallen into disuse after expulsion of the Society of
Jesus from the Spanish possessions in 1767. Since the Spanish were anxious about Russian
activity in the Pacific Northwest, Serra, together with José de Gálvez y Gallardo, conceived of
the idea of colonizing Upper California by setting up and maintaining a chain of missions on the
west coast. Under the leadership of Captain Gaspar de Portolá Rovira (1723–1784), commander
of a military regiment, Serra embarked on what became known as the Sacred Expedition of
1769. Serra reached San Diego by land in 1769; another group of Franciscan friars reached
Upper California by sea on the San Carlos, the San Antonio, and the Señor San José. Following
instructions to set up Spanish settlements, Serra founded the mission of San Fernando de
Velicatá (1769) in Baja California. In Upper California, he founded no less than seven missions:
San Diego de Alcalá (1769), San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (1770), San Antonio de Padua
(1771), San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (1772), San Juan Capistrano (1776), Santa Clara de Asís
(1777), and San Buenaventura (1782). During his tenure, his followers also founded San Gabriel
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Arcángel (1771) and San Francisco de Asís (1776), and Serra served as founding president of the
nine Upper California missions until his death. The missions Serra established in Upper
California were instrumental in securing a Spanish foothold in the region: by 1823, twenty-one
missions dotted the area from San Diego to Sonoma. Humboldt refers here to the Relación
Histórica de la Vida y Apostólicas Tareas del Venerable Padre Fray Junípero Serra (Historial
account of the life and spostolic tasks of the venerable Father Junípero Serra, 1787), written by
Serra-follower Francisco Palóu (1723–1789), a Franciscan missionary. Serra’s biography was
translated into English and annotated by Maynard Geiger (1901–1977) as The Life and Times of
Fray Junípero Serra in 1959. Antonine Tibesar (b. 1909) edited Serra’s writings in a four-
volume edition from 1955–66.
I.96. A Spanish Brigadier from the Canary Islands, Pedro DE NAVA (b. c. 1740) was commander-
general of New Spain’s Interior Provinces (Provincias Internas). Nava, who had entered the
Spanish military in 1753 and had quite a successful career, arrived in New Spain in 1790. He
traveled to the interior in the fall of that year to replace Jacobo de Urgarte y Loyola (d. 1798) as
commander-general. New Spain’s Provincias Internas was a huge semiautonomous
administrative unit comprising Texas, Coahuila, Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, Sinaloa, Sonora,
and the two Californias (Baja and Alta). In late 1792, Charles IV reunited the previously divided
Provincias Internas and made the territory independent of the viceroy’s control. His Royal Order
ushered in Nava’s administration, which lasted until 1802. Nava chose a peaceful diplomatic
approach to strengthening Spanish relations with the region’s indigenous peoples, especially the
Apaches who has successfully resisted religious (and political) conversion. Nava was replaced
by Nemecio Salcedo. The Spanish King changed his mind about the division of the Interior
Provinces once again in 1804.
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I.102. Saxon mineralogist Friedrich Traugott SONNESCHMIDT (c. 1763–1824) was among the
eleven mining experts whom Fausto Elhuyar, director-general of the Board of the Mining
Guild, recruited in 1788 to come to New Spain. The purpose of their technical mission was to
introduce to New Spain the Austrian amalgamation method. The mission proved a dismal failure:
not only was the Austrian method more costly than the standard patio method, but it also
produced less silver. Sonneschmidt, who visited the mines at Guanjuato, Zacateras, Chihuahua,
and Catorce during his stay in New Spain (1788–1800), made a sustained but ultimately doomed
effort to find an alternative to patio amalgamation (beneficio de patio), a method first used on a
large scale in the silver mines of Pachuca. The amalgamation process as such had been
introduced to Spanish America by Bartolome de Medina as early as 1554. Humboldt came into
contact with Sonneschmidt’s work when he was at the Royal School of Mines in Mexico City,
where he met Elhuyar and was also reunited with Andrés del Río, a former fellow student at the
Freiberg Academy.
I.102. Andrés Manuel DEL RÍO (1764–1849) was a highly regarded academic from Madrid who
became the inaugural professor of mineralogy at the Royal School of Mines in Mexico City in
1793. Del Río arrived in Veracruz via Cuba in 1794. Having been chosen by Charles III to
acquire new scientific knowledge about mining and introduce it to New Spain, Del Río studied at
the Royal Academy of Mines at Almadén, the Austrian Imperial-Royal Mining Academy at
Schemnitz, and in Paris with great minds such as the French chemists Jean d’Arcet and Antoine
Laurent Lavoisier. Like Humboldt himself, Del Río also trained under Abraham Gottlob
Werner at the Freiberg Mining Academy. Forced into exile in 1829 when the Spanish were
expelled from Mexico, Del Río left the now-independent Mexico for Philadelphia where he lived
until resuming his post at the School of Mines in Mexico City in 1834. His vast accomplishments
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include the independent discovery of the element erythronium, known as vanadium, in 1801 and
the publication of the first mineralogical textbook in the Americas, the Elementos de
orictognosia (Elements of mineralogy, 1795).
I.102. Isidro Vicente VALENCIA (1776–1811), whose parents were from the Mexican state of
Michoacán, was a graduate of the Royal School of Mines, Mexico City. A disciple of Andrés
Manuel del Río’s, Valencia entered the school in 1793; he graduated first in his class. The
mining school sent Valencia to the Royal Mines of Zacatecas for an internship (1798), after
which he worked at the of Valenciana mine in Guanajuato. Valencia wrote his doctoral thesis
while working in Zacatecas; he completed it in 1799. Because of his affiliation with the Mexican
independence movement, Valencia was executed in 1811.
I.102. Like Valencia, José Casimiro CHOVELL (1775–1810) was a student at the School of Mines
in Mexico City, which he entered in 1792 after training in mathematics at the Academy of San
Carlos. After studying mineralogy under Andrés Manuel del Río and graduating in 1797,
Chovell was dispatched to Guanajuato. The Mexican independence movement gained
momentum while he was administrator of the Valenciana mine in Guanajuato. Because he
organized an infantry regiment composed of local miners, then-colonel Chovell was executed in
1810.
I.102. Born in Villarpedre, Asturias (Spain), Manuel Ignacio ABAD Y QUEIPO (1751–1825) was
educated at the University of Salamanca (Spain), where he studied canon law, literature, and
philosophy after his entry into the priesthood. His initial posting was in Comayagua, in the
Captaincy-general of Guatemala (present-day Honduras). Around 1785, he moved from
Comayagua to Valladolid, Michoacán (present-day, Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico), where he
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worked under the bishop Antonio de San Miguel Iglesias. Upon the bishop’s request, Abad y
Queipo drafted the “Representación sobre la inmunidad personal del clero” (Presentation about
the personal immunity of the clergy, 1799). In defending the clergy’s immunity, he proposed
several measures to bridge the social gap between the indigenous and castas peoples on one
hand, and Creoles and Spaniards on the other. By 1805, Abad y Queipo had also brought
smallpox vaccine to Valladolid and written the “Representación a nombre de los labradores y
comerciantes de Valladolid de Michoacán” (Presentation on behalf of the farmworkers and
business people in Valladolid de Michoacán), his well-reported opinion against the Cédula de
Consolidación de Vales Reales (Decree about the consolidation of royal vouchers) of December
24, 1804. To have access to higher ecclesiastical positions, Abad y Queipo had to travel to Spain
in 1807 to explain his illegitimacy and defend his credibility. While in Spain, he wrote an essay
against Napoleon’s (1769–1821) rule in Europe titled “Proclama a los Franceces…”
(Proclamation to the French), first published in Valencia in 1808. Upon his return to New Spain,
Abad y Queipo was elected Bishop of Valladolid, a position he assumed on May 22, 1810.
Because papal confirmation remained pending, he continued to fight for the bishopric of
Valladolid until Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) appointed him Bishop of Tortosa (Spain) in 1820. In
“Representación a la Primera Regencia” (Presentation to the First Regency) from May 30, 1810,
Abad y Queipo warned Spain about the independence movements in the Americas. He pointed to
the backward-looking policies of the then-viceroy and archbishop of New Spain and gave
recommendations on how to prevent the imminent revolution. In 1810, he also excommunicated
his long-time friend Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–1811), the father of the Mexican
independence movement. Upon his return to Spain in 1815, Abad y Queipo was appointed and
removed as Minister of Grace and Justice (or attorney-general), prosecuted by the Inquisition in
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Mexico and Spain for disloyalty, arrested for questioning the authority of the Inquisition, and
finally exonerated. In addition to the multiple opinion pieces (the Representaciones), pastoral
letters, reports, and episcopal edicts, Abad y Queipo published a collection of what he deemed
his most important works the title Colección de los escritos más importantes (1813). Humboldt
knew Abad y Queipo and used notes he had received from him, both in New Spain in 1803 and
in 1808, when the latter was in Paris.
I.102. José Vicente DE ANZA (d. c. 1814) was an important mine owner in Taxco in the state of
Guerrero (Mexico). In addition to the Taxco mines, Anza owned mines and mining mills in
Sombrerete, Zacatecas, and Fresnillo. Having inherited from his uncle Pedro de Anza shares in
the Compañía de Socavonistas—a mining company in Taxco founded in 1779—José Vicente
became its sole owner. An heir and a member of powerful mining dynasties in New Spain, Anza
was certified as an expert for mercury detection by the Royal Mining Board and served as a
consultant to it in 1795. Anza lost most of his capital during the Mexican war of independence.
I.102. A wealthy mine owner born in Guanajuato, Antonio Obregón y ALCOCER (1722–1786)
was granted the title of Count of Valenciana in 1780 after having struck the vein of silver that
turned Guanajuato into the richest mining city in the Americas. Architect and owner of the
greatest single fortune in eighteenth-century New Spain, he made his fortune by investing in
silver production, notably in the mine La Valenciana, which produced more silver than the mines
of Peru and Bolivia together. His son, Antonio Francisco Obregón y Barrera (1773–1833),
succeeded him with the title of Second Count of Valenciana.
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I.103n. Antoine François TARDIEU (1757–1822) was a prominent French cartographer and
engraver. Among others, he corresponded with Thomas Jefferson concerning a map of
Louisiana.
I.103n. Humboldt had been candid in his December 20, 1811, letter to Thomas Jefferson,
stating that “Mr. Arrowsmith in London has stolen my large map of Mexico, and Mr. [Zebulon]
Pike has taken, rather ungraciously, my report which he undoubtedly obtained in Washington
with the copy of this map, and besides, he also extracted from it all the names. I am sorry over
my cause for complaint about a citizen of the United States who otherwise showed such fine
courage. I don’t find my name in his book and a quick glance at Mr. Pike’s map may prove to
you from where he got it” (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-04-02-0270). In
his reply to Humboldt from December 6, 1813, Jefferson wrote, “[t]hat their [the British’s]
Arrowsmith should have stolen your map of Mexico, was in the piratal spirit of his country. But I
should be sincerely sorry if our Pike has made an ungenerous use of your candid communication
here; and the more so as he died in the arms of victory gained over the enemies of this country.
Whatever he did was on a principle of enlarging kno[w]ledge and not for filthy shillings and
pence of which he made none from that book. If what he borrowed has any effect, it will be to
excite an appeal in his readers from his defective information to the copious volumes of it with
which you have enriched the world. I am sorry he omitted even to ackno[w]ledge the source of
his information. It has been an oversight, and not at all in the spirit of his generous nature. Let
me solicit your forgiveness then of a declared hero, of an honest and zealous patriot, who lived
and died for his country” (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0011).
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I.103n. The first hydrographer to the British admiralty, Scottish geographer Alexander
DALRYMPLE (1737–1808) prepared charts for William Vincent’s (1739–1815) The Periplus of
the Erythræan Sea (1800 and 1805) and The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the
Indian Ocean (1807).
I.103n. Louis Stanislas d’Arcy de LA ROCHETTE (also Delarochette, 1731-–1802) was a
prominent British engraver and mapmaker. Humboldt’s reference point here is likely the map of
North America and the Antilles that de la Rochette engraved for Robert Wilkinson (d. c. 1825) in
1781: A Map of North America and the West Indies.
I.104. Jean Baptiste POIRSON (1760–1831) was a French geographer, engineer, and globemaker.
The map to which Humboldt refers here is the Carte du Mexique et des pays limitrophes situés
au nord et à l'est (Map of Mexico and adjoining countries to the north and east) from 1811.
I.107. The Revillagigedo Archipelago is a group of four small volcanic islands in the Pacific
Ocean southwest of the southern tip of the Lower California Peninsula. James COLNETT (1753–
1806) surveyed the uninhabited islands, which had first been discovered by Hernando de
Grijalva in 1533, during his 1793–94 expedition to Chile and Lower California to identify ports
suitable for British whalers. Colnett’s narrative of this expedition, A Voyage to the South Atlantic
and round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean (1798), was instrumental in opening up the south
Pacific sperm whale fishery and related branches of trade. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is said to
have carried a copy of the book with him on the HMS Beagle. Earlier in his career, Colnett had
been midshipman for James Cook. He also undertook trade voyages to mainland China to the
Northwest coast of America, where he became embroiled in the Spanish–British Nootka Sound
Dispute in 1789/90.
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I.107. Ruy LÓPEZ de Villalobos (1500–1546) was the commander of a Spanish expedition to the
Pacific Ocean from 1542 to 1546. A lawyer educated in Spain, he arrived in New Spain in 1540.
Antonio Pacheco de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain, ordered Villalobos, his nephew,
to travel to the Islas del Poniente (Western Islands) of the Mar del Sur, the South Sea (as the
Pacific Ocean was then known). In 1542, Villalobos departed on six vessels (the Santiago, San
Antonio, San Cristobal, San Martin, San Jorge, and San Juan de Letran) to the present-day
Philippines, which Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) had called the San Lazaro Islands. The
expedition crossed the Pacific Ocean in three months. In 1542, Villalobos reached the Islas del
Poniente, naming today’s Samar and Leyte Islands (the Visayas, Philippines) Filipina after the
Crown Prince of Spain who later became Philip II; the name later applied to the entire
archipelago. The Villalobos expedition was unable to return to New Spain across the Pacific; on
two occasions he attempted in vain to send reports of the voyage to viceroy Pacheco de Mendoza
(1495–1552).
I.107. The first attempt was in 1543 on the San Juan de Letran with Bernardo de la Torre (d.
1546), as commander and Juan GAËTAN as pilot; De la Torre completed the first
circumnavigation of Mindanao (Philippines). The second attempt to reach New Spain was
launched at Tidore Island (Indonesia) in 1545, with Yñigo Ortiz de Retes (fl. 1545) as
commander of the San Juan. Ortiz de Retes sailed along the northern coast of New Guinea,
claimed the island for the King of Spain, and so named it in June 1545. Due to Portuguese
presence in the area and a general lack of supplies, Ortiz de Retes was forced to negotiate with
the Portuguese to return to Spain. At Tidore Island, Villalobos surrendered to Fernão de Sousa de
Tavora (fl. 1625), commander of the Portuguese fleet, and signed a treaty with him on November
4, 1545. The fleet departed Tidore in January 1546; Villalobos died shortly thereafter. Some of
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the members of the expedition survived and returned to Spain (not New Spain) after their
commander’s death. There are at least four accounts of the expedition: the reports by Juan
Gaëtan, García de Escalante Álvarado, Gerónimo de Santiesteban, and an anonymous report
published by Consuelo Varela in El viage de Don Ruy López de Villalobos a las islas del
poniente in 1983. Escalante Álvarado’s report (1548) and Santiesteban’s summary (1547) were
published in Colección de documentos inéditos de Ultramar in 1886 (Escalante: vol. 5, pp. 117–
209; Santiesteban: vol. 14, pp. 151–65).
I.107. José CAMACHO y Brenes (d. 1795) was a senior pilot in the 1779 expedition to survey the
Pacific Northwest Coast under Ignacio de Arteaga. During the return leg of that expedition,
Camacho drew a map of San Francisco Bay, adding significantly to chartographic knowledge of
that region. Camacho began his career in the Spanish navy around 1755; he worked as a pilot in
Cádiz before being transfered to San Blas under José de Gálvez y Gallardo’s orders. An
experienced sea pilot, Camacho served on missions to Monterey, San Francisco, San Diego,
Peru, and the Philippines. In addition to the chart of San Francisco Bay, he drew a map of the
bay and the port of Bucareli (1780) and a chart of the Port of Santiago (1780).
I.108. Spanish naval officer ALONSO DE TORRES y Guerra (fl. 1782–1793) was born at Seville. In
1782, Torres reached the rank of commander; his first command was the Ardilla in 1788.
Promoted post-captain in 1792, he served under Bodega y Quadra for the 1792 border
expedition to the Pacific Northwest. He commanded the Santa Gertrudis sent from Callao to San
Blas in 1791 to reinforce the Spanish fleet in the Pacific Northwest. On the return trip to San
Blas, he left Nootka on July 1792 and stopped at Neah Bay (now on the Makah Reservation in
Clallam County, Washington) to determine the suitability of the land for Spanish settlement.
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Torres also charted part of the Galapagos Islands. His “Carta esférica” is housed at the Library of
Congress.
I.109. British Captain John FRANKLIN (1786–1847) was a renowned Arctic explorer. The
purpose of his first significant sea voyage under Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) was to
explore Australia (then New Holland); it ended with a famous shipwreck in 1803. Franklin was
eventually able to return to England via Canton. As the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close in
1815, Franklin’s military career began to founder. It was saved by the Royal Navy’s growing
interest in exploring the Artic, largely thanks to John Barrow. Two British expeditions left
England in 1818, one to find the Northwest Passage, the other to cross the Arctic Ocean from
Spitzbergen. Franklin commanded one of the ships of the latter expedition, which proved
fruitless. Barrow, however, was undeterred and proposed two more expeditions, the first one
headed by William Edward Parry, the second by Franklin who was to set out overland from
Hudson Bay to explore and chart the north coast of the American continent. This was an
exceedingly difficult assignment. Little was known about the area; the climate was inclement
during the long winters; and shortage of provisions was a constant problem. When the voyagers
changed from canoe to walking, nine crew members died of starvation. Franklin himself barely
survived. Upon his return to England in 1822, he was celebrated as a hero and was elected fellow
of the Royal Society. The following year, Franklin proposed to the Admiralty another overland
voyage, this time one prepared carefully in advance. This expedition (1826–27) proved
successful in charting the unexplored coastline. In the 1830s, the navy showed little interest in
further Artic explorations. But in 1845, Franklin was once again given the command of an Artic
expedition with two ships, over one hundred men, and provisions for three years. Whalers last
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saw him in northern Baffin Bay in July of that year. Despite an extensive search, no trace of his
expedition was found for five years.
I.109. Unlike Franklin, Scottish fur trader Alexander MACKENZIE (1763–1820) was a paragon of
physical strength and stamina. He emigrated to New York in 1774. After moving to Canada in
1779, he joined a fur-trading company that was later part of the North West Company (1787). A
successful trader and zealous explorer, he became a partner in the company in 1785 and
established Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca (Canada) in 1788 as a base of future
northwestern exploration. A year later, Mackenzie embarked on an expedition attempting to
reach the Pacific Ocean and open a trade route through the northwest. His company left Fort
Chipewyan in June 1789, traveled north to the Great Slave Lake, then west to the mouth of the
Mackenzie River (Northwest Territories, Canada), and continued north past the Great Bear River
until reaching the Arctic. After his failed attempt at reaching the Pacific and securing more
shares in the North West Company, Mackenzie returned to England. In 1792, however, he was
back at Fort Chipewyan from where he left in October for a second attempt at reaching the
Pacific. He traveled west and south on rivers (Peace, Parsnip River, McGregor, and Fraser) until
crossing much of present-day British Columbia, reaching Fort Alexandria and finally the Pacific
Ocean via the Dean River in July 1793. By August of that year, he had returned to Fort
Chipewyan, where he stayed until deciding to settle in Montreal in 1794. In 1799, after finding
out that he was no longer a partner in the North West Company, he returned to England where he
worked on publishing the accounts of his explorations. He was knighted in 1802, became an
elected politician in the legislative assembly of Lower Canada (1804–1808), and retired to
Scotland in 1812. He published his travel accounts as Voyages from Montreal on the River St.
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Laurence, through the continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans in the years
1789 and 1793 in 1801.
I.109. In the early 1770s, the explorer and fur trader Samuel HEARNE (1745–1792) led
expeditions in the part of North America that is today’s Canada; he was the first to see and cross
the Great Slave Lake. His travel account was published posthumously in 1795 and translated into
five languages.
I.110. This may be Barthélemy LAFON (1769–1820), an architect, engineer, and cartographer
from New Orleans. As far as we can tell, the map in question is lost.
I.110. Mechanic, inventor, and astronomer David RITTENHOUSE (1732–1796), an autodidactic
mathematician, was built several high-prized astronomical instruments, including transit and
equal altitude instruments, zenith sectors, telescopes, barometers, metallic thermometers,
hygrometers, and orreries. The owner of an instrument-making shop, he designed and built
sought-after surveying instruments by 1770. Rittenhouse is credited as the inventor of the vernier
surveying compass that compensates for the angular difference between the true north and
magnetic north. As city surveyor of Philadelphia (1774), he served on commissions to demarcate
the borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. A
skilled astronomical observationist, he also helped survey a ninety-mile westward extension of
the Mason–Dixon Line (1784). Rittenhouse was a member of the American Philosophical
Society (1768) and served as its librarian, curator, secretary, vice president, and president. He
was also a professor of astronomy of the University of Pennsylvania (1780–81) and was
appointed a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1795. Rittenhouse served as the
first director of the USAmerican Mint (1792–95). In addition to calculating ephemerides for
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USAmerican almanacs, Rittenhouse published an essay, “An Easy Method for Deducing the
True Time of the Sun’s Passing the Meridian” (1771) that was reprinted in Franz Xaver von
Zach’s Tabulae Motuum Solis (1792).
I.110. USAmerican surveyor Andrew ELLICOTT (1754–1820) began his career as a surveyor
commissioned to establish the Virginia–Pennsylvania border in 1784. He later surveyed
Pennsylvania’s western and northern boundary (1787) and found employment as a surveyor for
the federal government (1789–91). Initially the manager of the family business (mills and
clockmaking) who supplemented his income by building mathematical instruments and
calculating ephemerides for The United States Almanack, Ellicott became a mathematics and
astronomy professor at the Baltimore Academy in 1785. In 1791, President George Washington
(1732–1799) commissioned him to survey the ten-mile square territory that would serve as the
national capital; Ellicott’s report appeared in the Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society 4 (1799): 49–51. A member of the American Philosophical Society since 1786, he
undertook other important surveys, including those of the boundary between United States and
Spanish territory in Florida (report published in 1803), the northern boundary between Georgia
and South Carolina (1811), and the astronomical observations to determine the 45th parallel of
latitude for the boundary between Canada and the United States (1817, 1819). Ellicott died while
serving as a professor of mathematics at the USAmerican Military Academy at West Point.
Ellicott City in Maryland is named after him.
I.112. In 1751, French astronomer Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de LALANDE (1732–1807)
accurately measured the Earth’s distance to the Moon, simultaneously with Nicolas Louis de
Lacaille. Having succeeded his former professor, Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, at the Collège de
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France in 1761, Lalande helped organize expeditions to observe the transit of Venus (in 1761 and
1769), using their results to calculate the solar parallax, that is, the angular width of the Earth’s
equatorial radius at the center of the sun at the mean distance between the earth and the sun. His
Historie céleste française (Celestial history of France) from 1801 catalogued over 47,000 stars.
One of them was the planet Neptune, which Lalande recorded in 1795, fifty-one years before the
German astronomer Johann Gottfried (1812–1910) located it. Also part of the catalogue is the
fourth-closest star to the sun, named Lalande 21185. Among other works on astronomy and
narratives about his travels to Italy and England, Lalande also published the books Astronomie
(1764) and Bibliographie astronomique (1803). He established the Lalande Prize for outstanding
contributions to astronomy with the French Academy of Science (1802–1970).
I.112. Due to his precarious health, German astronomer Johann Friedrich WURM (1760–1833),
who was a trained vicar and a high school teacher of classical languages and mathematics in
Blaubeuren and Stuttgart from 1800 to 1824, had little opportunity to do his own field research.
Instead, he devoted himself to astronomic calculations and often corrected the work of other
astronomers. His name appeared regularly in such scientific journals as Zeitschrift für
Astronomie und verwandte Wissenschaften (Journal for astronomy and related sciences) and
Zach’s Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde (Monthly
correspondence for the furtherance of geography and astronomy). Among Wurm’s early
publications are also the books Geschichte des neuen Planeten Uranus (History of the new
planet Uranus, 1791) and Praktische Anleitung zur Parallaxenberechnung (Practical guide to
parallax calculation, 1804). Since he had an excellent command of classical languages, he was
also able to do important historical work on Arabic, Greek, and Roman astronomy.
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I.112. Hamburg-born Christoph Daniel EBELING (1741–1817) studied theology, philology,
geography, and history at the University of Göttingen, where he developed an interest in North
America. In addition to his work as a scholar of music and literature, he created a private
America collection of more than 3,000 books and 10,000 maps, which was given to Harvard
College after his death. His magnum opus was the seven-volume Erdbeschreibung und
Geschichte von America (Geography and history of America, 1796–1816). Ebeling’s work may
be seen as a continuation of Anton Friedrich Büsching’s (1724–1793) monumental geographical
text, Neue Erdbeschreibung (1754–1757), which Patrick Murdoch translated into English as A
New System of Geography (1762).
I.112. Constantin François de Chassebœuf, Count DE VOLNEY (1757–1820) was a French
philosopher, historian, orientalist, and politician. In 1795, he undertook a journey to the West
Indies and to the United States, where John Adams’s (1735–1826) administrations accused him
of being a French spy sent to prepare for the reoccupation of Louisiana by France. The results of
his travels took form in his Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis (Tableau of the climate
and the soil of the United States, 1803).
I.112n. Amateur astronomer WILLIAM LAMBERT (d. 1834), a clerk at the Department of State
(1790–93) and the War Office’s Pension Fund (1793–1821), attempted to determine the
longitude of the USAmerican capitol from Greenwich Observatory. Lambert had built a small
private observatory on Capitol Hill, in which he made astronomical observations to be forwarded
to Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). To avoid depending on the calculations of foreigners,
Lambert, in 1809, proposed a new prime meridian running through the center of the Capitol in
Washington, D.C., and advocated for his cause until 1824. Although a permanent astronomical
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observatory was never established, some cartographers in the United States employed the
proposed new USAmerican meridian until Greenwich was adopted as an international standard
in 1884. Lambert published Calculations for ascertaining the Latitude North of the Equator and
the Longitude West of Greenwhich Observatory, in England, of the Capitol, at the City of
Washington, in the United States of America in 1805. His final report on the subject was
published as Message from the President of the United States in 1824.
I.113. Heinrich Friedrich von STORCH (aka Andrej Karlowitsch Schtorch, 1766–1835) was a
Russian economist of German descent. He became known in 1790 with Skizzen, Scenen und
Bemerkungen, auf einer Reise durch Frankreich gesammelt (Sketchen, scenes, and comments
collected during travels across France). In 1789, he was appointed professor of Fine Arts at the
Military Academy in St. Petersburg. His first important statistical work shows the influence of
Adam Smith (1723–90), Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832), Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de
Sismondi, and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832): Gemälde von St. Petersburg (The Picture of St.
Petersburg, 1801), saw print in Riga in 1794 and was quickly translated into a host of other
languages. Of particular interest about Storch’s economic theories are the connections he
establishes between economic and cultural development (what Pierre Bourdieu calls “cultural
capital” would not have been a foreign concept to Storch). Gemälde set a standard for European
accounts of the city and is still frequently quoted. In 1804 and 1808, Storch was inducted into the
St. Petersburg and Bavarian Academies of Sciences. Storch’s Rußland unter Alexander I, to
which Humboldt refers here, appeared between 1803 and 1811.
I.115. Tomás LÓPEZ DE VARGAS Machuca (1730–1802) was one of Spain’s most important
geographers and cartographers in the eighteenth century. After studying grammar, rhetoric, and
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painting in Madrid, he began his career as a geographer in 1752, when he went to Paris with a
group of other geographers, including Antonio de Ulloa, to study map engraving. In Paris, he
studied with D’Anville and in 1755 collaborated with Juan de la Cruz Cano y Olmedilla on a
nautical map of Mexico and the Antilles (Mapa marítimo del Golfo de México e islas de América
and Mapa de la América Septentrional). In 1758, he published the Atlas geográphico de la
América Septentrional y Meridional (Geographical atlas of northern and southern America).
Upon returning to Spain after an eight-year residency in Paris (1752–1760), López was put in
charge of the newly created Cabinet of Geography and thus of making maps of the entirety of
Spain. A member of the Royal Academy of History since 1776 and the King’s Geographer,
López created about two hundred maps, including a complete series of maps of the provinces of
Spain and maps of America. His sons, notably Juan López (1765–1830), were map-making
apprentices and carried on the trade. Juan López collaborated with his father on several projects,
including drawing the maps of America. The Royal Academy of History has a collection of forty
maps of the Americas by Tomás, Juan, and other authors (twenty-three for North America
including Central America and the Caribbean and seventeen for South America). These maps are
reproduced in Antonio López Gómez and Carmen Manso Porto’s Cartografía del Siglo XVIII
(Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2006). Most of the printed maps of America were done
by or with the collaboration of Juan López. By recommendation of his father, Juan became a
member of the Royal Academy of History in 1796. He was also in charge of the Cabinet of
Geography in his father’s absence. Juan also worked on translations into Spanish and published
his Disertación ó memoria geográfico-histórica sobre la Bastitania y Contestania about the old
kingdom of Murcia (Spain) in 1795.
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I.117. Architect Luis MARTÍN (1772–c. 1808) was born in Almaluez (Spain). He arrived in New
Spain in 1786 to attend the Academia de San Carlos, where he earned prizes in geometry and
architecture. In 1788, Miguel Costanzó employed him as a draftsman. After graduating from the
Academy in 1791, Martín designed the neoclassical church of Santiago Zapatitlán at Tlapa in the
present-day state of Guerrero (Mexico). In 1798, he designed and oversaw the construction of a
bridge in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo. The following year, he was transferred to Oaxaca as an architect.
During his time at Oaxaca, Martín and Pedro de Laguna drew the first images of Mitla that
Humboldt reproduced as plates XLIX and XL in Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Humboldt thought very highly of Martín. Having been
investigated by the Inquisition since 1789, Martín was excommunicated in 1803, but the
Inquisition absolved him of any charges in 1805. He died before 1816, possibly around 1808.
I.118. British mapmaker and engraver Emanuel BOWEN (c. 1693–1767) began his career as an
apprentice engraver in 1709. In addition to etching and selling prints, he engraved maps for
George Willdey’s (c. 1676–1737) Atlas of the World (c. 1717) and John Owen’s Britannia
Depicta or Ogilby Improved (1720). In 1729, Bowen conducted a survey and engraved a six-
sheet map of South Wales (“A new and accurate map of South Wales”). He continued to make
maps of British counties, took apprentices, and became a master engraver and mapmaker. By
1750, Bowen had become a top engraver. He published seventy-six maps, British and foreign, in
the General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, Philosophical, Philological, Mathematical, and
Mechanical (1755–1765), and others in periodicals such as The Universal Magazine of
Knowledge and Pleasure (1747–1803). In addition to producing numerous maps for other’s
atlases, Bowen published the Complete System of Geography (1744–1747) and the Complete
Atlas or Distinct View of the Known World (1752). With his protégé and son-in-law Thomas
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Kitchin (1719–1784), he also completed The Large English Atlas or A new set of maps of all the
countries in England and Wales (1760) and The Royal English Atlas: Being a New and Accurate
Set of Maps of all the Counties of South Britain (c. 1763). Near the time of his death, Bowen
collaborated with his son, Thomas Bowen (c. 1732–1790), on the Atlas Anglicanus or a
Complete Set of Maps of the Counties of South Britain (1767–1768). Humboldt refers here to one
of Bowen’s most reproduced maps, “An accurate map of North America describing and
distinguishing the British, Spanish and French dominions” (1763), which is at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France.
I.119. Miner, businessman, and government representative JOSÉ MARÍA FAGOAGA Liyzaur
(1764–1837) was born in Oiartzun (Gipuzkoa, Spain). A member of a powerful, wealthy, and
well-connected family of miners of Basque-descent that lived in Mexico City, he made a fortune
from his silver mines in Sombrerete and Zacatecas. He studied at the School of San Ildefonso,
was active on the Royal Mining Board, and held numerous administrative and political positions
in New Spain. In 1815, Fagoaga was arrested and exiled to Spain for supporting the Mexican
independence movement. He returned to New Spain in 1820 and was elected representative of
the province of Mexico to the Courts. A member of the Mexican Provisional Government Board,
he was among the representatives that signed the Declaration of Independence of Mexico. A
supporter of British investment in Mexico, he was also a member of the Constitutional Congress
of Mexico.
I.119. The FAGOAGA family was one the most important mining dynasties in eighteenth-century
New Spain. For three generations, the family’s properties (silver mines) gave it power and
influence. The patriarch of the family was the Basque merchant and banker Francisco Fagoaga
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Iragorri (1678–1736), who established the foundations of the family enterprise in 1607 through a
gold and silver exchange and mintage business. Upon Francisco’s death, his wife and business
partner, Josefa de Arozqueta (d. 1772), administrated the business with the help of their son-in-
law, Manuel de Aldaco (d. 1770). Arozqueta then bequeathed her fortune to her surviving
children, Colonel Francisco Manuel (c. 1725–1799), Marquis del Apartado, and Juan Bautista (c.
1728–1805). The heirs decided to not divide the bequest and expanded the family business by
acquiring agricultural and mining real estate; they also acted as money lenders. The brothers
united their interests by marrying Josefa María, daughter of Francisco Manuel, to one of Juan
Bautista’s sons, José María Fagoaga.
I.122. French geologist and botanist Louis-François Elisabeth RAMOND (1755–1827), Baron de
Carbonnières, was the first explorer of the Pyrenees. Starting in 1787, his expeditions led him to
climb many peaks and passes. In 1802, Ramond became the driving force behind the first ascent
of the Pyrenees’ Monte Perdido (11,007 ft) next to the enormous glacial valley of Ordesa in
today’s Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park. Ramond wrote extensively about this experience
in his 1801 travelogue, Voyages au Mont-Perdu et dans la Partie adjacente des Hautes-Pyrénées
(Travels to Mont-Perdu and in the neighboring parts of the High-Pyrenees). Indebted to German
Romanticism, Ramond’s works on landscape description, in which he fused science with poetry
by focusing on the act of perception, became an important inspiration for European naturalists
and explorers at the turn of the century. Humboldt’s own Views of Nature is an example of this
style.
I.122. An accomplished poet and dramatist, Antonio de SOLÍS y Rivadeneyra (1610–1686) was
appointed Spain’s Chief Chronicler in 1661, an office in which he succeeded Antonio de León
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Pinelo (c. 1590–1660). A native of Alcalá, where he studied classics, philosophy, and laws, Solís
authored the Historia de la conquista de México (History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1684), in
which he defended Spain’s conquest of the Mexica empire to improve his country’s image in the
international community. To that same end, Solís corrected earlier accounts of the conquest and
argued against what he believed to be other historians’ biases. Although he spent twenty years
preparing the manuscript for the Historia, a literary elaboration of known historical events
written in epic style, Solís completed only the first part, which covers the Conquest through the
fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521. The most popular chronicle of the late seventeenth century, the
Historia was translated into all the major European languages. It served as the reference book on
Cortés and the Conquest until the nineteenth century.
I.122. Educated at the University of Edinburgh, William ROBERTSON (1721–1793) was a
historian and minister of the Church of Scotland. Robertson’s History of America, first published
in 1777, proved so popular that it saw nine editions until 1780 alone. Robertson had started the
History in 1769 upon completion of his biography of Charles V, a book that had sealed his
reputation as one of Europe’s leading historians. But the book had also made him realize that the
history of sixteenth-century Europe would be incomplete without an account of the colonization
of the New World. The History was considered his masterpiece, although it does suffer from
certain limitations, such as an unsurprisingly Eurocentric worldview. Robertson also published
works on Scotland (1759) and India (1784).
I.122. Dutch-born philosopher and historian Cornelius DE PAUW (1739–1799) was a disciple of
Georges-Louis Leclerc, the famous Comte de Buffon, author of the monumental anti-
Americanist Histoire naturelle (Natural history, 1749–88). Humboldt’s refusal of the “systematic
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ideas” of such authorities on the European Enlightenment as de Pauw, Raynal, and Robertson
in his discussion of the mythological characteristics and cultural specifics of the Aztec Calendar
Stone is no accident. In his very popular Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains
(Philosophical researches on the Americas, 1768–1769), De Pauw had advanced his degeneracy
thesis about the indigenous American cultures: according to him, it was inevitable that plants,
animals, humans, and, by extension, human institutions, whether indigenous or transplanted from
Europe, would eventually degenerate in the unfavorable American environment. The “natural
people” of the Americas were, therefore, to be seen as naïve children obeying only the impulses
of their instincts; they were incurably lazy and incapable of any mental progress. Instead of just
reading travel accounts like de Pauw did, Humboldt had actual travel experiences and extensive
studies to back up his counterarguments.
I.124. Spanish naval officer Fernando María NOGUERA (b. 1761, fl. 1792–1797) was a member
of Joaquín Francisco Fidalgo’s hydrographic expedition (from 1792 to 1797) to the coast of
the viceroyalty of New Granada in 1792. This expedition was part of a larger endeavor by the
Spanish Royal Navy to chart the Gulf of Mexico and the Antilles between 1792 and 1805.
Having entered the navy in 1778, Noguera departed Cádiz with the Fidalgo expedition on July 4,
1792. On the ship San Servando (also known as Empresa) Noguera, who held the rank of senior
lieutenant, helped chart the southern Caribbean Sea between Trinidad and the southern coast of
Cartagena.
I.124. Spanish naval officer and mathematician Gabriel de CISCAR y Ciscar (1759–1829) studied
at the University of Valencia. In 1777, he entered the Naval Academy at Cartagena, where he
later became professor of mathematics (1788). Ciscar was also the Spanish representative to the
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French National Institute for the establishment of the metric system (1798). His Memoria
elemental sobre los nuevos pesos y medidas decimales fundados en la naturaleza (Basic account
of the new pesos and the decimal measurements founded in nature) from 1800 was among the
first publications arguing in favor of the metric system.
I.124. Spanish cartographer, painter, and engraver Juan de LA CRUZ Cano y Olmedilla (1734–
1790) published a landmark map of South America, the Mapa Geográfico de América
Meridional (Geographical map of South America, 1775), which Humboldt owned. The Mapa
Geográfico, a modern, very detailed map drawn on the basis of the results of maritime
explorations and astronomical observations, was engraved by Hipólito Ricarte (fl. 1750–1794).
Because of the potential territorial conflicts it might cause, the map’s sale was prohibited in
Spain until 1802. Together with Tomás López, Cruz trained in engraving and cartography with
d’Anville in Paris for eight years (1752–1760). In 1764, Cruz was admitted to the Royal Arts
Academy of San Fernando on the basis of academic merit. In addition to creating cartographic
works, Cruz published a set of engravings titled Colección de Trajes de España (Collection of
dresses from Spain, 1777–1778). Juan’s brother, Ramón de la Cruz (1731–1794), was a Spanish
poet and dramatist.
I.126. In 1800, Basque pilot Joaquín de GOYENECHE lived in the city of Quibdó in the province
of Chocó (now Colombia). He supported the idea of opening an interoceanic canal there.
I.134. In 1820, Edwin JAMES (1797–1861) was appointed to Major Stephen Harriman Long’s
government-supported expedition from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains (1819–20) as
surgeon, botanist, and geologist. Long was charged with mapping the Missouri River and its
tributaries and with documenting the plants, animals, and indigenous peoples encountered along
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the way. One of the first scientists to explore the Rocky Mountains and the surrounding area,
James lead the first ascent of Pikes Peak. He also compiled the expedition’s findings in Account
of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains (1822–1823). The account was based
on notebooks, recollections, and additional information that other members of the party,
including Long himself, supplied. Later on, James served as an Indian agent and learned the
Ojibwe language. In 1830, he edited the Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John
Tanner.
I.134. Captain Henry Miller SHREVE (1785–1851) was the American steamboat captain who
built a thriving transportation business and invented a special snagboat with which to clear rivers
of dead wood and other obstructions. He is best known for clearing the so-called Great Raft of
the Red River, a massive logjam 160 miles long that had made westward expansion from
Natchitoches in northwest Louisiana to Arkansas virtually impossible. In 1826, Shreve became
an employee of the USAmerican Army Corps of Engineers and superintendent of navigation for
the tributaries of the Mississippi River. By 1832, he had cleared all blockages on the Ohio,
Arkansas, and Mississippi Rivers. In doing so, he had mounted an unintended legal challenge to
the Fulton–Livingston monopoly on government contracts for shipping on the lower Mississippi.
In the spring of 1833, Shreve began the five-year task of opening up the Red River. Three years
later, he and his partners founded a settlement called Shreve Town, which overlooked the final
section of the raft to be cleared. By the time the job was completed in 1839, the town was known
as Shreveport. Captain Shreve’s older brother was John Shreve.
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I.135. The PLATTE RIVER in Nebraska empties into the Missouri. It is the confluence of the South
and the North Platte Rivers. The South Platte River was known as PADOUCA FORK even after
1800. Padouca (or Paducah) is another name for the Comanches.
I.138. Humboldt portrayed his isothermal work as a continuation of a project sketched by the
German astronomer and cosmographer Johann TOBIAS MAYER (1723–1762) to the Göttingen
Academy of Sciences in 1755 and published by Georg Lichtenberg (1742–1799) in 1775. Mayer
developed a theory of heat distribution on the Earth’s surface in terms of trigonometrical
equations with indeterminate coefficients. Humboldt held up Mayer’s astronomical method as
exemplary for his own enterprise, not because it enshrined gravitational equilibration as a
universal heuristic but because it placed precise measurement at the center of any attempt to
reveal the laws of temperature or magnetism.
I.139. Naval officer Bernardo de ORTA (fl. 1788–1806) was commander at the port of Veracruz
in 1788. In addition to drawing a map of the Port of Veracruz published by the Depósito
Hidográfico of Madrid, Orta gathered data about Veracruz between 1789 and 1803. Humboldt
analyzed this data. On the basis of his barometric observations, Orta wrote the “Noticia sobre
estaciones del Seno Mexicano” (About the seasons in the Seno Mexicano, 1795).
I.140n. Pierre-Antoine CLERC (1770–1843) was a French military engineer. In 1811, he created a
large map of the Gulf of La Spezia in the Liguria region of Northern Italy. This was the first map
with contour lines in the history of cartography. It marked an important step forward in
cartographical technique and representation. As professor for topography of the French École
Polytechnique, Clerc set up various research groups to develop better methods for assembling
such large maps for military and scientific purposes. With his three-volume Essai sur les
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éléments de la pratique des levers topographiques et de son enseignement (Essay concerning the
practice and teaching of topographical leveling, 1839–1843), Clerc set the methodological
foundations for modern topography.
I.141n. Louis-Joseph-Alexandre de LABORDE (1773–1842) was a French politician and man of
letters. Sent into exile in Vienna after the guillotining of his father, he joined the Austrian army.
From 1800 to 1801, he was an attaché at the French embassy in Madrid under Lucien Bonaparte
(1775–1840) who, unlike his brother Napoleon (1769–1821), seems to have held genuinely
revolutionary ideas. Upon his return to France, Laborde assembled a team of artists and writers
to help complete two voluminous works on Spain: the Itinéraire descriptif de l'Espagne
(Descriptive travels in Spain, 5 vols. plus an atlas, 1809) and the Voyage pittoresque et
historique en Espagne (Picturesque and historical voyage in Spain, four folio vols., 1807–1818).
The latter contained over nine hundred views of Madrid, Seville, Córdoba, and other antiquities
in Spain engraved on copper plate. It was an expensive project that seriously drained Laborde’s
resources. His Itinéraire would prove unexpectedly, and unwittingly, useful during the
Napoleonic invasion of Spain. Laborde was named to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-
lettres in 1816.
I.141n. In 1805, French politician Jean-Marie POYFÉRRÉ, BARON DE CÈRE (1768–1758) received
a prize from the Society for the Improvement of French Wool for his work with merino sheep
(he had founded a model sheep farm in Cère). Later on, he was honored by the Agricultural
Society of La Seine for having brought to France a herd of 1,200 merino sheep during the
Spanish War of Independence, crossing rebellious provinces at the risk of his life.
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I.142–43. What is the alternative to descriptive text in our attempt to best condense the
complexity of scientific data so that the reader gets it all in one glance? This might just be one of
the core concerns of Humboldtian Science and of Humboldt’s Essai de Pasigraphie (Essay on
Pasigraphy, 1803/1804, not published until 1958). The Essai is one of the first related conceptual
outlines in the field of abstract visualization in the sciences and marks an early attempt at what
we today know as statistical data design. Since his research on Versuche über die gereizte
Muskel- und Nervenfaser (Experiments on galvanized muscle and nerve fiber, 2 vols., 1797),
Humboldt had eagerly explored the semiotic and symbolic possibilities of data display. It is
during his time at Mexico City’s School of Mines that his pasigraphical ideas become part of a
seminar reader Humboldt had assembled for the school’s students; it was translated from the
French manuscript to Spanish as part of Andrés Manuel del Río’s Elementos de orictognosía
(Elements of orictognosis, 1805). The goal was to establish a sort of universal scripture of signs,
a concept first discussed by the German philosopher and naturalist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646–1716), one of the key figures of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century science. The
pasigraphy (from the Greek, meaning “scripture to everyone”) Humboldt had in mind was meant
to solve the problem of the often imprecise description of the geognostical surveys of his time.
Only a new method of graphic and symbolic representation would be capable of presenting all at
once: the Earth’s layers; its components and density; and the surface altitude, including its
outcrops and mountain peaks. Always caring more about the general outline than about the
singular phenomenon, Humboldt’s Essai den Pasigraphie explains two things: one, how to apply
a newly designed set of symbols for eighteen core geological traits, and two, how to combine
graphically the horizontal and vertical projections of the Earth’s geological profiles in order to
obtain more complex, yet economical, “cut-through” illustrations that could function either as
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“altitude maps” (like Humboldt’s iconic 1805 Tableau physique des Andes et Pays voisins
(Physical tableau of the Andes and neighboring countries) or “rock formation maps,” the latter
placing greater emphasis on the succession of rock layers than on exact spatial scaling.
I.142n. Humboldt refers here to “Nivelación Barométrica desde Cartagena hacia Santa-Fe.”
Drafted on the basis of his voyage on the Magdalena River in the months of April, May, and
June 1801, Humboldt’s map first appeared in print in the periodical Anales de Ciencias
Naturales (Madrid) to illustrate “Nivelación barométrica hecha por el Barón de Humboldt in
1801 desde Cartagena de Indias hasta Santa Fe de Bogotá” (1802). Humboldt’s “Carta del curso
del río de la Magdalena desde Honda hasta el Dique de Mahares, formada sobre las
observaciones astronómicas hechas en Abril, Mayo y Junio de 1801” is housed at the Biblioteca
Luis Angel Arango (Bogotá, Colombia) in the section of Rare Books and Manuscripts (H3).
I.146 Jean-Louis DUPAIN-TRIEL (1722–1805) was a geographical engineer and mapmaker who
eventually became Royal Geographer of France. Humboldt’s reference is to Dupain-Triel’s
experimental map of France from 1789/99 (see his Carte de la France in Humboldt’s Library).
I.157. Rafael DÁVALOS (b. 1782/86–1810) was a member of a family in the mining business in
New Spain. Trained at the Mining School in Mexico City (1800–1805), he was commissioned in
1805 to do the practical aspect of his training in the mine of Morán of Real del Monte (present-
day Hidalgo), together with Juan José Rodríguez. Dávalos was transferred to Guanajuato in
1806. Interim professor of mathematics at the Colegio de la Purísima Concepción de Guanajuato,
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he was a teacher of Lucas Alamán’s. Because of his support for Hidalgo during the Mexican
war of independence, Dávalos was executed by a firing squad in 1810.
I.157n. A native of Real San José del Parral (present-day Chihuahua), then a mining town in
Nueva Vizcaya, Juan José RODRÍGUEZ (fl. 1800–1805) entered the School of Mines in 1800. In
1804, he passed Andrés del Río’s exams on mine work and structural geology. A year later,
Rodríguez was assigned to the mine of Jesús in Real del Monte.
I.158. Basque-descended Novo–Spaniard IGNACIO DE CASTERA (1777–1811) was trained by his
father in geometry, mathematics, and the use of instruments for architecture and land
measurement. Licensed as a land surveyor and architect in 1777, Castera worked as a land
surveyor (or agrimensor) and took on the task of making six plans of the city between 1776 and
1794. Castera worked as inspector of architecture (1786), was appointed construction manager of
the city (1781–1811), the famous Real Desagüe del Valle de México, the city’s drainage system
(1783–1811), and the Royal Palace (1794–1806). In addition to holding administrative positions,
Castera was a professor of architecture at the Royal Academy of San Carlos, starting in 1791.
I.160. Hamburg-born mathematician, printer, and engineer ENRICO MARTÍNEZ (c. 1555–1632,
also Henrico, Enrique, or Henrico, and Heinrich Martin) moved to Seville (Spain) at an early
age, traveled Europe as a young man, and studied mathematics in France. He arrived in New
Spain in 1589 and worked as an interpreter of Flemish and German for the Inquisition.
Appointed Royal Cosmographer (official consultant in meteorology and cartography) in 1603,
Martínez copied the cartographic results of the Vizcaíno expedition to the Pacific (thirty-two
maps). He also worked on a sketch of New Mexico, probably in 1600, titled “Rasguño de las
provincias de la Nueva México.” Appointed chief engineer for the Desagüe del Valle de México,
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the drainage system of the Valley of Mexico in 1607, he completed the principal canal in 1608
and maintained it until 1623. The drainage system consisted of an 8.2-mile long all-valley canal
and four-mile tunnel to drain out recurrent floodwaters. Blocked with derbis and soil, the trench
did not work during the Great Flood of Mexico City in 1629. Martínez was blamed and promptly
imprisoned for the failure. Although he worked on a solution to drain the flooded city, he died
before seeing the waters recede in 1634. The owner of a press and a printer, Martínez authored
the Reportorio de los Tiempos y Historia Natural Desta Nueva España (Collection of the times
and natural history of New Spain, 1606).
I.160. Prussian-born physician Johann Gottfried EBEL (1764–1830) first visited Switzerland in
1790 and ended up spending three years exploring the country. He became a Swiss citizen in
1801. The result of his early travels was the first real guidebook to traveling in Switzerland:
Anleitung, auf die nützlichste und genussvollste Art in der Schweitz zu reisen (Instructions for
traveling in Switzerland in the most useful and pleasurable way, 1793). The book included
drawings and an atlas.
I.160. Georg Rudolf Daniel OSTERWALD (1803–1884) was a German painter, illustrator, and
engraver who did his major work in the 1830s to 1850s. It is unclear how and where Humboldt
would have come in contact with his landscape paintings prior to 1830.
I.162. Spanish-born clergyman Francisco Antonio de LORENZANA y Buitrón (1722–1804)
became a priest in 1734, was trained in canonical law, and quickly rose to the highest rank of the
Catholic Church. After being appointed Bishop of Plasencia in 1765, he was named archbishop
of Mexico (1766–1772). Presiding over the fourth Mexican provincial council in 1771,
Lorenzana published the documentary result of the previous three councils (1555, 1565, and
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1585) in Concilios Provinciales (1769–1770). A learned clergyman, he is famous for editing and
annotating Historia de Nueva España escrita por su esclarecido conquistador Hernán Cortés
(History of New Spain written by its enlightened conquistador Hernán Cortés, 1770) and for
publishing Cartas pastorales y edictos (Pastoral letters and edicts, 1770). Appointed cardinal in
1789, Lorenzana served as the Spanish representative to the Holy See in 1797. The resolutions of
the IV Provincial Council of Mexico, which were never approved by the monarch or the pope,
were first published as Concilio IV Provincial Mexicano, celebrado en el año 1771 in 1898.
I.163. Wilhelm Friedrich GMELIN (1745–1821) was an engraver and painter from Germany who
studied under Christian von Mechel (1737–1817) in Basel, Switzerland. His best works were
inspired by Claude Lorrain (c. 1605–1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). Gmelin moved to
Rome in 1788, where he worked until his death. Louis Bouquet (fl. 1800–1817) was an engraver
who focused on landscapes. He and Gmelin collaborated in the production of Humboldt’s plates
for Views of the Cordilleras.
I.163n. Historian Antonio de REMESAL (1570–1619) arrived in the Americas in 1614 to conduct
missionary work in Comayagua (present-day Honduras). Remesal studied in the University of
Salamanca and entered the Dominican Order in 1592. In 1615, he began working on his
monumental Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapas y Guatemala (History of the
province of San Vicente de Chiapas and Guatemala, 1619). Divided into eleven books, this
extensive and important chronicle contains information about Central America, including
Guatemala, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, as well as the Philippines and Peru. Remesal also recounts the
work of the Dominicans in Central America, including that of Bartolomé de Las Casas, and the
abuses of the indigenous population. Recording data from civil and ecclesiastical regulations
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between 1529 and 1619, as well as information about local history, Remesal remarks on the
beginnings of Mercedarian missionary work in Chiapas and Guatemala.
I.163n. The priest Juan Domingo JUARROS y Montúfar (1753–1821) was one of the first
Guatemalan historians. The first volume of his Compendio de la historia de la ciudad de
Guatemala (Compilation of the history of the city of Guatemala) was published in 1808. The
entire Compendio de la Historia del Reino de Guatemala (Chiapas, Guatemala, San Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica 1500–1800) saw print in 1856/57.
I.164. Spanish conquistador Diego de ORDAZ (also Ordás and Ordax, 1480–1532) was among
those who conquered Cuba in 1511. Following Cortés in 1519, Ordaz also participated in the
conquest of Tenochtitlán and in the military campaigns in Honduras. A resident of Mexico City,
he held the office of mayor from 1525 to 1526. In 1531, Ordaz was appointed governor of
Cumaná (Venezuela); he died on his way there. Ordaz is one of the main characters in a
historical novel about the Conquest: Titled Jicoténcal (1826) and attributed to Félix Varela
(1788–1853), this text was translated into English by Guillermo Castillo-Feliú as Xicoténcatl
(1999).
I.164. Spanish conquistador FRANCISCO MONTAÑO (fl. 1520–50) also participated in the siege
and capture of Tenochtitlán and settled in Mexico City. Among the first foreigners to enter
Michoacán, he also took part in the conquest of Pánuco, Honduras, Guazacualco, and Guatemala.
Montaño received a coat of arms in August 1540, and Cortés awarded him the encomienda of
Tecali (90 miles from Mexico City) in 1548. He also held half of the encomienda of Zapotitlán
(125 miles from Mexico City) in 1570.
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I.166. Botanist and physician Aimé Goujaud BONPLAND (1773–1858) accompanied Humboldt
on his entire American journey. Although not much of a writer, Bonpland, who much preferred
fieldwork to desk work, is named as coauthor of Humboldt’s thirty-volume Voyage aux régions
équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804, or Travels to
the equinoctial regions of the New Continent during the years 1799–1804, in Helen Maria
Williams’s (1759–1827) translation. After returning to Europe, Bonpland was named Chief
Gardener of Malmaison, Napoleon’s (1769–1821) residence near Paris. In 1816, after
Napoleon’s fall, Bonpland emigrated to South America, where he died, alone and forgotten, in
what is now Santa Ana, Argentina.
I.166n. Ennio Quirino VISCONTI (1751–1818) was an Italian art historian, archeologist, and
antiquarian. In 1782, he assisted his father, the papal antiquarian Giovanni Battista Visconti
(1722–84), in compiling the first volume of the illustrated and annotated catalogue of the
Vatican’s Museo Pio-Clementino and prepared volumes 2 through 6 in subsequent years. After
having earned a reputation as a scholar of rare books, Visconti became conservator of the
Capitoline Museum. An advocate of the French Revolution, he also served as the director of the
Paris Musée Napoléon (now the Louvre). Visconti’s letter to Humboldt from December 12,
1812, is reprinted in Views of the Cordilleras.
I.167. Italian astronomer Barnaba ORIANI (1752–1832) was educated by the Barnabites, a Roman
Catholic order associated with the Counter-Reformation, at the College of San Alessandro,
Milan. He studied the physical and mathematical sciences, philosophy, and theology. In 1776,
Oriani was appointed to the staff of the Observatory of Brera in Milan, where he advanced to
assistant astronomer in 1778 and director in 1802. In 1778, he began to publish the dissertations
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on astronomical subjects that would form an important part of the Effemeridi astronomiche di
Milano (Astronomical ephemerides of Milan) to which he contributed regularly and which he
edited for many years. Oriani’s early work soon attracted attention, and in 1785, an account of
his calculation of the orbit of Uranus and a table of elements for that planet won for him an
international reputation. He was elected to membership in several learned societies and traveled
throughout Europe to visit the major observatories. He was in contact with all the major
astronomers of his time. When Napoleon (1769–1821) set up the republic in Lombardy, Oriani
became president of the commission appointed to regulate the new system of weights and
measures. When the republic was transformed into a Napoleonic kingdom, Oriani received
various honors and was tasked with measuring the arc of the meridian between the zeniths of
Rimini and Rome. Later in life, Oriani published a series of important papers on spherical
trigonometry. Humboldt might be referring to Oriani’s journal, Un viaggio in Europa nel 1786
(A voyage across Europe in 1786).
I.167. Johann Georg TRALLES (1763–1822) was a German physicist and mathematician whom
Humboldt respected highly and visited in Berne in 1795 on his travels through Switzerland.
Responsible for the first astronomical observatory in Berne, Tralles was a prominent
representative of modern science with whom Humboldt discussed galvanic experiments and
geomorphological measurements.
I.167. Franz Xaver Freiherr von ZACH (1754–1832) was a German-Hungarian astronomer under
the patronage of Ernst II (1745–1804), Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Zach built an
observatory on the Seeberg near Gotha and directed the observatory—one of the most important
of the time—from 1791, when it was completed, until 1806. During this period, Zach enlisted
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twenty-four astronomers from across Europe in a systematic search for new comets and for the
planet between Mars and Saturn, expected on the basis of Johann Elert Bode’s (1747–1826) law
(the so-called Titius–Bode law). The main result of this effort was the discovery of several minor
planets (commonly called asteroids). Zach left his most lasting imprint as editor of three major
scientific journals between 1798 and 1826.
I.167. Johann Friedrich ARNOLD (1780–1809) was a German engraver who worked frequently
with Humboldt.
I.167n. John PURDY (1773–1843), of Laurie & Whittle in London, was the foremost
hydrographic authority of his time. Although he himself did not participate in any hydrographic
expeditions, he compiled charts and wrote navigational aids based on others’ reports. Purdy
began to publish the Columbian Navigator in 1817.
I.172n. Antoine-Marie HÉRON DE VILLEFOSSE (1774–1852) was a French mining engineer and
geographer with an interest in the archaeological work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–
1840). In 1803, during the Napoleonic occupation of Germany, Villefosse was put in charge of
the Harz Mountains, a small but significant mining region. In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–
1821) promoted him to inspector-general of the mines between the Rhine and the Weichsel
River. After the Napoleonic wars had ended, Villefosse returned to Paris and assumed a cabinet
post under Louis XVII (1785–1795). His major work is De la richesse minérale (Of mineral
wealth) and its accompanying atlas (1810–1819).
I.173. British political economist William PLAYFAIR (1759–1823) was the inventor of statistical
graphs to display empirical data. In 1786 and 1801, he invented three basic styles of graphs, the
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time-series line graph, the bar chart, and the pie chart. Trained as an engineer (1774–1781),
Playfair obtained four patents for working metals in 1781. After a failed attempt at starting a
silver and plate-making business, Playfair engaged in the study of political economy. In 1785, he
wrote Regulations for the Interest of Money and published an early critical edition of Adam
Smith’s (1723–90) Wealth of Nations (1776) in An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the
Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations (1805). In 1786, Playfair published statistical
charts to examine the English trade during the eighteenth century as The Commercial and
Political Atlas, of which several editions appeared. Among his other significant statistical
publications was The Statistical Breviary (1801).
I.186. Pierre-Simon de LAPLACE (1749–1827) was one of the most influential and controversial
mathematicians and astronomers of his time. Humboldt had met and worked closely with
Laplace during his years in Paris. Among Laplace’s most important works are the Exposition du
système du monde (System of the world, 1795) and his more ambitious five-volume Traité de
Mécanique Céleste (Treatise on celestial mechanics, 1798–1825). The first volume of the Traité
was sent to Lima right after its publication, where Humboldt received it in 1802 while working
on the notes to his astronomical, magnetical, and barometrical observations. These notes were
published in Paris between 1808 and 1811 under the coauthorship of Jabbo Oltmanns (1783–
1833) as Recueil d’observations astronomiques (Compendium of astronomical observations).
Contemporary scholarship has pointed out Humboldt’s detailed knowledge of Laplace’s works
and the resemblances in scientific approach and structural design between Laplace’s Exposition
du système du monde and Humboldt’s Kosmos. In mathematics, LAPLACE’S FORMULA is known
as the Laplace operator or, simply, the Laplacian.
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I.187. Together with his brother Cristóbal (d. 1764), Felipe de Zúñiga y ONTIVEROS (c. 1717–93)
opened a successful printing shop in Mexico City in 1761. By 1781, their press was so successful
that Zúñiga y Ontiveros had to move the shop into a larger space. The press published several
seminar periodicals, including Efemérides calculadas y pronosticadas según el meridiano de
México con la noticia y explicación de los eclipses y otros meteoros (Ephemerides calculated and
forecast about the meridian of Mexico City, with information about and explanations of eclipses
and other meteors, 1752–1780), Explicación del Pronóstico de México (1755), and Calendario
Manual para el año del Señor de… (1761–1792). In addition to running the press, Felipe was
employed as a land surveyor, printed eleven maps used in land disputes (1754–74), and surveyed
the land the Jesuits had left behind after their expulsion. He also authored a pamphlet titled
Bomba hidráulica (Hydraulic pump, 1770). After Felipe’s death, his son, Mariano José (1745–
1825), who inherited the printing shop (which closed in 1832) and the rights to edit and print the
Guía de Forasteros (Guide for foreigners), continued with the family business until 1832. He
regularly printed the Calendario Manual y Guía de Forasteros en México (1792–1825),
Pronóstico de temporales (1809–16), and the Diario de México (1812–15).
I.190. The so-called Battle of El Toro, between Chilean patriots and Spanish royalist forces, was
fought near MAULLÍN, Chile, on March 6, 1820. The remnants of the royalist garrisons gathered
at Fort CARELMAPU after having been defeated at Valdivia and Osorno. Although Chile had
already issued its official declaration of independence in 1818, the Spanish were not expelled
from mainland Chile until 1821 and 1826, when the island of CHILOÉ became part of Chile as
well. Clearly, Humboldt would have not been able to know this when he wrote the first edition of
this text. By 1825, however, these “mere” geographical reference points would have assumed
historical significance.
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I.190. The island of Cailín (old spelling Caylin) is located to the southeast of the CHILOÉ
Archipelago in present-day Chile. In 1764, the Jesuits founded a permanent mission at Cailín; it
was the southernmost mission of their system and served as the base for annual excursions into
then-unexplored territories. The church buildings in Cailín, built by order of the Jesuits who
administered the mission until their explusion, follows the architectural prototype Chilota School
of Wooden Religious Architecture. Jesuit priest José García Martí led an expedition that
departed from Cailín in October 1766 to explore the Strait of Magellan; after reaching 48º5′
southern latitude, he returned to the island in January 1767. García’s travel journal was first
published in 1809–11.
I.191. The Spanish jurist José Moñino y Redondo, COUNT OF FLORIDABLANCA (1728–1808) was
the reformist chief minister of King Charles III of Spain; he also served briefly under Charles
IV. Because he defended of the expulsion of the Jesuits, some regarded the count as Spain’s
most effective statesman in the eighteenth century. Influenced by the French philosophers and
economists, he established the commercial freedom of the Spanish colonies in America in the
late 1770s. He died trying to defend Spain against Napoleon (1769–1821).
I.195. Diego Velázquez’s nephew, the Spanish explorer Juan de GRIJALVA (or Grijalba, c. 1480–
1527) commanded the second expedition to Yucatán in 1518. Departing Cuba in April 1518, he
circumnavigated the Yucatán, initially landing in Cozumel Island, and reached the Río Pánuco.
On his return trip to Cuba, Grijalva engaged in battle with the Campeche population to avenge
Hernández de Córdoba’s death and was wounded. During his travels, he amassed considerable
wealth, preparing the path for the conquest of Mexico under Cortés. Grijalva was killed during
an Indian rebellion in Nicaragua.
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I.195. CHARLES V was Holy Roman Emperor (1519–1556), King of Spain (as Charles I, 1516–
1556), and Archduke of Austria (as Charles I, 1519–1521). The Spanish and Habsburg Empire
he inherited comprised large parts of Europe (Spain and the Netherlands, Austria and the
Kingdom of Naples) and the Spanish colonies overseas.
I.196. Jesuit Francisco Javier CLAVIJERO Echegaray (also known as Francesco Saverio
Clavigero, 1731–87) was a scholar and historian from the viceroyalty of New Spain (which
included modern-day Mexico). He focused on studying pre-Conquest Mexican history. A
polyglot who knew Náhuatl, Otomi, Mixteca, Latin, and ancient Greek, among other languages,
he analyzed documents on Aztec history and early Conquest narratives that Carlos de Sigüenza
y Góngora had donated to the Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo (1576–1767) in
Mexico City. Exiled to Italy after Spain expelled the Jesuits in 1767, Clavijero wrote in Spanish
and published in Italian the four-volume Storia antica del Messico (Early history of Mexico,
1780–81), in which he refutes claims that Cornelius de Pauw, Georges-Louis Leclerc, the
Count of Buffon, Abbot Guillaume Raynal, and William Robertson made about Europeans’
superiority to Native Americans and Creoles, that is, Americans of European descent. Shortly
after its Italian publication, the book was translated into English (1787), German (1789–1790),
and Spanish (1826). Clavijero’s Spanish manuscript was published in Mexico in 1945. In
addition to numerous essays and letters, Clavijero is also the author of the Historia de antigüa
Baja California (Early history of Lower California, 1852).
I.198. The CESSION OF LOUISIANA refers to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The state of
Louisiana joined the USAmerican Union in 1812.
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I.199n. Fernando NAVARRO y Noriega (d. 1826), inspector-general for New Spain, was highly
regarded, among others by historian Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832–1918), who claimed that
Navarro’s “sources could not have been well surpassed by any contemporary.” Navarro is the
author of Memoria sobre la población del Reino de la Nueva España (Report on the population
of the kingdom of New Spain, 1820) and the Catálogo de los curatos y misiones que tiene la
Nueva España en cada una de sus Diocesis (Index of the parishes and missions New Spain has
in each of its bishoprics, 1813).
I.205. British fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer Peter FIDLER (1769–1822) was chosen by
Philip Turnor (c. 1750–c. 1800), a land surveyor and mapmaker working for the Hudson Bay
Company, as assistant surveyor of an exploring and mapping expedition into Canada’s
Athabasca country (1789–92). Fidler had joined the Hudson Bay Company in 1787. Trained by
Turnor in field sketching, surveying, and cartography, Fidler worked as the company’s chief
surveyor until 1821. Between 1790 and 1820, he drew nearly eighty separate maps and more
than 370 sketch maps.
I.206. British naval officer William Robert BROUGHTON (1762–1821) was commander of the
Chatham, which accompanied George Vancouver on his sea voyage to the Northwest Coast of
America. Admitted to the Royal Navy in 1774, Broughton first served as a midshipman on the
coast of North America and then in the East Indies. On his way to the Americas via the Cape of
Good Hope, Broughton “discovered” Chatham Island in 1791. A year later, he explored the
Columbia River for one hundred miles upstream. In 1793, Broughton crossed New Spain from
San Blas to Veracruz on his way to England, where he was promoted to commander of the
Providence and sailed for the northwest coast of America. He then surveyed the coast of Asia
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from 35° to 52° northern latitude. Once back in England, Broughton published the story of his
voyage and its geographical results as Voyage of discovery to the North Pacific Ocean in 1804.
I.207. Conrad MALTE-BRUN (born Malte Conrad Bruun, 1775–1826) was the founder of the first
modern geographical society. He was exiled from Denmark for his verse and his pamphlets in
support of the French Revolution and moved to Paris. Among his works are the first six volumes
of the Précis de la géographie universelle (Universal Geography, 1810–26).
I.207. Next to Alexander von Humboldt himself, Carl RITTER (1779–1859) is considered one of
the founding fathers of modern geography. As professor of geography and history and member
of the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, Ritter delivered public lectures that became the talk
of the town, much like Humboldt’s famous Kosmos lectures did in 1827–28. In his publications,
Ritter, again much like Humboldt, pursued conceptual challenges that at times exceeded his
capacities. After some preliminary publications on the methodology and pedagogy of geography,
Ritter published the first two volumes of his General and Comparatative Geography in 1817–18.
Although initially imagined as twelve volumes, this already ambitious compilation grew to a
total of nineteen volumes with over 20,000 pages in a second edition published (1822–59). Even
so, this massive work on geographical world literature remained a fragment, covering only
Africa and Asia. Ritter became a corresponding member of the Société Asiatique de Paris in
1824 and founded the Berlin Geographical Society in 1828. Three years before his death, he was
appointed curator of the Royal Cartographic Institute of Prussia. Ever since they first met in
1807, the relationship between Humboldt and Ritter had been one of mutual admiration. Yet, it
was not until Humboldt’s return from Paris to Berlin in 1827 that their ongoing conversation
about historical geography and other matters, including slavery and racism, was to take off. Their
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correspondence is estimated to have consisted of several hundred letters, of which 179 are
published.
I.207n. Founded by German-American businessman John Jacob Astor (1763–1848) in 1811, the
fur-trading post ASTORIA (Oregon) was apparently the oldest white settlement in the Pacific
Northwest. See also Washington Irving’s (1753–89) Astoria (1836).
I.208. Captain Meriwether LEWIS (1774–1809) was a USAmerican explorer best known for
leading, with William Clark (1770–1838), the discovery voyage that became known as the Lewis
and Clark Expedition (1804–06). Their mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana
Purchase, establish trade with and sovereignty over indigenous populations near the Missouri
River, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon territories for the United States. The Corps of
Discovery departed Camp Dubois, Illinois, on May 14, 1804, meeting up with Lewis in St.
Charles, Missouri, shortly thereafter. The expedition’s route followed the Missouri River
westward to its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains and then passed over the Continental Divide.
They descended the mountains in canoes before reaching the Pacific Coast at the point where the
Willamette and Columbia Rivers meet (just past present-day Portland, Oregon). Along the way,
the expedition established contact with over two dozen indigenous nations, without whose help
the travelers would have likely either starved to death or become lost. During the expedition,
Lewis and Clark surveyed the land, documented more than 200 plants and animals previously
unknown to Euro-Americans, noted seventy-two indigenous populations, and drew about 140
maps. The two-year exploration was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by
the United States.
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I.212. William DAVIS ROBINSON (b. 1774) was a USAmerican merchant who had traded with the
Spanish authorities in Venezuela since 1799. During the Mexican Revolution he grew openly
critical of Spain and eventually made the acquaintance of insurgents. In 1816, he went to New
Spain with a passport issued by then-Secretary of State James Monroe (1748–1831). Robinson
was eventually captured and imprisoned in Oaxaca but escaped in 1819. Upon his return, he
wrote his Memoirs of the Mexican Revolution (1820).
I.212n. Martin de la BASTIDE was the secretary of the French soldier and diplomat Charles-
François de Broglie, Marquis de Ruffec (1719–1781).
I.213. William DAMPIER (1651–1715) was a British pirate and a pioneer in scientific exploration.
An orphan at age sixteen, he sailed to Newfoundland, the East Indies, and the Gulf of Mexico.
From 1678 to 1691, he engaged in piracy. In 1699, he traveled to Australia as an explorer for the
British Admiralty, but his ship, the Roebuck, sprung a dangerous leak and had to be abandoned.
The crew was stuck on a South Atlantic island but was eventually rescued by homeward-bound
warships. Dampier returned to pirating after that. His New Voyage Round the World (1697)
proved immensely popular. Lionel Wafer sailed with Dampier for some time, and Wafer’s
travel account was attached to Dampier’s (volume II).
I.215n. DIEGO LÓPEZ DE SALCEDO Y RODRÍGUEZ (d. 1547) was governor of Honduras from 1526
to 1530 and governor of Nicaragua from 1526 to 1527. The Río San Juan or Desagüadero is an
outlet of Lake Nicaragua, which flows from the lake’s southeastern end at San Carlos north to
the border of Nicaragua with Costa Rica and into the Caribbean Sea at San Juan del Norte. The
river has been the cause of many a dispute between the two countries regarding rights of use.
Migration within the United States from the East Coast to California between 1850 and 1870
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went by way of San Juan del Norte and across Lake Nicaragua. It is of little surprise, then, that
the shipping and railroad tycoon “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) became
interested in Nicaraguan opportunities. The possibility of a transoceanic canal in Nicaragua,
which Humboldt discusses here, also played a role.
I.217. Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de BALBOA (c. 1475–1519) was the first European to
see the Pacific Ocean. In 1501, he arrived in Hispaniola where he settled, became a famer, and
went bankrupt. To escape his creditors, he traveled as a stowaway to what is now Colombia in
1510. When he reached land, Núñez de Balboa mutinied and took command of the ship, steered
it to the Isthmus of Panama, and founded Santa María de la Antigua del Darién. In 1511, he was
named the colony’s interim governor and captain-general. In 1513, he headed an expedition to
explore the isthmus in search of a much-rumored great ocean. On September 25, the expedition
first encountered the Pacific Ocean. Several days later, on September 29, 1513, Núñez de Balboa
made landfall, took possession of the territory for the Spanish Crown, and named it Mar del Sur
(South Sea). On January 18, 1514, he returned after exploring the Pearl Archipelago. As a
reward for his successful expedition, he was named Adelantado del Mar del Sur (admiral of the
South Sea) and was appointed governor of Panama and Coiba Island. He then carried out a
second expedition, this time to explore the Pacific Ocean. Before returning to Acla upon the
request of Pedro Arias Dávila, the governor of Darién since 1514 and his rival, Núñez de
Balboa explored the Gulf of San Miguel (1517–18), parts of the Gulf of Panama, and took
possession of the Pearl Islands. Upon his return to Acla, Dávila had him tried for treason and
executed in the public square.
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I.218. Don José Antonio (de) Tiscar was a Spanish general and governor of Barinas province in
Venezuela around 1813. In 1819, Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) sent troops from Spain in support
of the viceroy of Peru; Tiscar was among them. He left Cádiz for Lima on the vessel Alexandro 1
together with a number of other ships, at least one of them bound for Antarctica. Tiscar’s ship
sprang a leak and had to return to Spain.
I.218. At the time of Humboldt’s voyage, Venezuela was one of the seven provinces of the
Captaincy-general of Caracas, known then commonly as TIERRA FIRME.
I.218. Spanish naval officer José Ignacio de COLMENARES (1761–1833) began his career in the
Spanish navy in 1776. In 1783, he served in the viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata. In 1792,
Colmenares was stationed in Lima and appointed assistant to the viceroy. Ten years later, he was
commander of Peruano. Together with Mariano Isasbirivil (on the Estremeña), he carried out a
hydrographic expedition from 1803 to 1804. Surveying the southwest coast of the Pacific,
especially of the Chiloé Archipelago, he drafted a report of the expedition titled Derrotero
General del Callao a los puertos e islas de las costas de Chile hasta Chiloé y regreso (General
route from Callao to the ports and islands of the coasts of Chile up to Chiloé and back). Between
1809 and 1811, Colmanares was commander of the San Fernando for trips to Manila. During the
war of independence, he fought for the Royalists.
I.218. Spanish naval officer Antonio QUARTARA y Guerrini (fl. 1800–1821) was stationed in
Lima in 1801. Holding the rank of junior lieutenant, Quartara set out to make detailed surveys of
the coast of Peru and Central America in 1802. The expedition, under Moraleda, was to follow
up the work carried out by the Malaspina Expedition. After finishing his work in Peru, Quartara
sailed from Callao to San Blas in New Spain. He had been appointed to the Naval Department at
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San Blas in 1801 but could not assume his new position until nine years later. In 1817, Quartara
was appointed commander of the Naval Department at San Blas; he was the last Spaniard to hold
that position. Having rejected the Plan of Iguala (1821) and sided with the Royalists during the
independence wars, Quartara left for the Philippines when San Blas was taken by the
revolutionaries. Quartara knew Humboldt and kept in contact with him.
I.220. British surgeon and buccaneer Lionel WAFER (c. 1640–1705) traveled to Borneo (1677–
1679) on East India Company ships and to Jamaica (1679). In the Caribbean, he met William
Dampier, together with whom he joined a squadron of buccaneers in a successful raid of
Panama (1680). After defecting in April 1681, Wafer lived with the Cuna peoples of Darien. He
also traveled to Chesapeake Bay (1683), the Galápagos Island (1684), and Virginia (1688). At
Chesapeake Bay, he was arrested on the charges of piracy in June 1688, was released in
September 1689, and returned to England where he became an authority on the isthmus of
Darien. He published A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America in 1699, in
which he argued for an English settlement in Panama. Wafer’s A New Voyage contains one of
the best accounts of the indigenous peoples of the Isthmus of Panama.
I.224n. The later Greek historian DIODORUS SICULUS (of Sicily), or Diodorus of Agyrium in
Sicily (first century BCE), is best known for his forty-volume Bibliotheca Historica, a
compendium of universal history ranging from prehistorical mythologies to the reign of Gaius
Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE). Aimed at a wider audience, Diodorus’s monumental compilation
has a tone and methodology very different from Hellenistic historiography in the tradition of
Herodotus. Yet, Diodorus Siculus provides the only surviving continuous narrative of events for
long stretches of Greek history in the classical period. A complete set of Diodorus’s Bibliotheca
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still existed in the imperial palace in Constantinople at the start of the Renaissance in the
fifteenth century but most it was destroyed when the city was sacked in 1453. Today, only fifteen
books survive: books 1–5 and 11–20.
I.224n. Natural philosopher and writer BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–90) was the oldest signer of
the USAmerican Declaration of Independence (1776). In collaboration with his grandnephew
and private secretary Jonathan Williams (1750–1815), Franklin carried out experiments to
measure the temperature of the Atlantic’s currents. The result of these experiments and his
consultations with whalers is the first chart depicting the Gulf Stream. It was published in the
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society to accompany Franklin’s “Letter Containing
Sundry Maritime Observations” in 1786. Williams kept a journal during the experiments.
Published in book form in 1799, this journal first appeared as “A Thermometrical Journal of the
temperature of the atmosphere and Sea, on a voyage to and from Oporto, with explanatory
observations thereon” in the Transactions in 1793. A merchant and lay-scientist, Williams
became the first superintendent of the USAmerican Military Academy at West Point. After his
elementary education in Boston, Williams traveled to London in 1770 and six years later joined
Franklin in France. He returned to the USA with Franklin in 1785. On their return voyage to
Philadelphia, he helped Franklin carry out ocean temperature measurement experiments. Under
Franklin’s sponsorship, he served at different times as secretary, councilor, and vice president of
the American Philosophical Society. In 1796, Williams became associate judge in the Court of
Common Pleas in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson appointed him to inspector of fortifications
and superintendent at West Point (1801–03). Reappointed with the rank of lieutenant colonel of
engineers in 1805, Williams planned and supervised the construction of forts around New York
City. He was elected to Congress in 1814 but died before taking office.
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I.227n. French engineer Jean-Baptiste LEPÈRE (1761–1844), father-in-law of the architect
Jacques-Ignace Hittorff (1792–1867), was the creator of Saint Vincent de Paul Church in Paris.
He was also one of the architects who worked on raising the colonne Vendôme. LePère was part
of the Commission of Sciences and the Arts that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) took with
him on his Egyptian campaign. Part of Bonaparte’s interest was to see whether LePère’s planned
project of linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea across the Nile delta could be realized,
and whether the difference in sea levels between the two was sufficiently small to make such a
canal feasible. While in Egypt, LePère also produced drawings of ancient temples and other
relics, which can be found in the Commission’s monumental multivolume publication,
Description de l'Égypte.
I.230. The CAMEL family appeared about 40–45 million years ago in North America. From there,
camels dispersed to Asia and South America at about 2–3 million years ago. A large herbivorous
mammal that thrived in arid habitats, the camel evolved to cope with life in near-desert and
desert conditions. The one-humped dromedary (about 12.6 million worldwide) was first
domesticated in central or southern Arabia and then spread to North and East Africa and India.
The two-humped Bactrian camel (about 1.4 million) was domesticated probably before 2,500
BCE in northern Iran and southwestern Turkestan and spread to Iraq, India, and China. This
camel population has shrunk; most remain in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Mongolia, Turkey, and
Russia. The South American camelids, which have a population of about 7.7 million (llama,
alpaca, wild guanaco, and vicuña), adapted to arid and steppe environments with altitudes of up
to 15,100 feet. South American camelid domestication might have occurred in the Lake Titicaca
region or on the Junin Plateau about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. The camma, a cross between a
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camel and a llama, was a hybrid breed. On the history of the camel on the Spanish islands and
Spain’s dominions, see also Humboldt, Voyage I: 91, I: 123–24, and 3:133–35.
I.230. A wealthy landowner and supporter of the South American independence movements,
Caracas Creole Francisco Rodríguez del TORO e Ibarra (1761–1851) was a lieutenant-colonel of
the Spanish army and brigadier and commander of the newly constituted independent army in
what includes present-day Venezuela. He became the fourth MARQUIS DEL TORO and inherited the
family fortune upon his father’s death in 1787. By 1790, Toro had also received the seat of
regent of the Council of Caracas, a prestigious governmental position awarded mainly to the
local nobility (matuanos). For his participation in the so-called Mantuanos Conspiracy (1808), he
was arrested on charges of advocating for independence. After reassuring the Junta Central de
España of the mantuanos’ loyalty to the Spanish monarchy, Toro was released in April 1809.
After the reconfiguration of the provincial government of the Capitancy-general of Venezuela on
April 19, 1810, Toro was promoted to the rank of brigadier. Because the province of Coro
refused to accept the authority of the newly created Suprema Junta de Caracas, Toro was
appointed commander of the Western Army (1809–11). A representative in the first Congress of
Venezuela in 1811 and supporter of a declaration of independence from the Spanish monarchy,
Toro was among those who signed the Act of Independence and the Constitution in 1811. In
1812, however, Toro abandoned the independence cause until 1822 when Simón Bolívar (1783–
1830) became president of the Republic of Gran Colombia. A year after his return to Venezuela,
Toro was appointed intendant of Venezuela (1823–24), the highest governmental position in the
region. Del Toro was a cousin of Bolívar’s wife, María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza
(1781–1803) and the uncle of diplomat, statesman, and writer Fermín del Toro y Blanco (1806–
1865). Humboldt stayed at the Marquis del Toro’s house in Guacara (Venezuela) and visited
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Mucundo, that family’s sugar plantation. He approved of the Marquis’s introduction of camels
from Lanzarote (Canary Islands) to Venezuela.
I.231n. Historian and statesman Lucas ALAMÁN (1792–1853), one of the foremost conservative
intellectuals of nineteenth-century New Spain and independent Mexico, held various political
appointments and wrote several works on the history of Mexico. Alamán was born and raised in
Guanajuato, where he met Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753–1811). A member of a family of
mine owners, Alamán moved to Mexico City to study at the mining school when he was eighteen
and later trained in Freiberg and Göttingen (in Germany) and in Paris. Elected representative of
New Spain to the Spanish Court, he held his first administrative position, that of Secretario de
Junta of Guanajuato (1820). After independence, Alamán was first appointed diplomat to France,
then Minister of Interior and Foreign Affairs, and finally Minister of Industry (1831–1835). As
Minister of Foreign Affairs (1823–1825, 1830–1832, and 1853), he shaped Mexican foreign
policy and worked ardently to protect Mexico’s Interior Provinces from USAmerican expansion.
He also worked to establish Mexico’s first national bank, the Banco de Avío in 1830 and was a
driving force to establish the United Mexican Mining Company in 1825. Having organized the
Conservative Party (1849), he was elected party representative for Jalisco in 1851 and became a
senator a year later. Alamán is the founder of the Archivo General de la Nación, the Museo de
Antigüedades e Historia Natural, and the Dirección General de Instrucción Pública. In addition
to publishing several essays in periodicals such as El Diario de México and El Universal,
Alamán’s most famous publications are Disertaciones sobre la histoira de la República
Mexicana desde la época de la Conquista… hasta la independencia (Dissertations about the
history of the Mexican Republic from the conquest to Independence, 1844–1849) and Histoira
de Méjico desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon su independencia en el año 1808
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hasta la época presente (History of Mexico from the first movements that prepared its
Independence in 1808 to the present, 1849–1852). Rafael Aguayo Spencer (b. 1914) compiled
Alamán’s unpublished works in Documentos diversos (inéditos y muy raros) (1945–47). Some of
Alamán’s papers are currently at the Benson Latin American Collection of the University of
Texas at Austin (Lucas Alamán Papers, 1598–1853).
I.232n. Born in Popayán near Cartagena de Indias, José Ignacio POMBO (1761–c. 1815) was a
philanthropist and supporter of progress, educational causes, and, above all, scientific
experimentation. A friend and avid correspondent of José Celestino Mutis’s, Pombo was
particularly known as a generous supporter of Francisco José de Caldas, giving him books and
instruments, paying for his scientific excursions, and contributing to his journal. An unflagging
patriot, Pombo used the entirety of his considerable fortune to aid the struggle for independence,
in which two of his sons fought and perished. Humboldt, who met Pombo in New Granada, was
also interested in the latter’s studies of interoceanic navigation in connection with the Atrato
River.
I.232n. VICENTE TALLEDO y Rivera (b. 1760) was deputy colonel of the Royal Corps of
Engineers in New Granada around 1800. He drew a map of New Granada—the Mapa
corográfico del Nuevo Reino de Granada—and corrected Humboldt’s map of the Río Magdalena
on orders of the viceroy.
I.232n. A naturalist, lawyer, politician, and historian of Colombian independence, José Manuel
RESTREPO (1781–1863) was forced into exile from 1816–19. He was a member of the
commission to draft the Colombian Constitution and a minister of the interior under Simón
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Bolívar (1783–1830). A disciple of Caldas, Restrepo surveyed his native province of Antioquia
in 1807, drawing a map and writing an account in 1809. See also Zea and Mutis.
I.238n. A native of Aragón, Spain, Father Manuel SOBREVIELA (d. 1803) was elected guardian of
the Franciscan Missionary College of St. Rose in Ocopa, Peru, in 1787. A year after he had
sailed from Cádiz, he embarked upon a two-year voyage to explore the Mairo River in central
Peru and made several trips into the province of Tarma. In 1790, he also explored the River
Huallaga. Sobreviela described his voyages in three diaries and one report that were initially
published in the Mercurio Peruano (1791–95), a journal of which Sobreviela had been one of the
founders, along with Unanué and Taboada de Lemos, among others. The mercenary and
translator Captain Joseph SKINNER (c. 1715–1756) published a very successful abridged version
of Sobreviela’s writings under the title The Present State of Peru in 1805.
I.239. The preliminary PEACE treaty signed in London on October 1, 1801, temporarily resolved
the conflict between Britain and France and paved the way for the Treaty of Amiens (1802). The
terms of the London treaty were for Britain to return all colonies it had captured from France,
and to withdraw from Malta and the other Mediterranean ports. France, in return, would restore
Egypt, withdraw from Naples and Switzerland, and guarantee Portugal.
I.240. Galician naval officer Francisco Gil de Taboada y LEMOS (1736–1810) was viceroy of
New Granada and of Peru (1790–1796). Known as one of the most progressive viceroys of Peru,
Lemos supported maritime explorations, including that of José de Moraleda to the south
Atlantic coast of Chile and the western coast of Patagonia in 1795. Lemos entered the Naval
Academy and the Order of Malta in 1752. Promoted to post-captain in 1776, he served as captain
and commander in the Naval Department at Ferrol from 1779 to 1788. A rear admiral in 1782, he
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was appointed viceroy of New Granada and president of the Audiencia of Santa Fé in 1788;
Lemos arrived in America to take office in 1789. After a brief seven-month term, he was named
viceroy of Peru and president of the Audiencia of Lima with the rank of vice admiral in 1789. In
Peru, Lemos instituted the Bourbon administrative reforms. He also supported the creation of
scientific periodicals such as El Mercurio Peruano (1791–1795), Semanario Crítico (1791), and
Gazeta de Lima (1793–1795), and backed the Malaspina Expedition. In June 1796, Lemos
returned to Spain where he was promoted to admiral in 1805 and minister of the navy the
following year. After Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) stepped down, Lemos served in the ruling
government juntas.
I.240. Trained at the naval academy of Cádiz, Spain (1760–1764), José Manuel Nicolás de
MORALEDA y Montero Espinoza (1747–1810) made several journeys to the Caribbean and the
East Indies before embarking on his first government-commissioned scientific exploration of the
Chiloé archipelago in 1787. Moraleda was well respected as a pilot and a mapmaker. His work
on Chiloé can still be considered the most complete account of the region. One of the canals in
the Ayssen province is named after him. In December 1802, he was at the helm of the war
corvette Castor that ferried Humboldt and Bonpland from Lima to Guayaquil and on to
Acapulco.
I.240. Accompanied by five Spaniards and thirty-four Chonos, the Spanish Jesuit JOSÉ GARCÍA
Martí (or Alsué, 1709–c. 1783) led the Cailín mission in 1766–1767. His journal, first published
in 1871, is one of the most important early sources on the culture of the Alacalufes and the
Chonos, an indigenous people of the Chiloé Archipelago in Chile, who went extinct in the late
nineteenth century.
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I.240. JUAN VICUÑA (d. 1768), another Jesuit, traveled to the Guayaneco Archipelago in southern
Chile in 1768 with the intent to convert the local population there. He died in a shipwreck on his
return voyage.
I.241. Spaniards of French descent, the engineers Francisco LEMAUR y de la Muraire (1770–
1841) and Félix Lemaur y de la Muraire (1767–1841) were two of the four sons of Carlos
Lemaur y Burriel (c. 1720–1785), who designed the Guadarrama-Rozas canal in Spain in 1785.
He committed suicide later that year, and his sons completed this project. They were also the
unsuccessful planners of the old Güines canal in Cuba and technical advisors to the Railroad
Commission that was formed on the island in 1830. They carried out two geodetical
triangulations of Cuba, in 1800 and 1820. Francisco Lemaur is also the author of a Spanish
translation of Aryan Higgins’s Observations and Advices on ther manufacturing of sugar and
rum (Jamaica, 1797–1803).
241n. British captain of the Royal Navy, Charles Stuart COCHRANE (fl. 1822–1825, d. 1834)
arrived in the port of La Guaira, Venezuela, in 1822. From there, he traveled to Caracas and the
interior of Colombia, including Cauca, Tolima, Antioquia, and Chocó. Illustrated with maps and
color plates, his Journal of a Residence and Travels in Columbia during the years 1823 and
1824 (1825) describes, among other things, Colombian society after independence.
I.243. Jean-Rodolphe PERRONET (1708–1794) was a French engineer best known for his stone-
arch bridges. In 1747, he founded the world’s first engineering school, the École Nationale des
Ponts et Chaussées (National School of Bridges and Highways) and was appointed its director.
(One of his successors would be Baron Riche de Prony.) In 1791, in spite of the French
Revolution, he finished work on the bridge Pont de la Concorde, which was originally called
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Pont Louis XV. Perronet was also involved in the construction of the Burgundy Canal, a project
that lasted—with interruptions—from 1765 until 1832. The canal has a tunnel at its summit,
through which one barge can pass at a time. Perronet joined the French Academy of Sciences in
1765.
I.252. Baron Christian Leopold von BUCH (1774–1853) was a Prussian geologist and geographer
who studied under Abraham Gottlob Werner at the Freiberg School of Mines in Saxony from
1790 to 1793, where he must have met Humboldt. Starting in 1797, Buch investigated the Alps,
moved on to Italy, and visited the Auvergne Mountains. His volcanic theories contributed to
revising Werner’s own theories. Buch also visited Scandinavia and the Canary Islands. His
extensive wanderings and writings significantly influenced the development of geology.
Humboldt expressed his high regard for Buch in Kosmos and in his letters to Karl August
Varnhagen von Ense (1785–1858). At the point of his death, Humboldt had in his possession
nearly forty items authored by Buch.
I.252. Francisco ESCOLAR (d. 1826) kept a register in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, from 1808 to 1810,
on which Buch commented in his Physicalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln (Physical
description of the Canary Islands). Apparently, Escolar, who had studied law in Spain in the
1790s and chemistry and botany at Göttingen University, prepared statistics on the Canary
Islands between 1793 and 1806. He also translated the 1801 Nicolas François Canard’s (1754–
1833) Principes d’économie politique (Principles of political economy).
I.252. In 1808, the British officers Felix V. Raper (b. 1778) and William Spencer WEBB (b.
1785) of the Tenth Bengal Native Infantry set out from Delhi, India, on a famous expedition to
find the sources of the River Ganges. With them was also the Anglo-Indian mercenary Hyder
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Jung (or Young) Hearsey (1782–1840). In 1806, Webb had become the assistant of renowned
British orientalist Henry Thomas Colebrooke. Colebrooke, who had succeeded Major James
Rennell as surveyor-general of Bengal, had fallen ill of malaria and thus did not take part in
what would become a famous expedition to the Himalayas. Webb was the first European to
behold the entire Garhwal Himalaya, but the party had to turn back forty miles short of their
goal. Webb later fought in the Anglo-Nepalese war of 1814–1816 and was appointed surveyor of
Kumaon thereafter. Extracts from Webb’s letters, often communicated by Colebrooke, were
published in London journals such as The Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature, and Art,
Annals of Oriental Literature, and Asiatick Researches in 1819 and 1820. Raper’s journal, which
was recovered from Colebrooke’s effects after the latter’s untimely demise, was published in
Asiatick Researches in 1812. Webb continued Colebrooke’s work.
I.252n. Scottish traveler and travel writer James BRUCE (1730–1794) spent more than a dozen
years in North African and Ethiopia, tracing the origins of the Blue Nile. Intent on verifying his
hypothesis that the source of the Nile was located in Ethiopia, Bruce arrived in Alexandria in
June 1768. From there he traveled to Cairo where he gained the support of the Mamluk ruler Ali
Bey al-Kabir (1728–1783) before heading south across the desert to Kosseir. After reaching
Kosseir, Bruce donned the dress of a Turkish sailor and crossed the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia,
reaching Jidda in May 1769. After a brief stay in Arabia, he recrossed the Red Sea and arrived in
Massawa, Eritrea (then in possession of the Turks) on September 19, 1769. He reached Gondar,
then capital of Ethiopia, on February 14, 1770. After recovering from malaria, Bruce continued
his quest, setting out again in October 1770 with a small party of men. The final march was made
in November 1770, and after climbing more than 9,500 feet, Bruce and his party reached the
Gish Abay (the source of the Lesser Abay) on November 14, 1770. Bruce declared that they had
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reached the source of the Blue Nile. He stayed in Ethiopia for two years, where his knowledge of
Ge’ez gained him favor among locals and allowed him to gain a fair understanding of Ethiopian
life. Bruce’s story of his travels was met with some incredulity upon his return to London in
1774, which caused him to retire to his home in Kinnaird. An account of his travels was not
published until 1790, when it appeared under the title Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile,
In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773. Other travelers continued to question the
report’s authenticity. Its substantial accuracy has, however, been verified since, and Bruce’s
accounts are now considered a significant contribution to geographical knowledge of the region.
I.253. In the mid-1730s, the French Jesuit Jean Baptiste DU HALDE (1674–1743) wrote a
description of the Chinese Empire that featured fifty plates of provinces, cities, and territories.
The Paris-based Du Halde had never traveled to China himself but collected and edited others’
materials.
I.253. Scottish-descended Dutch explorer, naturalist, and linguist Robert Jacob GORDON (1743–
95) was an early, though neglected, explorer of South Africa. Having joined the Dutch East India
Company, he rose to the rank of colonel and commanded the Cape garrison between 1780 and
1795. Of the six journeys he undertook in South Africa, only four (between 1777 and 1786) are
covered in journals discovered in 1964. Gordon drew, or had drawn, 456 sketches in full color,
which were meant to accompany his journal. Of these, 157 have appeared in various forms. The
full Gordon Atlas is owned by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and available online from the
University of Cape Town at https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/robert-jacob-gordon-journal-
archive.
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I.253. French sketcher, naturalist, and collector Jacques-Julien Houtou de LABILLARDIÈRE (also
La Billadière, 1755–1834) is best known for his contributions to the study of Australian flora and
fauna. After completing his studies of botany and medicine at Montpellier, France, he graduated
as a doctor of medicine in Paris around 1780. Labillardière worked at the Jardin du Roi with his
friend René Louiche Desfontaines and their patron Louis Guillaume Le Monnier, and, in
1782, was sent to England for two years to study the plant collections in Kew Gardens. There, he
met Sir Joseph Banks. Labillardière was part of Admiral Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s
(1737–93) voyage to the Pacific in 1791–94 in search of the lost explorer La Pérouse. During
the voyage, Labillardière collected more than 4,000 plants, as well as animals, fish, and birds.
When he returned to France after two years’ confinement in Java (1793–95), he discovered to his
dismay that his plant collections had been sent to England as a prize of war. They were returned
after Banks interceded, and Labillardière set to work on two publications in connection with the
voyage: first, the two volumes of his unofficial version of the expedition, Relation du Voyage à
la Recherche de la Pérouse (Voyage in search of La Pérouse, 1799), which proved very popular
and went through four English editions; second, his Prodromus Novae Hollandiae Plantarum
Specimen (Introduction to New Hollands plant specimens, 1804, 1806), which contains 265 full-
page plates of Australian plants said to have been engraved after Labillardière’s own drawings.
This book has been hailed as the first general account of Australian flora. The English naturalist
Robert Brown (1773–1858) honored his French colleague by naming an Australian shrub
Billardiera. A corresponding member of French Académie Royale des Sciences since 1792,
Labillardière was elected a full member in 1800.
I.253. Martin Hinrich Carl LICHTENSTEIN (1780–1857) was German physician and zoologist.
After studying medicine at the Universities of Jena and Helmstedt, he traveled to South Africa
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and became personal physician to the governor of the Cape of Good Hope (1802–06). In 1810,
Lichtenstein founded the Zoological Museum in Berlin, whose director he became three years
later. In 1811, the same year he was appointed the first professor of zoologie at the University of
Berlin, he published the first volume of his Reisen im südlichen Africa (Travels in South Africa).
Lichtenstein was instrumental in the founding of the famous Berlin Zoo. In 1840, he wrote a
memorandum to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1795–1861) to request a loan and part of the
area in which the king kept his pheasants. It appears that Humboldt made sure that the king
received this request, and Friedrich Wilhelm promptly ordered the founding of the zoo in 1841.
Lichtenstein was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences from 1813 to 1857 and
also belonged to the German Academy of Naturalists. In addition to his work in zoology,
Lichtenstein also pursued his interest in music.
I.253n. Sir John BARROW (1764–1848) traveled with Lord Macartney first to China and then to
the Cape of Good Hope. Macartney sent him to reconcile the Kaffirs with the Boers and to obtain
more accurate topographical knowledge of the then-unmapped colony. In pursuit of these
objectives, Barrow went on a journey of more than a thousand miles, traversing on horseback
and on foot virtually every part of the colony. In 1800, Barrow married and made plans to settle
in South Africa, but these plans were frustrated by continued unrest in the colony. After the
treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802, forcing the British to relinquish the Cape colony, Barrow
returned to England. In 1804, Henry Dundas, or Lord Melville (1742–1811), the First Lord of the
Admiralty under William Pitt, appointed Barrow second secretary of the Admiralty, a post he
occupied for the next forty years. Barrow published almost 200 articles in the Quarterly Review
and the Encyclopædia Britannica; among the most interesting are his observations on Arctic and
Chinese subjects. His Account of Travels into the Interior of southern Africa, in the Years 1797
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and 1798 appeared between 1801 and 1804, followed in short order by Travels in China (1804)
and A Voyage to Cochinchina (1806). In addition to these works and to his own autobiography,
published posthumously in 1852, Barrow edited countless manuscripts of travelers in all parts of
the globe, including Some Account of the Public Life and a Selection of the Unpublished
Writings of the Earl Macartney (1807). His abiding interest in Arctic exploration led to A
Chronological History of Arctic Voyages (1818) and Voyages of Discovery and Research within
the Arctic Regions (1846). See also John Franklin.
I.265n. One of New Spain’s greatest linguists, ALONSO DE MOLINA (c. 1513–1579) was raised by
Franciscan friars in New Spain and learned to speak Nahuatl playing with children. His
Vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana (1555) is one of the most extensive and accurate
works on Nahuatl lexicography. Molina helped the Franciscans produce more than eighty
grammars, dictionaries, catechisms, breviaries, and scriptural translations into Nahuatl between
1546 and 1578. In addition to the Vocabulario, eleven of Molina’s publications are extant,
among them Arte de la lengua Mexicana (1571, 1576), Doctrina breve en lengua mexiana
(1571), and Doctrina christiana en lengua Mexicana (1578).
I.269n. Captain John Anthony HODGSON (1777–1848) went to India as a mere cadet in 1799.
Near the end of the Anglo-Nepal War (1814–1816), governor-general of India Warren Hastings
(1732–1818) appointed Hodgson and James Dowling HERBERT (1791–1833) to survey the
mountainous areas between the Sutlej River and the Ganges, with Tibet as a northern boundary.
They also surveyed Gurwhal. Hodgson was known for using his own instruments and books
when surveying. Hodgson served as surveyor-general of India from 1821 to 1823 and 1826 to
1827. In the intervening time, he was tax inspector-general of Bengal with a residence in
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Kathmandu. In 1828, the Himalaya survey project was abandoned for financial reasons. After
spending time in England, he returned to India in 1845 as major-general of the Rohilkhand
Division of Uttar Pradesh.
I.269n. Deputy surveyor-general Lieutenant HERBERT played a major role in the Asiatic Society
of Bengal. Notably, he edited and financed the journal Gleanings in Science which, unlike
Asiatic Researches, did not admit short contributions. Gleanings became a regular outlet for the
Society’s monthly proceedings and scientific notices. In 1832, Herbert was selected as
astronomer to the second king of Oudh, the Nawab Nasiruddin Haider (1803–1837). Though
often ridiculed as an incurable Anglophile, Nasiruddin Haider wanted to establish a Royal
Observatory at Lucknow, in part for the astronomical training of young courtiers. Herbert was to
supervise the construction and order instruments from England. After his sudden death, Herbert
was replaced by Major Richard Wilcox (1802–1848). After Wilcox’s death, the observatory was
closed and finally destroyed in the Indian War of Independence in 1857.
I.275. Arthur YOUNG (1741–1820) was an Englishman who wrote around twenty-five books and
pamphlets on agriculture and fifteen on political economy, as well as many articles. In 1762,
Young took over a farm in Essex, where he engaged in various experiments, describing the
results in A Course of Experimental Agriculture (1770). He had already begun a series of
journeys through England and Wales and gave an account of his observations in books that
appeared between 1768 and 1770: A Six Weeks’ Tour through the Southern Counties of England
and Wales, A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England, and the Farmer’s Tour through
the East of England. These and other books of his were received favorably and translated into
most European languages. In 1784, Young began publishing the Annals of Agriculture, which
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was continued for forty-five volumes. He first visited France in 1787 and published his
observations about public affairs and the condition of the people during the early years of the
French Revolution in two volumes titled Travels in France (1792). Upon his return to England
the following year, he was appointed secretary of the Board of Agriculture and assisted in the
collection and preparation of agricultural surveys of English counties until his eyesight failed
him around 1811. Upon his death in 1820, he left an autobiography in manuscript, which was
edited in 1898 by Matilda Betham-Edwards (1836–1919). He also left the materials for a great
work on the Elements and practice of agriculture.
I.275. Augustin Pyramus (or Pyrame) DE CANDOLLE (1778–1841) was a Swiss botanist who
documented hundreds of plant families and created a new natural plant classification system.
Although Candolle primarily worked in botany, he also contributed to the related fields of
phytogeography, agronomy, and paleontology. Candolle’s career in botany began after moving
to Paris, where French botanist René Louiche Desfontaines recommended him for work in the
herbarium of fellow French botanist Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle (1746–1800) in 1798.
Candolle’s first publications, Plantarum historia succulentarum (History of succulents, 4 vols.,
1799) and Astragalogia (1802), brought him to the attention of Georges Cuvier and Jean-
Baptiste Lamarck. With Cuvier’s approval, Candolle became deputy at the Collège de France
in 1802, and Lamarck entrusted him with the publication of the third edition of the Flore
française (1803–1815). In 1804, Candolle published his Essai sur les propriétés médicales des
plantes and was granted a doctoral degree by the medical faculty of Paris. Two years later, he
published Synopsis plantarum in flora Gallica descriptarum. Candolle then spent the next six
summers on a botanical and agricultural survey of France at the request of the French
government, which was published in 1813. In 1807, he was appointed professor of botany at the
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University of Montpellier, where he would later become the first chair of botany in 1810.While
in Montpellier, Candolle published his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique (Elementary theory
of botany, 1813), which introduced a new classification system. Candolle moved back to Geneva
in 1816 and was invited by the government of the Canton of Geneva to fill the newly created
chair of natural history the following year. He spent the rest of his life attempting to complete his
natural system of botanical classification. He published initial work in his Regni vegetabillis
systema naturale but realized after two volumes that he could not complete the project on such a
large scale. He thus began his less extensive Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis in
1824, of which he was only able to finish seven volumes. Although he completed only two-thirds
of the Prodromus, Candolle was able to categorize over one hundred families of plants, which
helped lay the empirical basis of general botany. Candolle also originated the idea of “Nature’s
war,” which influenced Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and his theory of natural selection. During
his work with plants, Candolle discovered that plant leaf movements follow a near-24-hour cycle
in constant light, suggesting an internal biological clock. While many doubted Candolle’s
findings, experiments conducted over a century later demonstrated that the internal biological
clock does indeed exist.
I.276. Botanist and physician Benjamin Smith BARTON (1766–1815) is the author of the first
botany published in the USA. His Elements of Botany; or, Outlines of the Natural History of
Vegetables (1803) was intended as an illustrated textbook for medical students. Having been
trained in medicine since 1781, Barton continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh
(1786–1788), where he became president of the Royal Medical Society and a member of the
Speculative Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. In 1789, Barton was appointed
professor of botany, natural history, and medicine at the College of Philadelphia, which became
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the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. Humboldt met him during his visit to Philadelphia in
1804. Interested also in Native American ethnology and linguistics, Barton published New Views
of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America in 1797. A member and president of the
Linnean Society of London (1806), president of the Philadelphia Medical Society (1808–1812),
and vice president of the American Philosophical Society (1802–1815), Barton published and
edited the Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal from 1804 to 1809.
I.278. Well known for his twelve years of studying the plants of North America, the French
botanist André MICHAUX (1746–1802) traveled widely on orders of the French government. On
his return trip to Paris in 1797, he lost most of his collected specimens in a shipwreck. Prior to
his time in Canada, Nova Scotia, and the United States, Michaux had traveled in Egypt and to
Persia to collect plants and grains (1782–1785). Besides bringing mimosa, gingko, and camellia
from Persia, he also compiled a French–Persian dictionary. Some of Michaux’s observations in
North America were published by his son François André Michaux (1770–1855) in Histoire des
chênes de l’Amérique: ou, Descriptions et figures de toutes les espèces et variétés de chênes de
l’Amérique Septentrionale, considérées sous les rapports de la botanique, de leur culture et de
leur usage (History of the oak trees of America, or, descriptions and drawings of all the species
and varieties of oak trees in North America, considered under their botanical aspects and their
cultivation and use) in 1801 and Flora Boreali-Americana in 1803. Between trips, Michaux was
introduced to Thomas Jefferson, who asked him to organize an expedition to the west. Michaux
only got as far as St. Louis, when Jefferson recalled the expedition for political reasons.
I.296. In his dramatic and colorful Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España,
BERNAL DÍAZ del Castillo (1492–1585) countered Gómara’s version of the Spanish conquests,
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especially his reports on Hernán Cortés’s invasion of Mexico (1519–1521) in Historia de la
conquista de México (1522). Diaz’s Historia verdadera narrates Cortés’s invasion from the
perspective of an ordinary soldier, who—unlike Gómara and many other chroniclers of the
time—had actually been in the New World and participated in the conquest. Parts of the Historia
verdadera were published in 1632; the complete text was not recovered until 1904.
I.298. Spanish missionary Jerónimo de LOAYSA (also Loaisa or Loaysa, 1498–1575) was the first
bishop of Lima and the first archbishop of Peru. After entering the Dominican Order, he arrived
in America in 1528 to take charge of the bishopric of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). Appointed
bishop of Lima in 1541, he took office in 1543; two years later, he became the first archbishop of
Peru, a position he held for thirty years.
I.298. A Jeronymite priest from the monastery at El Escorial who had arrived in Lima in 1773,
Diego CISNEROS (c. 1740–1812) was a strong supporter of the Peruvian Enlightenment. A
member of the Sociedad de los Amantes del País (Patriotic Society), he contributed to the
Mercurio Peruano under the pseudonym “Archidamo.” Once in Lima, he opened a library and
circulated banned works by such authors as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert, and
Montesquieu, to which his political connections with the Spanish monarchy gave him access.
Cisneros’s clandestinely introduced works were readily cited in the Mercurio Peruano, the
twelfth and last volume of which he personally financed. In 1796, the Inquisition opened a
fruitless trial against Cisneros for possessing prohibited books and upholding heretical ideas. A
letter criticizing the Inquisition, allegedly by Cisneros, was published in the newspaper El
Investigador (1813–1814) after the abolition of this tribunal in 1812.
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I.299. Miguel FEYJÓO de Sosa (also Feijoo, 1718–1791) was born in Arequipa (Peru), studied at
the Jesuit school of St. Martin’s College (1733), and graduated from and lectured at the
University of San Marcos in 1755. The governor of Quispicanchi since 1744 and chief
accountant for Lima’s royal treasury court since 1744 by way of marriage, he was appointed
governor of Trujillo in 1757. In the 1760s, Feyjóo became comptroller and then director of the
royal tobacco monopoly. In 1769, he headed up a commission to privatize the possessions of the
recently expelled Jesuits. Feyjóo resigned from his position as chief accountant for the royal
treasury court in 1773. In addition to writing Relación descriptiva de la ciudad y provincia de
Trujillo del Perú (Descriptive account of the city and province of Trujillo in Peru, 1763),
Feyjoo’s authored Nuevo gazofilacio real del Perú (New royal treasury of Peru, 1771). The latter
is housed at the Archivo General de Indias at Seville (Lima 1068).
I.299. Captain James WILSON (1760–1814) was a British explorer who brought the first British
missionaries from the London Missionary Society to Tahiti aboard the Duff in 1797. While
captaining the Duff, Wilson visited many islands in the Pacific, some of which had no recorded
visits by prior European explorers. His A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean was
published in 1799.
I.299. Enterprising British naval officer, merchant captain, and fur trader John TURNBULL (fl.
1799–1813) served as second mate on the Barwell on her voyage to China in 1799. After
returning from his travels, Turnbull partnered with John Buyer, the first officer, in a business
venture that involved the lucrative fur trade on the northwest coast of the Americas. The ship
Margaret was bought and fitted out for the venture, with Buyers placed in command of the ship
and Turnbull entrusted with business arrangements and appointed historian of the voyage. The
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Margaret left England on July 2, 1800, and sailing by way of the Cape of Good Hope, stopped in
Sydney, Australia, in February 1801 and at the Society Islands in September 1802 before
continuing on to the Hawaiian Islands, which they reached in mid-December 1802. Turnbull and
Buyers then headed south and sailed among the Tuamotuan atolls and Nukutipipi before heading
to Tahiti. After landing at Tahiti, Turnbull and Buyer attempted a few business ventures that all
ended in failure before ultimately returning to England by way of Sydney and the Cape of Good
Hope. Though a consummate financial failure, Turnbull’s voyage yielded useful, though biased
and dated, information about Tahiti and the Hawaiian and Society Islands and led to the English
discovery of a handful of new islands, including Margaret, Phillips, and Holt in the Tuamotu
Archipelago. His A Voyage Round the World was published in 1805.
I.300. Born in Asturias (Spain), Pedro Rodríguez, Count of CAMPOMANES (1723–1802)
graduated as a lawyer in 1745 and began his government career a decade later. In 1756,
Campomanes became a member of the Royal Academy of Spain. Three years later, during the
reign of Charles III (1759–1788), he became a highly influential political economist who
advocated for commercial and agrarian reform, the liberation of international trade, and the
establishment of many regional economic societies (especially the Economic Society of Madrid).
Public prosecutor, governor of the Council of Castile, and the president of the Royal Academy of
History, Campomanes was most notoriously the political architect of the expulsion of the Society
of Jesus from the Spanish territories. Under orders from Charles III, he authored the Dictamen
fiscal de expulsion de los jesuitas de España (Fiscal rule on the Jesuits’ expulsion from Spain,
1766–67). In it, Campomanes reviewed the wealth and actions of the Jesuits in Europe and the
Americas (especially Paraguay) to argue that the Jesuit Order has defrauded the Catholic Church
and the State by evading taxes. He also accused the Jesuits of being spiritual and regal
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insubordinates. In 1766, Campomanes had written the Tratado de la regalía de Amortización
(Treatise on the privilege of amortization, 1765), limiting the wealth of the Catholic Church,
especially its freedom to own, buy, and inherit land. In his Tratado, he argued that the Church’s
wealth was mainly to blaime for the impoverishment of the country and depopulation of cities. In
Campomanes’s other influential essay, Discurso sobre el Fomento de la Industria Popular
(Discourse on the development of working-class industry, 1774), he adapted British and French
liberal theories for the betterment of agricultural economies. He wrote countless government
reports, several other treatises, and collaborated with Miguel Casiri (1710–1791), a librarian of
El Escorial, in translating Abu Zachariah’s treatise on agriculture. It was published in Spanish as
Tratado del cultivo de las tierras (Treatise on cultivating the land, 1751). Campomanes’s
influence waned during the reign of Charles IV (r. 1788–1808).
I.301. Spanish diplomat PEDRO CEBRIÁN y Agustín, Count of Fuenclara (1687–1752), was
viceroy of New Spain from 1742 to 1746. After receiving a royal order requesting information
about the state of the viceroyalty, Fuenclara ordered José Antonio Villaseñor y Sánchez to
gather statistical information about the population of New Spain. Fuenclara was responsible for
arresting Boturini and confiscating his famous collection. Before arriving in New Spain,
Fuenclara was ambassador of Spain in Venice (1734–36), Vienna (1736–38), Dresden (1738),
and Naples (1738–40). As ambassador in Vienna, he arranged the wedding of Charles III of
Spain and María Amalia of Saxony.
I.301. A native of San Luis Potosí, statistician and mapmaker José Antonio VILLASEÑOR y
Sánchez (1703–1759) studied at the Real Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City from 1720 to
1726 and began an administrative career. Appointed royal cosmographer of New Spain, he was
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commissioned by the viceroy Fuenclara to compile a report about the condition of the provinces
of New Spain in 1743. His report, titled Theatro Americano (1746–48), contains geographic,
economic, and demographic information about mid-eighteenth-century New Spain. Published in
two volumes, the Theatro includes descriptions of the bishoprics of Mexico, Puebla, Michoacán,
Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and Durango. Written with the goal to present population data from the
1742–45 census, it includes information about New Spain, New Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya, and the
Interior Provinces. A prolific writer and cartographer, Villaseñor also updated and expanded the
Theatro by adding a description of Mexico City.
I.304. The ENCOMIENDA was a special form of repartimiento, originally an allotment of lands
either won or yet to be won. The colonial encomienda system, however, included no allocation
of either land or rents, as it originally had when used on the Spanish Peninsula. It was purely a
forced labor system, in which the state temporarily assigned Indians to individual Spaniards who,
in turn, agreed to take care of them. The encomienda system was a common practice among
Spanish conquerors until 1542, when it was prohibited by Spanish law.
I.305n. Spanish clergyman Francisco Javier de Lizana y Beaumont (1750–1815) was
ARCHBISHOP of Mexico (1803–11) and viceroy of New Spain (1809–10). Trained in civil and
canonical law, he studied at Calatayud and the University of Zaragoza and had previously been
bishop in Teruel (Spain). After viceroy Iturrigaray was deposed, Lizana provisionally took over
the viceregal office; he was the last to hold the dual post of archbishop and viceroy. Lizana
ratified Manuel Abad y Queipo’s decree of excommunicating the insurgent Hidalgo and his
followers during the Mexican war of independence.
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I.306n. Pedro José DE FONTE y Hernández Miravete (1777–1839) was archbishop of Mexico City
from 1815 to 1837, the last Spaniard to occupy that seat in the Mexican capital. His opposition to
the independence movements forced him to flee to Spain in 1821. When asked to return to his
office, de Fonte decided instead to retire from his position.
I.311. The career of Jacques PEUCHET (1758–1830) led from literature to medicine, medicine to
law, and from law to administration to the police. In 1799–1800, he published a five-volume
dictionary of commercial geography, the Géographie commerçante, which made Bonaparte
appoint him to the Council of Trade and the Arts. The best known of his many works, which
were mostly on economic subjects, is his topographical and statistical description of France,
Statistique élémentaire de la France, from 1805. For a time, he edited the Gazette de France and
even took over the royalist Mercure. A supporter of the French Revolution for only a short time,
Peuchet soon turned to the royalist party. At the restoration of the Bourbons, Peuchet was given
the post of keeper of archives in the Paris police prefecture, a position he held until 1827.
I.311. Born into a peasant family in Södermanland, Sweden, mathematician and astronomer
Henrik NICANDER (1744–1815) became famous for his work as a demographer who followed, in
this respect at least, in the footsteps of his mentor Pehr Wargentin. Nicander became
Wargentin’s astronomical assistant in 1776 at Uppsala University. After the latter’s death in
1783, it was assumed that Nicander would succeed him as secretary-general of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences. There was, however, a strong opposition to Nicander’s
candidacy in the Academy because of his weak scientific credentials. Finally, the difference was
split between Nicander and the other candidate, the physicist Johan Carl Wilcke (1732–96).
Wilcke became first secretary and took over most of Wargentin’s functions. Nicander became
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second secretary in charge of astronomical observations and almanac publishing. Nicander’s
research as an astronomer was fairly insignificant, and he turned to Swedish population statistics
instead, putting the Academy’s Tabellkomission (statistical commission) back on its feet.
I.313n. The English political economist and demographer Thomas MALTHUS (1766–1834), who
visited Norway, Sweden, and Russia in 1799, met Nicander in Stockholm and had the benefit of
a first look at his statistics before they were published. Malthus was able to use Nicander’s
unique work to demonstrate the correlation between mortality rates and good or bad harvests.
I.314. First a military officer and merchant, economist and architect Samuel BLODGET (1757–
1814) was one of the earliest USAmerican writers on political economy. He was among the
founders of the Union Bank and the Insurance Company of North America (both in 1792), the
latter of which underwrote merchants’ ships at sea, and the Bank of Columbia, the first private
bank in Washington, D.C. Designing an unapproved plan for the USAmerican Capitol and
appointed superintendent of buildings for the District of Columbia in 1793, he designed the Bank
of the United States in Philadelphia in 1795. Blodget’s first publication was Thoughts on the
Increasing Wealth and National Economy of the United States of America (1801). His main
work, Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States (1806), includes notes on
agriculture, commerce, banking, and a description of a project for a national university.
I.316. From 1801 to 1804, French physician and researcher Louis-René VILLERMÉ (1782–1863)
studied surgery with anatomy professor Guillaume Dupuytren in Paris. After serving in the
army for a decade, Villermé practiced as a physician until 1818 and later worked full time in
medical research. He also served as the secretary-general of the Société Médicale d’Emulation
(1818), was elected to the Académie de Médecine (1823), entered the Conseil de Salubrité de
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Paris (1831), and was elected to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1832). In
addition to cofounding the Annales d’Hygiène Publique et de Médecine Légale (Annals of public
hygiene and lawful medicine, 1829), he was the rapporteur for the Statistical Commission of the
Académie de Médecine. Commissioned by the Academy to research the impact of
industrialization on society in 1834, he produced the Tableau de l'état physique et moral dans
ouvriers employés dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et de soie (Tableau of the physical
and moral state of the workers employed in cotton, wool, and silk manufacturing, 1840) to
describe working conditions, lifestyle, and life expectancy. The Tableau led to the first child
labor laws in France. Pioneering the analysis of data to challenge medical hypotheses, Villermé’s
writings on mortality rates and prison conditions made him a forerunner of the field of social
epidemiology.
I.328. A former naval officer, Juan Antonio de RIAÑO y de la Bárcena (c. 1757–1810) was a
Spanish colonial administrator for the better part of a quarter of a century. He was mayor of
Valladolid de Michoacán and the first intendant of the province (1786–91), and he was appointed
intendant of Santa Fé de Guanajuato in mid-1791, a post he held for eighteen years. In
Guanajuato, Riaño also established a chair of French and Mathematics at the Royal College of
the Immaculate Conception (currently the University of Guanajuato). Riaño died during the
Mexican War of Independence in the Alhóndiga de Granaditas (Guanajuato, Mexico), a granary
built by his own orders.
I.329. Of Irish and Spanish descent, the brothers Mateo Lorenzo (b. 1777), Juan (b. 1767), and
Tomás MURPHY Porro (also Morfi, b. 1768) were among the most important merchants in the
port of Veracruz in the 1790s and early 1800s. They were the sons of Bárbara Porro Reynado of
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Gibraltar (b. 1738) and Juan Murphy y Eliot (b. 1748). Tomás and his older brother Juan came to
Veracruz in 1791 to work as apprentice merchants in the trading house of their uncle, Bernardo
Porro. In 1795, Tomás became a partner in the firm of Porro & Murphy. A year later, when both
Mateo and Tomás became members of the Veracruz merchant guild, Tomás formed another
partnership, this time with the London merchant William Duff Gordon (1772–1823). (Gordon &
Murphy exported mainly dyes and bullion to Spain.) Tomás Murphy’s manifold commercial
interests and the resulting flexibility served him well throughout his career, helping him build up
a network of trading partners in various European, Caribbean, and USAmerican ports. In
addition to profiting handsomely from the sugar boom (1800–04), Gordon & Murphy, which had
a number of subsidiaries, received so-called neutral shipping contracts from the Spanish Crown
during the Anglo-Spanish War and retained them even after Spain revoked most of these licenses
after 1799. Receiving these profitable permits was the result of Tomás’s excellent political
connections, notably with the Spanish Prime Minister Manuel Godoy. Tomás Murphy Porro
also served as an advisor to viceroy Revillagigedo and other colonial administrators.
I.329. Spanish military physician Francisco Javier de BALMIS Y BERENGUER (1753–1819) led the
Spanish smallpox vaccination expedition, also known as the Balmis Expedition (1803–06).
Trained in the Military Hospital of Alicante (1770–75), he was admitted to the military health
unit in 1778. An army surgeon in 1781, he practiced in New Spain before becoming physician to
Charles IV. In Spain, he envisioned, planned, and advocated for a global expedition to spread
the new smallpox vaccine in Spain’s oversees dominions. The health care mission sailed from La
Coruña (Spain) in 1803 on the María Pita. Balmis visited Puerto Rico, La Guaira, Havana, and
New Spain. In New Spain, the vaccine reached the Interior Provinces as far north as Texas. In
1805, Balmis traveled to Manila from Acapulco. After dispensing the vaccine in the Philippines,
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he left for Macao and Canton. Successful in introducing the vaccine beyond the Spanish Empire
into British-controlled territories in Asia, he arrived back in Spain in 1806. In addition to
translating into Spanish Jacques Louis Moreau de la Sarthe’s (1771–1826) Traité historique et
pratique de la vaccine (Historical and practical treatise on the vaccine, 1803), he published
Demostración de las eficaces virtudes nuevamente descubiertas en las raíces de dos plantas de
Nueva España (Demonstration of the effective benefits newly discovered in the roots of two
plants in New Spain, 1794).
I.331. Edward Anthony JENNER (1749–1823) was an English physician and scientist from
Berkeley, Gloucestershire, whose pioneering work in immunology led to the advancement of
vaccination as a medical practice. Jenner’s interest in developing a smallpox vaccine began when
he noticed that milkmaids were generally immune to the disease. Jenner hypothesized that the
milkmaids’ exposure to pus from cowpox (an illness similar to smallpox but much less virulent)
accounted for their immunity. He tested his hypothesis on May 14, 1796, by inoculating his
gardener’s eight-year-old son, James Phipps, in both arms with pus scraped from the cowpox
blisters on the hands of milkmaid Sarah Nelmes. Even after subsequent injections of variolous
material, Phipps failed to develop any signs of infection. Jenner successfully tested his
hypothesis on twenty-three cases before reporting his results to the Royal Society, which
eventually published his report. Previous to Jenner’s discovery, vaccination had been conducted
by using variolous material that carried much higher rates of risk and infection. Jenner’s
discovery revolutionized vaccination practices and many consider him the father of immunology.
I.331. José Hipólito UNANUÉ y Pavón (1755–1833) edited the Mercurio Peruano (1791–95) and
contributed to the Sociedad de Amantes del País (Patriotic society). A year after publishing
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Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima (1806), in which he discussed endemic, epidemic, and
sporadic diseases in relation to the region’s physical geography and natural history, Unanué was
named the colony’s chief medical officer. An intellectual during the transition period from the
colonial to the independence era, he acted as advisor to several viceroys; after independence, he
was appointed Peru’s first minister of finance. He became president of Peru in 1825.
I.332. Lawyer José Agustín Pardo de Figueroa y Acuña, MARQUIS OF VALLEUMBROSO (c. 1695–
1747), came from an affluent, aristocratic family of Lima. One of the most famous Limeños of
the eighteenth century, he began his studies at the Colegio de San Martin (1708) and was trained
in law at the University of San Marcos. After practicing law for a few years, he traveled to Spain
(1720), and then to New Spain with his great-uncle, the newly appointed viceroy Marquis de
Casa Fuerte. After five years, he returned to Spain where he traveled and met with European
scholars and intellectuals. In Spain, he supported the inclusion of two Spaniards in the French
Academy’s expedition to the then-province of Quito to determine the shape of the Earth. Writing
from Cuzco, where he held the office of governor of the province (1742–44), the Marquis
became a close correspondent and friend of La Condamine, with whom he shared a wealth of
information about exploring the Amazon. After his term as governor of Abancay (1735) and
Cuzco, Valleumbroso retired to a country estate.
I.333n. British physician RICHARD VINES (1585–1651) was an early explorer of northern New
England who became deputy governor of the Province of Maine. Humboldt (via Morse and
Parish’s Compendious History of New-England) refers here to Vines’s explorations in Maine
during 1616–17, when he had traded with the local Indians. After leaving the employ of Sir
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Ferdinand Gorges (1565–1647), Vines established himself in Barbados. By 1648, he owned two
cotton plantations. He also practiced medicine.
I.333. Jedidiah MORSE (1761–1826) was a USAmerican Congregational minister and
geographer, who authored the first textbook on American geography, Geography Made Easy
(1784). He had the encouragement of, among others, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison
(1751–1836). Morse published his first geographical dictionary, The American Gazetteer, in
1797. Noah Webster (1758–1843), who would later work on his own dictionary, had initially
offered his assistance but had to withdraw.
I.333. In 1804, Morse, together with Elijah PARISH (1762–1825), published the first edition of A
Compendious History of New England (1804), a history text of the colonial period. Parish, a
reverend of Byfield (Massachusetts), was also the coauthor, with Morse, of A New Gazetteer of
the Eastern Continent (1802).
I.334. Father TORIBIO was better known by the Nahuatl name MOTOLINIA (“the poor one”).
Toribio Paredes (also Toribio de Benavente, c. 1490–1569) was one of the legendary first twelve
Franciscan missionaries in New Spain. He arrived in Tenochtitlán in 1524. Having been asked to
write about the indigenous peoples’ beliefs system before the conquest, Motolinia studied and
documented their religions and customs along with the Franciscans’ missionary efforts from
1524 to 1540. The extant part of this work is known as Historia de los Indios de la Nueva
España (History of New Spain’s Indians), which he completed around 1541 (it was published in
1858). Based on oral accounts and pictorial codices, Motolinia’s Historia includes an
introductory letter about indigenous history and is divided into three treatises. In the introductory
letter, Motolinia mentions as his sources five different kinds of books—tonalamatls (from
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tonally, day, and amatl, book)—which indigenous peoples used to record history and beliefs.
These included the annals of history describing conquests, succession of rulers, and other
important events; the book of days and feasts; the book of dreams, illusions, superstitions, and
omens; the book of baptism and the naming of infants; and the book of marriage rites and
ceremonies. Other now lost writings by Motolinia, which go into more detail, were published as
Memoriales in 1903. Today, scholars believe that he had actually completed a larger work on
indigenous subjects, of which the Historia is merely an extract, and that the Memoriales are parts
of earlier drafts. The title of this longer work was supposedly De moribus indorum (Of the
customs of the Indians), Libro de los ritos, costumbres y conversión de los indios (Book of rites,
customs, and the conversion of the Indians), or Relación de las cosas, idolatrías, ritos y
ceremonias de la Nueva España (Account of the things, idolatries, rites, and ceremonies of New
Spain). In addition to his writings about the religious conquest, Motolinia also authored a now
lost account of the military overthrow. Famous is his letter to Charles V, dated January 2, 1555,
in which Motolinia attacks the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, bishop of Chiapas, and
supports Cortés. Before his death, Motolinia had traveled as far south as Nicaragua and
Guatemala.
I.334. Pánfilo de NARVÁEZ (1470–1528) was a Spanish conquistador and lieutenant under
Cuba’s first governor, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. His slave was called Estebanico (also
Mustafa Zemmori, 1500–1539); the Moor, as he was also known, he is supposed to be the first
African to reach American shores. With a special authorization by the Spanish King to found
new colonies and begin trade, Velázquez saw an opportunity to prevent his rival, Fernando
Cortés, from conquering the Mexican mainland; he sent out Pánfilo de Narváez to stop Cortés’s
expedition and arrest him. Together with the Spanish captain Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca,
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Narváez undertook, in 1528, an expedition through the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa Bay to
Galveston, which took a disastrous turn. After landing in Tampa Bay, Narváez had decided to
split up his troops of 400 men and eighty horses into two expeditions, one to sail north along the
western coast, the other to follow the same route on land. But the tropical jungles of the Florida
peninsula and the steady attacks by Apalachees obstructed the land route, and the two
expeditions never saw each other again. Two years and several shipwrecks later, few
expeditioners were still alive, among them Cabeza de Vaca, who continued his odyssey in search
of Spanish settlements along the Texan Coast and the Rio Grande toward the heartland of New
Spain until 1536. We know of these first European travelers to the west from Cabeza de Vacas’s
famous Naufrágios y Comentarios (Shipwrecks and comments). The most complete English
version is of this narrative is the three-volume Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His
Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Pautz (1999). For a
fictional treatment, see Laila Lalami’s novel The Moor’s Account (2014).
I.334. Born in Spain, Franciscan friar and historian Juan de TORQUEMADA (c. 1564–1624) moved
as a child to Mexico City, where he learned Nahuatl from the indigenous scholar and poet
Antonio Valeriano (1531–1605). After being named chronicler of the Franciscan order in 1609,
Torquemada completed Monarquía Indiana (Indian monarchy) in 1612 (it was published in
1615). This work, which portrays pre-Hispanic Mexico as an advanced civilization, is an
invaluable documentary source on preconquest and early colonial Mexico. For Torquemada,
New Spain succeeded the Mexica empire (founded in 1325, not 1521). Since many of the book’s
chapters are translations of the then-unpublished Historia eclesiástica indiana (Ecclesiastic
Indian history, 1596) by Gerónimo de Mendieta (c. 1528–1604), Torquemada has been
denounced as plagiarist. His work served as a basis for other historians, notably for Clavijero.
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Torquemada also wrote several other works, including Vida y Milagros del Santo Confesor de
Cristo Fray Sebastián de Aparicio (Life and miracles of the holy confessor of Christ, Friar
Sebastian de Aparicio, 1602).
I.334. Spanish politician Martín Enríquez de ALMANSA (also Almanza, c. 1510–c. 1583) was the
fourth viceroy of New Spain and the sixth viceroy of Peru. Upon his arrival in New Spain in
1568, Almanza assumed the role of peacemaker between the secular clergy and the Franciscan
order. His twelve-year viceregal rule in New Spain marked a period of political stability and
increased attention to the protection of the country’s silver highways. During his term, the
Inquisition was formally established (1571), the Jesuits arrived in New Spain (1572), and the
construction of the Cathedral of Mexico began (1573). Three years later, in 1576, an epidemic
afflicted thousands of people; especially vulnerable were the indigenous peoples. Almanza also
strove to uphold and enforce laws that protected New Spain’s population from the Huachichiles,
indigenous people whom the Spanish considered “barbaric.” These laws sought to pacify the
Huachichiles and the Chichimecs through violence and enslavement in what was known as the
guerra a fuego y a sangre (war by fire and blood). Part of these measures, for which Almanza
had the backing of leading intellectuals and theologians of his time, was the founding of the San
Felipe prison in Guanajuato. Almanza left New Spain when he was appointed viceroy of Peru
(1581–83).
I.334. Among many other things, the Philadelphia lawyer Richard RUSH (1780–1859) was
Minister to Britain and to France.
I.338. The MITA (from the Quechua word mit’a, turn or period of service) was an extensive
system of rotational forced labor used since preconquest times and in Peru and Bolivia until
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1825. The Hispanicized version of the mita was consolidated in 1573. It was a form of
repartimiento (as known in New Spain) that served to assign unskilled indigenous labor to
private colonial entrepreneurs, especially for mining and textile production. The system was
abolished by Simon Bolívar.
I. 343. Abraham Alfonse Albert GALLATIN (1761–1849) was a Swiss-American ethnologist,
linguist, politician, diplomat, congressman, and the longest-serving secretary of the USAmerican
treasury. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Gallatin immigrated to the United States in the 1780s. He
was politically active in opposition to the Federalist Party’s program. Though elected to the
USAmerican Senate in 1793, he was removed from office by a 14 to 12 party-line vote after
opponents protested that he had fewer than the required nine years of citizenship. In 1795,
Gallatin was elected to the House of Representatives and served in the fourth through sixth
Congresses, becoming House Majority Leader. He was an important leader of the new
Democratic-Republican Party, its chief spokesman on financial matters, and led the opposition to
many of the policy proposals of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804).
Gallatin’s services to his country were honored in 1805 when Meriwether Lewis named one of
the three headwaters of the Missouri River after him. Gallatin ultimately settled in New York,
where he founded New York University in 1831. Throughout his life, he had cultivated an
interest in the Native American cultures and languages of both North and South America.
Gallatin’s work in Native American studies has led many to call him the father of American
ethnology. After they met in 1804, he became a trusted friend and regular correspondent of
Humboldt’s.
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I.343. Pierre François PAGE (1764–1805) wrote about Saint-Domingue, where he had bought
plantations and various tracts of land in early 1790. In 1795, he appeared in court in Paris on
behalf of other colonists, who were accusing two individuals of having devastated the French
part of the island.
I.348n. An expert navigator and successful merchant, naval officer, and fur trader George DIXON
(1776–1791) sailed on Captain James Cook’s third voyage (1776–79), one of many attempts to
discover the Northwest Passage. The voyage must have fired in Dixon an interest in discovery.
In August 1784, he wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, the influential president of the Royal Society of
London, to suggest an overland expedition to cross North America via Quebec and the Great
Lakes, with himself as “astronomer.” After 1788, Dixon devoted himself to editing. He
published the compilation, A Voyage Round the World in 1789. See also Meares, John; Portlock,
Nathaniel; Martínez, José Esteban.
I. 349. German-born Georg HORN (or Hornius, 1620–1670) studied medicine and theology at
Nuremberg, and theology at Groningen and Leiden, Holland, where he attained a doctorate in
1648. His first teaching post was at the University of Harderwijk in Gelderland, where he held a
chair in history, politics, and geography. In 1652, he was appointed professor of history at the
University of Leiden. His writings focused on universal history, chronology, history of religion,
and historical geography. Having converted to Presbyterianism while living in England (1648–
50), he became one of the prominent seventeenth-century doubters of the Nestorian Stele, a
Chinese monument erected in 781 CE to document 150 years of history of early Christianity in
China, which he deemed a “Jesuit fraud.”
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I.349. A professor of Syriac at the Collège Royale in 1757, Joseph de GUIGNES (1721–1800)
later served as royal censor and keeper of antiquities at the Louvre. He was a fellow of the
London Royal Society and a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters in Paris.
Besides writing a history of the Huns—Histoire générale des Huns (1756)—de Guignes also
tried to prove that China had been a colony of Egypt.
I.349. After studying at several universities in Europe, Strasbourg-born jurist, diplomat,
historian, geographer, and economist Jean-Benoît (or Johann Benedict) SCHÉRER (also Scherer,
1741–1824) served as attaché in the French embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, and participated
in diplomatic missions in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Berlin. Known as a Russia specialist, he
was also a prolific translator. In 1788, he published one of the earliest works in western Europe
on Ukrainian history and geography. Humboldt refers here to Schérer’s Recherches historiques
et géographiques sur le Nouveau-monde (Historical and geographical research about the New
World) from 1777. In 1808, Schérer settled in Germany and taught French literature and Russian
history at the University of Tübingen.
I.350. The German theologian and philologist Johann Severin VATER (1771–1826) is best
remembered for the fact that he edited volumes 2–4 of Johann Christoph Adelung’s
Mithridates after Adelung’s death in 1806. Vater was on the theological faculty of the
universities in Halle, Jena, and Königsberg (Kaliningrad), where he also taught Oriental
languages. The Mithridates assembled samples from all languages that were then known,
organizing them geographically. Alexander’s brother Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835)
contributed to the fourth volume additions concerning the Basque language.
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I.350. In 1791, when the Botanical Expedition in New Granada headed by José Celestino Mutis
settled in Bogotá, Francisco Antonio ZEA (1770–1822) joined them as a scientific associate. Zea
worked under Mutis until 1795, when Zea’s name came up in a scandal and he was sent to prison
in Spain; he was eventually declared innocent. His involuntary journey to Europe proved
felicitous, giving him the opportunity to study chemistry in Paris. Until 1804, he served as
assistant director of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid. Zea also enjoyed a political career. In
1819, he became Simón Bolívar’s (1783–1830) vice president of the new Republic of Gran
Colombia, which comprised the Captaincy-general of Venezuela, the Kingdom of New Granada,
and the Audiencia of Quito. Shortly after Zea’s death in England, a publication titled Colombia
from Humboldt and Other Recent Authorities appeared in Spanish, according to Humboldt
written under Zea’s auspices. Its authors were Robert Madie Neele and Frank Howard.
I.353. The number of languages listed for the United States of Mexico today is 295. Of those,
288 are living languages and seven extinct.
I.358. Italian doctor Marcello MALPHIGI (1628–1694), who had studied philosophy and anatomy
at the University of Bologna, is known as the founder of comparative physiology. Late in life, he
became papal physician.
I.360. Editor of the Weimar-based Asiatisches Magazin (Asiatic journal), Julius Heinrich von
KLAPROTH (1783–1835) knew several Oriental languages and engaged in comparative linguistics
and philology. He was also interested in geography, ethnography, and Asian history. Klaproth
traveled to China in 1805–06 and 1806–07. In 1821, he became a foreign associate of the new
Asiatic Society in Paris, where he had resided since 1815. Humboldt’s association with Klaproth
dated back to the former’s frustrated plans to visit Asia in the 1810s.
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I.361n. Florentine merchant, navigator, and explorer Amerigo VESPUCCI (1451–1512) made
several transatlantic voyages to America. On his first documented voyage (1499–1500) under
Alonso de Ojeda (also Hojeda, c. 1470–c. 1515), Vespucci traveled to the coast of Venezuela
and was among the first Europeans known to have reached the mouth of the Amazon. During
another voyage (1501–02), he claims to have sailed to the “new” continent under the auspices of
King Manuel I of Portugal (1469–1521) and explored Brazil’s coast. During a third (possibly
fourth) voyage to the Americas (1503–04), under the Portuguese flag, Vespucci went as far as
Bahia (Brazil) and built a fort there before returning to Lisbon. Granted Spanish citizenship
(1505) and appointed chief navigator in Seville in 1508, he died there in 1522. Although
Vespucci’s travel journals have not survived, four of his letters are extant and have been
published and translated numerous times. Possibly the first European to realize that America was
a “new” continent, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller (Hylacomylus in Latin, 1470–
1518) named it after Vespucci in Cosmographiae introductio (1507).
I.361n. Martin DOBRIZHOFFER (1717–91) was an Austrian Roman Catholic missionary who lived
in Paraguay (1748–67), first among the Guaranis and then among the Abipones in the Gran
Chaco region (a plain extending from southern Bolivia through Paraguay to northern Argentina).
Returning to Europe upon the expulsion of the Jesuits from South America, he settled in Vienna
and gained the friendship of the Hapsburg ruler Maria Theresa (1717-1780). Having survived the
suppression of his order, he wrote the history of his mission.
I.362. Having entered the merchant marine in 1783, fur trader John MEARES (c. 1756–1809)
sailed from China to the northwest coast of America in 1786 and 1788. Stranded in Prince
William’s Sound on his first voyage, the unlicensed interloper Meares was aided and captured by
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captains Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, traders for the rival King George’s Sound
Company. By arrangement with the East India and South Sea companies, the King George’s
Sound Company claimed the monopoly of British trade between the Cape of Good Hope and
Cape Horn. Meares was released on the understanding that he would depart for Macao and not
return to the Pacific Northwest. He blithely disregarded that arrangement, sailing to Nootka
Sound under Portuguese flag in 1788. During the winter of 1788–89, Meares, while in Canton,
China, formed a partnership with the King George’s Sound Company. The representative Meares
selected for the new partnership, named the Associated Merchants Trading to the Northwest
Coast of America, was James Colnett who clashed with Esteban José Martínez whom Spain
had dispatched to Nootka Sound in early 1789 to protect Spanish claims to the area by
establishing a post. British rights to the trade at Nootka and in the Pacific were eventually
acknowledged in the Nootka Convention (1790). Pervasive interest in the maritime fur trade and
the coastline of the Pacific Northwest led Meares in 1790 to publish his Voyages made in the
years 1788 and 1789, from China to the North West Coast of America. This work magnified the
author’s accomplishments at the expense of others, notably Dixon, who called it a “pompous
publication” and retaliated immediately with a broadside on the veracity of Meares’s account in
his Remarks on the Voyages of John Meares. In Further remarks on the Voyages of John
Meares, published later that year after a feeble response from Meares, Charles Duncan joined
Dixon in a conclusive discrediting of the original claims.
I.366n. German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von SCHREBER (1739–1810) studied
medicine, natural sciences, and theology at the University of Halle. He later transferred to the
University of Uppsala to study with Carl von Linné (1707–87). In 1769–70, Schreber accepted
an appointment as professor of botany, natural history, economics, and politics at University of
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Erlangen and, in 1773, became director of the university’s botanical garden. In addition to his
scholarship, notably the volumes of Die Säugethiere (The mammals) that he began in 1774,
Schreber also started to translate the complete works of Linné into German. What added to the
importance of Die Säugethiere was that Schreber was the first to give scientific names to many
of the animals included. Unsurprisingly, he followed the classification system that Linné had
established in 1758. Schreber was a member of several Academies of Science: in London, Russia
(St. Petersburg), and Bavaria. See also Löfling, Pehr.
I.366n. In 1796, at age twenty-two, MARTIN SALMERÓN y Ojeda (1774–1813), the “giant,” was
presented to viceroy Branciforte. At the time, Salmerón weighed 270 pounds and stood to the
then prodigious height of seven to seven and a half feet. The viceroy approved the man’s request
to exhibit himself for money.
I.368n. Georges Baron de CUVIER (1769–1832) was the leading French zoologist and anatomist
of his time. Humboldt for a time endorsed his theories on global catastrophe, formulated as a
corrective to the concept of evolution, which Cuvier vehemently rejected, believing that species
remained unchanged once created. Cuvier’s bone comparisons made him one of the founders of
modern paleontology. As permanent secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, Cuvier was
essential to the Academy’s international reputation. After Cuvier’s death, François Arago was
appointed as his successor.
I.369. Franz Joseph GALL (1758–1828) was a medical doctor and brain researcher. He developed
a theory, later called phrenology, which identified the twenty-seven “organs” of the human brain.
Gall argued that these so-called organs and the faculties they represented, such as the “faculty of
sexual reproduction” or the “faculty of music,” shaped the exterior of the skull and could thus be
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examined by sight or touch of the head. Born in the German region of Baden, Gall lived and
worked in Vienna. The lectures on his “Schädellehre” (theory of the skull) and his extensive
collection of skulls made him a well-known personality in late eighteenth-century Vienna. In
1801, however, the Austrian emperor Franz II (1768–1835) prohibited Gall’s lectures and any
publications, as a result of which Gall left Vienna and went on a lecture tour through Europe
between 1805 and 1807. He became increasingly popular particularly in Germany, where
important intellectuals such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) supported his theory.
In 1807, Gall settled in Paris, where he published an extensive account of his theory On the
Functions of the Brain and of each of its Parts (1810–19). Even though today Gall’s idea that the
human personality can be deduced by studying the shape of a head is repudiated, Gall remains
important for his approach to the brain functions and for his identification of the grey and white
matter of the brain.
I.371. Alexis Claude CLAIRAUT (1713–1765) was a renowned French mathematician. Taught by
his father, he studied mathematics from an early age and delivered his first paper to the
Académie des Sciences in Paris at thirteen. His work on “double-curvature curves” was admitted
to the Académie in 1731. There, Clairaut joined a group of scientists, including Pierre-Louis
Maupertuis (1698–1759), who supported Isaac Newton’s (1643–1727) theory of gravitation,
which was regarded with skepticism in France at that time. Together with Maupertuis, Clairaut
studied under Johann Bernoulli (1667–1748) in 1734. From 1736–37, Clairaut accompanied
Maupertuis on an expedition to Lapland, where they measured a degree of longitude. These
measurements confirmed Newton’s hypothesis that the shape of the Earth is flattened at the
poles, thus contradicting Jacques Cassini (1677–1756). In his “Théorie de la figure de la Terre”
(Theory of the shape of the earth) from 1743, Clairaut mustered theoretical support for the
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experimental data he had gathered in Lapland. In subsequent writings, Clairaut engaged with
Newton’s theories more closely. Not only did he help the Marquise du Châtelet (1706–1749)
with the translation of Newton’s Principia, but he also wrote about the moon’s orbit in Newton’s
system. He also used the moon as an example for a three-body problem in celestial mechanics
(1752). Later, Clairaut transferred this problem to a larger scale and occupied himself with the
movement of comets by computing the orbit of Halley’s Comet. He was praised for predicting
the precise date of the appearance of this comet within a month: the comet appeared on March 13
instead of on the predicted April 15, 1759. Clairaut also wrote two textbooks, Élémens de
géométrie (Elements of geometry, 1741) and Élémens d’algèbre (Elements of algebra, 1746).
I.372n. AL-MA’MŪN, whose full name is Abū Al-‘abbās ‘abd Allāh Al-ma’mūn Ibn Ar-rashīd
(786–833), was a caliph during the ‘Abbāsid Dynasty (813–833), an Islamic dynasty that
founded Baghdad and ruled in Iraq between 749 and 1258. Al-Ma’mūn was a philosopher and
astronomer known for his efforts to end sectarian rivalries in Islam and impose a rationalist
Muslim creed. Al-Ma’mūn encouraged the translation of Greek philosophical and scientific
thought and imported unknown manuscripts from Byzantium. In 830, he founded a translation
academy and research center called Bayt al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, which
survived until the thirteenth century. Al-Ma’mūn also established observatories at which Muslim
scholars could verify astronomical knowledge handed down from antiquity.
I.373n. BOCHICA is the founder–hero in the mythology of the Chibcha (Muisca) peoples, one of
the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations in South America. Bochica, possibly also known
as Idacanzas, arrived from the east as a bearded man, instructed the Chibcha ancestors in moral
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laws and crafts, and disappeared in the west. See also Humboldt’s Views of the Cordilleras and
Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
I.374. See Diego Muñoz Camargo..
I.382. Mexican pharmacist of Spanish origin Vicente CERVANTES (1758–1829) had originally
been sent to New Spain as part of the Real Expedición Botánica (Royal botanical expedition) to
help inventory the country’s flora. He traveled to New Spain in 1787 to assist Martin de Sessé,
the expedition’s head, in founding the Botanical Garden of Mexico City, which opened in 1788.
Sessé was director of the botanical garden while Cervantes held the chair in botany. He later
succeeded Sessé. Cervantes’s work, like that of the entire botanical expedition, met initial
skepticism from Mexican scientists. A good example of developing tensions was the conflict
between Cervantes and José de Alzate y Ramírez about the introduction of the Linnean system
of classification to New Spain, which Alzate refused. They eventually put aside their
disagreements and collaborated. Cervantes also tried to disseminate other European ideas, for
instance, by translating Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie (Basic treatise on chemistry)
into Spanish. Cervantes’s achievements were many. In addition to being the first to describe
about 300 newly discovered plants, he published fifteen substantial works, among them the
Ensayo a la Materia médica vegetal de México (Essay on the medical properties of plants in
Mexico), as well as his contributions to Plantae Novae Hispaniae (Plants of New Spain) and
Flora Mexicana, both of which summarize the results of the botanical expedition. Cervantes, in
short, fostered what recent scholars, among them Antonio Lafuente and Leoncio López-Ocón,
have called “the vigor of scientific Creolization in New Spain.” See also Martín de Sessé y
Lacasta.
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I.384n. In 1755, Francis I (1708–1765), the founder of the Hapsburg Dynasty, dispatched the
Dutch physician, botanist, and chemist Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von JACQUIN (1727–1817) to
the West Indies to collect plants for the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. Four years later, Jacquin,
who had also visited Carthagena, returned with a substantial collection of animal, plant, and
mineral specimens. Among many other botanical works, all beautifully illustrated, Jacquin
published the Selectarum stirpium americanarum historia (Select history of American roots,
1763), a select catalogue of plants from the Americas classified according to Carl von Linné’s
(1707–87) system. In 1763, Jacquin was appointed professor of chemistry at the Mining
Academy in Schemnitz (Hungary, now Slovakia). In 1768, he returned to Vienna as professor of
botany and chemistry and director of the recently established botanical gardens of the University
of Vienna. Of course, he was also in charge of the Schönbrunn gardens. He flourished in his new
positions and proved a prolific writer on botany who was in regular contact with the most famous
botanists of his day.
I.386. MONTEZUMA II (c. 1466–1520), also known as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin or Montezuma
the Younger—alternate spellings are Motēuczōmah and Moctezuma—is the most widely
described and documented of all Mexica emperors. He was the last tlatoani (great speaker, by
extension king or great lord) of Tenochtitlán (1502–1520). The nephew of Ahuizotl (r. 1486–
1502), this eighth ruler of the Mexica Empire conquered various towns in Oaxaca and Tlaxcala
and suppressed rebellions inside the empire’s borders. Following Mexica political traditions of
announcing and establishing the terms of war before attacking, Montezuma welcomed and met
with Cortés in 1519. Once inside Tenochtitlán, Cortés promptly captured Montezuma, who died
shortly after under historically contested circumstances: Montezuma presumably fled first,
spreading smallpox and other infectious diseases among his people.
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I.389. Under rule of the reformist King CHARLES III of Spain (1716–1788, r. 1759–1788), the
Society of Jesus was expelled from Spain and its colonies in 1767. Charles III implemented a
series of laws and measures known as the Bourbon Reforms, which introduced more vertical
administrative structures and highly centralized government. Applied to Spain and the Spanish
dominions oversees, these reforms were intended to expand imperial rule and increase fiscal
revenues. Under Charles III, José de Gálvez y Gallardo became colonial inspector-general of
New Spain. Charles IV, his son, succeeded him. See also Rodríguez, Pedro, Count of
Campomanes.
I.390. José de GÁLVEZ y Gallardo, Marquis of Sonora (1720–1787), was the brother of and an
uncle to two viceroys of New Spain, Matías de Gálvez and Bernardo de Gálvez, respectively.
After graduating from the University of Salamanca, José Bernardo practiced law in Madrid and,
in 1764, began his civil service career as judge of the superior court of the capital. A year later,
he was appointed royal envoy to New Spain, a position he held for six years, until 1771. Shortly
thereafter, he was selected as honorary member of the Council of the Indies, of which he later
became governor. As inspector-general, he had implemented Charles III’s 1767 order to expel
all Jesuits from Spanish territory. Gálvez and Junípero Serra planned the creation of a chain of
missions in Upper California to secure the western coast against Russian encroachments. In
1776, Gálvez also proposed and implemented the formation of the Provincias Internas (Interior
Provinces) in New Spain: this immense, near-autonomous region included Texas, Coahuila,
Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, Sinaloa, Sonora, Alta California, and Baja California. From 1776
to 1787, Gálvez served as Minister of the Indies (or Colonial Secretary). During the first year in
this powerful position, he established a new viceroyalty with a capital in Buenos Aires, which
covered present-day Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. He also established the Royal
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Monopoly on Tobacco to increase Spain’s trade revenues. In 1786, Gálvez put the intendancy
system into effect in New Spain.
I.393n. In 1814, Novo–Spanish colonial administrator Joaquin MANIAU Y TORQUEMADA (d.
1820) advanced from general accountant to director-general in the accountancy office of the
Tobacco Monopoly. Because of his professional expertise, Maniau collaborated with Carlos de
Urrutia and Fabián de Fonseca (d. 1813) in compiling the Libro de la razón general de la Real
Hacienda en Nueva España (1793). A year later, Maniau wrote a summary of the Libro, the
Compendio de la Historia de la Real Hacienda de la Nueva España, which, however, was not
published until 1914. The representative for Veracruz to the Spanish Courts at Cádiz since 1810,
Maniau became vice president of the Courts in 1811 and president two years later.
Bilbao-born Diego María de GARDOQUI y Arriquibar (1735–1798) was the Spanish ambassador
to the USA from 1785 to 1795. During the USAmerican Revolutionary War, he had been a
financial intermediary between the two countries while his Basque family’s business helped
supply arms and other military supplies for the Americans. In 1786, Gardoqui and founding
father John Jay (1745–1829) drafted a trade agreement with Spain that would grant the USA
access to free navigation on the Mississippi, which Spain, then still in control of the Louisiana
Territory, had closed to American traffic two years earlier. Congress rejected the treaty.
I.395. French writer and botanist Jacques-Henri BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE (1737–1814) was
the author of Paul and Virginie (1787), a literary romance that was enormously popular in
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Humboldt’s day. In fact, Humboldt himself read it so many times that he had it virtually
memorized. He still took it with him on his American journey.
I.395n. Humboldt personally knew the Spanish clergyman ANTONIO DE SAN MIGUEL Iglesias y
de la Cajiga (1726–1804), the bishop of Michoacán from 1785 to 1804, and admired him.
Admitted to the monastery of Santa Catalina de Montecorbán in 1741, San Miguel entered the
Jeronymite Order in 1805 and became a teacher of arts and theology in schools in the Spanish
cities of Ávila, Sigüenza, and Salamanca. In 1768, he became Father-general of his Order and
royal envoy for Castile. In 1776, San Miguel was appointed to the Capitancy-general of
Guatemala as bishop of Comayagua. Taking Manuel Abad y Queipo with him, San Miguel
arrived in Valladolid on December 1784 to take office as the bishop of Michoacán. Not only is
San Miguel remembered for his confrontations with viceregal authorities over ecclesiastical
rights and privileges and for being an advocate for the abolition of caste distinctions and legal
inequality in New Spain. He was also responsible for the completion of the great aqueduct in the
city of Morelia.
I.398. Spanish jurist Juan de SOLÓRZANO Pereira (1575–1655), one of the most authoritative
commentators of the laws of the Indies, was a member of the Council of the Indies from 1629 to
1644. Born in Madrid, he studied law at the University of Salamanca (1589–99), where he also
taught even prior to receiving a doctorate in law in 1608. To better understand and organize the
laws of the Indies, he was appointed judge of the Audiencia of Lima, a position in which he
remained until 1628. During his time in Lima and as governor of Huancavelica (1616–18),
Solórzano completed the first volume of his major work, De Indiarum iure (About Indian law),
in which he recorded the legal status and condition of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in
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the early seventeenth century. Published in two volumes, De Indiarum iure was immensely
influential in Spanish legal thought about the Indies. In 1639, Solórzano began drafting an
updated, abridged Spanish edition of the two volumes of De Indiarum iure; it was published in
one volume as Política Indiana (Indian politics) in 1648. An illustrated edition of the complete
De Indiarum iure was published by Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela (d. 1739) as Política
Indiana (1736–39). Francisco María de Vallarna published other writings by Solórzano
posthumously in Obras Varias (6 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta, 1776–79).
I.398. Juan Pio Montúfar y FRASO, first Marquis of Selvalegre (alternate spelling Frasso, d.
1761), was the president of the Quito Audiencia from 1753 to 1761 and an honorary member of
the Council of the Indies. His son, Juan Pío Montúfar y Larrea (1758–1818), and his grandson,
Carlos Montúfar (1780–1816), fought during the war of independence. Carlos accompanied
Humboldt and Bonpland during their post-Peru travels.
I.405. Born José Gabriel CONDORCANQUI, Tupac Amaru II (c. 1742–1781) claimed to be a direct
descendant of the Inca of the Vilcabamba State Sayri Tupac (r. 1545–1560) and the last reigning
Inca Tupac Amaru I (d. 1572). The latter had led the resistence against the Spanish conquest in
the 1570s. Tupac Amaru II was himself the leader of a widespread Indian revolt in Upper Peru
from 1780 to 1783. Educated at the Jesuit School of San Francisco in Cuzco, Tupac Amaru II,
cacique (head) of three towns in the district of Tinta (Surimana, Pampamarca, and Tungasuca,
south of Cuzco), married the mestiza Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua (c. 1744–81) in 1760. His
wife would become his key confidante and an active coordinator of the revolt. Before the
rebellion, he had battled in the courts with Diego Felipe Betancur (d. 1778) over the title of
Marquis of Oropesa. Tupac Amaru II’s rebellion movement spread like wildfire through the
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Andes; it claimed close to 100,000 lives and nearly overthrew the Spanish invasion. Among the
co-conspirator were his relatives Diego Cristóbal (d. 1783) and Andrés Mendigure (d. c. 1784).
Six months into the rebellion, in 1781, Tupac Amaru II, Bastidas, and some of their associates
were executed in Cuzco. The rebellion continued until 1783 when the last conspirators were
captured and slain.
I.405. King of Spain (Felipe II, r. 1556–1598) and Portugal (Felipe I, r. 1580–1598), PHILLIP II
(1527–1598) inherited the Spanish kingdoms (including the Spanish Empire in the Americas and
the Philippines) from his father, Charles V. After marrying his cousin, Mary I of England
(1516–1558) in 1554, Phillip also held the kingdom of Naples and the dukedom of Milan. A
patron of the arts, he supported the Italian painter Titian (c. 1489–1576) and commissioned the
construction of the royal palace and the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
I.405. In 1572, Phillip II ordered the fifth viceroy of Peru, FRANCISCO DE TOLEDO (1515–1582),
to execute Tupac Amaru I (see above). Before being appointed viceroy (1568–1581), Toledo had
served the Spanish monarchy as a soldier to Phillip’s father. Toledo arrived in Lima in late 1569,
toured the viceroyalty for two years, and established the Inquisition in Peru a year later. See also
Tupac Amaru II.
I.406. Chief magistrate of the Andean province of Tinta in the viceroyalty of Peru, Antonio de
ARRIAGA (d. 1780) was known as an abusive Spanish colonial administrator. In November 1780,
he was captured, tried, and executed in Tungasuca (Peru) by Tupac Amaru II. His killing
marked the opening of the Tupac Amaru II Rebellion against the Spanish Empire. See also
Tupac Amaru II.
193
I.406–7. Humboldt describes the Tupac Amaru II Rebellion, the largest rebellion in Spanish
American colonial history that took place in the Andean region from 1780–83, in his Personal
Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the new Continent (vol. 3, p. 438 in the 1818
translation by Helen Maria Williams).
I.408n. While being detained in France during the Napoleonic Wars from 1802 to 1806, the
British orientalist Alexander HAMILTON (1762–1824) drew up a catalogue of Sanskrit
manuscripts at the Paris library. He was released thanks to the intervention of his colleague
Silvestre de Sacy. Hamilton became the first professor of Hindu literature and the history of
Asia at the future Haileybury College, founded in 1806 by the East India Company. Friedrich
Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weiheit der Indier (About the language and wisdom of the
[East] Indians, 1808) grew out of Schlegel’s studies with Hamilton. Hamilton is not to be
confused with his namesake, the USAmerican statesman Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804).
I.408. In addition to founding the École des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris (School of
Living Oriental Languages) in 1795, Louis Mathieu LANGLÈS (1763–1824) published numerous
editions of travel accounts to which he would add his own notes. Another one of Langlès’s
projects was a translation of Voyage d’Égypte et de Nubie (Voyage to Egypt and Nubia) by
Danish artist Frederik Ludvig Norden (1708–1742).
I.409. Ancient Greek poet HESIOD (fl. c. 700 BCE) is the principal source of the earliest recorded
phase of Greek ideas about the gods. His Theogony gives the fullest account of myths about their
origin. Although often mentioned in one breath with Homer, Hesiod lived in a very different
social and spiritual world.
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I.409. Spanish historian Francisco LÓPEZ DE GÓMARA (1511–1560) was Cortés’s secretary. With
his Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies), Gómara became one of the prominent
chroniclers of the New World. Gómara’s version of the Spanish conquests, especially his reports
on Cortés’s invasion of Mexico (1519–21) in his Historia de la conquista de México (History of
the Mexican conquest, 1522), was contradicted by Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia
verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain).
I.409. A Dominican missionary, Friar PEDRO DE LOS RÍOS (d. c. 1565) compiled the Codex
Vaticanus A, also known as Codex Ríos or Codex Vaticanus 3738. He also annotated and
purportedly supervised the assemblage of a related codex, the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, a term
Humboldt coined in honor of its first known owner, Charles-Maurice Le Tellier (1642–1710),
archbishop of Reims. Combining indigenous with European elements, these codices, which were
of particular importance to Humboldt in his Views of the Cordilleras, focus on Aztec religion,
ritual, mythology, history, and politics.
I.410n. A prolific writer on theological subjects, Alexandrian theologian ORIGENES Adamantius
(also Origen, c. 185–254) was head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria and one of the
Greek Fathers of the Christian Church. Many of his writings are either lost or survive only as
fragments. One of the two works that survived intact are De principiis (On First Principles) and
Contra Celsium (Against Celus, c. 249), Origines’s response to Greek philosopher Celsus’s
rancorous anti-Christian writings in The True Word (c. 177). Origenes is also known for an early
edition of the Old Testament, titled Hexapla (written between 233 and 244), of which only
fragments endure.
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I.410n. French scholar and scientist Charles François DUPUIS (1742–1809) authored the highly
influential and beautifully illustrated multivolume Origine de tous les cultes, ou Religión
universelle (The Origin of all Religious Worship, 1795). Dupuis’s Origine regarded the world’s
mythologies and religious traditions as varieties of an original cult of the sun that he traced back
to ancient Egypt. An abridged edition of this work, the Abrégé de l’origine de tous les cultes
(Abstract of the origin of all religions, 1797–98) made his comparative theory of past and present
religions more accessible. Trained at the Collègé d’Harcourt in Paris, Dupuis became professor
of Latin at the Collège Royale in Paris. Taught in astronomy by Lalande, he contributed to the
prestigious Journal des Savants and was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-
Lettres (1788). He is not to be confused with French engraver Charles Dupuis (1685–1742).
I.411n. The German classicist Johann Albert FABRICIUS (1668–1736) was best known for his
Bibliotheca Graeca (1705–28), which the German philologist Gottlieb Christoph Harless (or
Harles; 1738–1815) revised and continued between 1790 and 1812. This comprehensive
multivolume study covers Greek literature from pre-homeric times until the fall of
Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453.
I.413. Known as the “the father of modern ethnography,” BERNARDINO DE SAHAGÚN (c. 1499–
1590) is the author of valuable ethnographic and linguistic texts about the indigenous cultures of
the Valley of Mexico and adjacent territories at the time of the Spanish conquest. Sahagún
arrived in New Spain in 1529, only eight years after the initial conquest. He learned Nahuatl in
present-day Mexico City, where he taught the Indian nobility at the Imperial College of Santa
Cruz de Tlatelolco. In 1540, while living in the monastery of Huexotzinco (today’s Puebla), he
finished his first book in Nahuatl, Sermonario (Homilies). Around 1558, Sahagún was
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commissioned to write about the indigenous cultures of his day. For this assignment, he spent
several years interviewing informants from different social classes, gathering information about
their religious practices, history, customs, and knowledge of their surroundings. Between 1563
and 1568, he crafted the Historia universal (general) de las cosas de (la) Nueva España (General
universal history of the state of affairs in New Spain) written in three-column page format in
Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin. A partial edition was published between 1829 and 1830. In 1569,
Sahagún produced a now-lost copy of the Historia entirely in Nahuatl. There are only two
surviving copies of the Historia. The first one is a Spanish-only version known as the
Manuscrito de Tolosa (or Tolosano) which was reportedly at the Franciscan monastery of Tolosa
(Navarra, Spain) in 1732–33 and is now housed at the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid.
The second one is the Florentine Codex at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy.
The culmination of Sahagún’s efforts, the Florentine Codex consists of 1,210 leaves with about
1,846 color illustrations, assembled in 1564 under the title Colloquios y doctrina cristiana con
que los doze frayles de San Francisco embiados por el papa Adriano sesto y por el emperador
Carlos quinto convirtieron a los Indios de la Nueva España, en lengua mexicana y española
(Conversations and the Christian doctrine with which the twelve friars of San Francisco
dispatched by Pope Adrian VI and the Emperor Charles V converted the Indians of New Spain,
in the Mexican and the Spanish languages); it is housed in the Vatican. The Colloquios narrate
supposed dialogues between surviving Mexica priests and the first twelve Franciscans from
1524. While Sahagún was preparing a bilingual Spanish/Nahuatl version of his Historia, Philip
II of Spain ordered the Council of the Indies to inspect his work because of a 1577 ban on
anything written about the so-called superstitions of the Indios and their former way of life. As a
result, at least one manuscript of the Historia was sent to Spain. Around 1585, Sahagún prepared
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and revised his Kalendario mexicano, latino y castellano (Mexican, Latin, and Castilian
calendar) and the Arte adivinatoria (The art of divination), later copies of which can be found at
the Biblioteca Nacional de México.
I.414. A descendant of the Acolhua kings of Texcoco through his maternal grandmother, the
Novo–Spanish chronicler Fernando de Alva Cortés IXTLILXOCHITL (c. 1580–1650) held several
positions in the viceroyalty’s colonial administration, including that of judicial governor of
Texcoco (1612–13) and of Chalco Tlalmanalco (1616–21). He was also a translator (nahuatlato)
in the court system in Mexico City. The Codex Ixtlilxochitl, three unrelated parts of mixed
Spanish and pictorial text, is named after him. Ixtlilxochitl’s Relaciones (Reports) and his
Historia de la Nación Chichimeca (History of the Chichimec people), his last and most extensive
work on what is now known as the Codex Xolotl—Ixtlilxochitl calls it La crónica de los reyes
chichimecas (The chronicle of the Chichimex kings)—remained unpublished until the nineteenth
century. Writing in Spanish, Ixtlilxochitl used indigenous pictorial manuscripts, hieroglyphic
texts, and Nahua oral traditions as his main sources of information. In transcribing primary
sources and providing detailed explanations and commentaries, which contemporary
anthropologists have shown to be substantially accurate, he preserved for posterity materials that
were believed lost and might have become unintelligible otherwise. Historia ends abruptly in
mid-sentence in a section that deals with the conquest through the first phase of the final siege of
Tenochtitlán. Preserved in the Mexican Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the
Codex Xolotl, a historical and genealogical manuscript from the sixteenth century, details the
history in the Valley of Mexico from the arrival of the Chichimecs of Xolotl from around 1224
through the Tepanec War of 1427.
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I.423. The influential SOCIEDAD ECONÓMICA DE AMIGOS DEL PAÍS (Economic Society of the
Friends of the Country) was founded in Havana in 1793, when the governor, Luis de las Casas,
approved a petition from twenty-seven prominent Cubans. Foremost among them was the planter
Francisco de Arango y Parreño (1765–1837), whom Humboldt met in Cuba. Later on, this
society was also known as the Sociedad Patriótica de Amigos del País, which is why Humboldt
often refers to it as the Patriotic Society.
I.424. I.424. Bernardo Vicente Apolinar de Gálvez Gallardo y Ortega, COUNT OF GÁLVEZ (1746–
1786) was the eldest son of Martías de Gálvez y Gallardo, viceroy of New Spain from 1783–
1784. The younger Gálvez arrived in New Spain in 1765, the same year his uncle, José de
Gálvez y Gallardo, was appointed inspector-general of New Spain. After serving as commander
of Nueva Vizcaya, he returned to Spain with his uncle in 1771. In Europe, Gálvez trained at the
Miliary Academy in Ávila and was promoted to colonel. In 1776, he was appointed interim
military governor of Louisiana, an office he held until 1783. A year later, Gálvez became
captain-general of Cuba; shortly thereafter, he succeeded his father as viceroy of New Spain and
served in this capacity until November 1786. In addition to reconstructing the then-unoccupied
Chapultepec Castle, Gálvez supported the natural science in New Spain, for instance, by
sponsoring the expedition of Martín Sessé y Lacasta.
I.425. In 1796, Valencian architect and sculptor Manuel TOLSÁ (1757–1816) constructed the
famous equestrian statue of Charles IV known as El Caballito. He did so under contract for
Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca de Carini y Branciforte, then-viceroy of New Spain. Since
1791, Tolsá had been director of sculpting at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, where
he made important architectural contributions to the Cathedral and the Royal School of Mines,
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also known as the Palace of Mines. The statue of the ruler, to which Humboldt alludes here,
features a neoclassical style, giving the Spanish King, who was often characterized as politically
weak, the aspect of a regal commander. In 1803, the completed sculpture was transported to the
Plaza Mayor in Humboldt’s presence. It remained in its original location until 1822, when it was
removed due to post-revolutionary grudges against Spanish colonialism and its effigies.
Subsequently stored on the patio of the city’s university, El Caballito was not returned to a
public space until 1852, when President Mariano Arista (1802–1855) came to power. It can still
be admired today in front of the National Museum of Arts in Mexico City.
I.426. As King of Spain from 1788 to 1808), CHARLES IV (1748–1819) had approved an all-
access royal passport for Humboldt and Bonpland’s visit to Spanish territories in the Americas.
Humboldt had managed to obtain this document during his stay in Spain in 1799 with the help of
the influential secretary of state, Mariano Luis de Urquijo (1768–1817). It was only because of
this highly unusual royal permission that the Prussian scientist was able to travel and work
without any restraints during his entire stay in the Spanish colonies. He could use all of his
scientific instruments, could board any Spanish ship, and had full access to the colonial archives.
Humboldt dedicated this Political Essay to Charles IV with a note of devotion and a personal
letter not entirely bereft of irony (see the initial pages of this book). He wrote to Thomas
Jefferson that he had done so as a way of softening the attitude of the Spanish Crown toward
certain individuals in New Spain, who had given Humboldt more information than the Court
might have liked. Because of the Napoleonic upheavals in Europe, Charles IV was forced to
abdicate power to his oldest surviving son Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) on March 18, 1808. The
latter was forced to do the same for Napoleon’s brother, Joseph-Napoleon Bonaparte (1768–
1844) as José I of Spain (r. 1808–13), only six weeks later. In this context, the dedication to
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Charles IV becomes even more significant. It can be understood as a sign of solidarity and
gratitude toward the former Spanish King, which was also a way of refusing to pay a tribute to
the new French rulers.
I.426. Spanish botanists Hipólito RUIZ López (1754–1816) and José Antonio PAVÓN y Jiménez
(1754–1840) led a botanical expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru and Chile from 1777 to 1788.
The team also included Juan Tafalla (1755–1811), French physician Joseph Dombey (1742–
96), and illustrators José Brunete (1746–1787) and Isidro Gálvez (1754–1829). After their return
to Spain with thousands of herbarium sheets and an extensive collection, Ruiz and Pavón
published Flora peruvianae et chilensis prodromus (Preliminary work on Peruvian and Chilean
plants, 1794). After Ruiz’s death, Pavón continued his work but later sold specimens of the
collection to supplement his official wage. The archive of the Real Jadrín Botánico in Madrid
holds several boxes of documentation generated during the botanical expedition, including about
2,245 botanical drawings, twenty-four zoological drawings, 300 calcographic plates, and
numerous engravings. Another part of the results of the expedition, about 400 sheets, are housed
at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona (Spain).
I.426. The botanist José Celestino MUTIS y Bosio (1732–1808) headed the royal botanical
expedition in the New Kingdom of Granada (that is, the modern countries of Colombia, Panama,
Venezuela, and Ecuador) in 1782. Mutis catalogued new plants, built an astronomical
observatory, trained painters and young natural philosophers, and supported the development of
agriculture, commerce, and culture in the viceroyalty. Humboldt exchanged botanical
information with Mutis when he and Bonpland stayed at Mutis’s house in Bogotá from July to
September 1801.
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I.426. The Spanish physician and naturalist Martín de SESSÉ y Lacasta (1751–1808) was the
head of a major botanical expedition across New Spain in 1787, and he founded the Botanical
Garden in Mexico City in 1788. The expedition, which Sessé undertook together with Cervantes
and the Creole botanist José Mariano Moziño, lasted until 1803 and resulted in several major
publications, among them Plantae Novae Hispaniae (Plants of New Spain, 1887–90) and Flora
Mexicana (1885).
I.426. The Novo–Spanish botanist and naturalist José Mariano MOZIÑO (also Mosiño, Muciño,
or Mociño, 1757–1820) was a member of the royal botanical expedition of New Spain. Having
been trained in medicine, theology, and botany at the University of Mexico, the Royal Academy
of San Carlos, and the Royal Botanical Garden in Mexico City, Moziño traveled to Nootka
Sound (Vancouver Island) in 1792 as part of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra’s
Expedición de Límites al Norte de California (Expedition to the northern borders of California).
The expedition was designed to settle the territorial dispute between England and Spain over
Nootka. A result of a five-month residence at Nootka Sound (from April to September 1792),
Moziño produced a comprehensive ethnographic and historical report of the Pacific Northwest
Coast. Noticias de Nutka (News from Nootka, 1803–04) discusses in detail almost every aspect
of the daily life of the people of Nootka at the time of their initial contact with Europeans. In
addition to a catalogue of plants and animals classified according to the Linnaean system with
drawings by Atanasio Echeverría, the report includes a Nootkan–Spanish dictionary. Written in
Spanish around 1793 and published in the twentieth century as Noticias de Nutka (News from
Nootka), the report is a guide to the history and culture of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples (formerly
called Nootka) who still occupy their traditional lands on Vancouver Island’s northwestern
shore. Until he left for Madrid with Sessé in 1803, Moziño worked for the royal scientific
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expedition in Mexico, Guatemala, and the West Indies. Under French rule in Spain, Moziño was
appointed director of the Royal Museum of Natural History and professor of zoology at the
Royal Academy of Medicine, appointments that later created political problems for him. In 1812,
he was arrested as a traitor to Spain and had to flee to France with the drawings of the botanical
expedition. The illustrations (1,800 of 2,000 of which are of botanical subjects) are now at The
Torner Collection of Sessé and Moziño biological illustrations at the Hunt Institute for Botanical
Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University. Moziño returned to Spain in 1817. Under the pen
name José Velázquez de Vice Cotis, he was also a regular contributor to Gazetas de literatura.
I.427. Atanasio ECHEVERRÍA y Godoy (d. c. 1811) was the resident artist of the Expedición de
Límites al Norte de California (Expedition of the northern borders of California). Together with
Moziño and Maldonado, they were chosen to join Bodega y Quadra’s expedition to collect,
classify, and reproduce pictorially all new plant species they encountered. Echeverría was
responsible for the botanical, scenic, and zoological plates that would accompany Moziño’s
descriptions. After the expedition, Echeverría arrived in Mexico City in 1793 and prepared the
manuscript report with Moziño. Echeverría and Moziño also worked together later in 1793,
investigating the active volcano of San Andrés de Tuxtla. From Mexico City, Echeverría moved
to Cuba, then, in 1802 to Spain. Although appointed second director of painting at the Royal
Academy of San Carlos in Mexico, he never returned to Mexico. During the French invasion of
Spain, he was forced to flee from Madrid to Seville in 1808. The genus Echeverria is named after
him.
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I.427n. Humboldt and Guillaume (or Guillermo) DUPAIX (1750–1819) met in the Mexican
capital, where the Prussian saw Dupaix’s private collection of Mexica sculptures from which the
“Aztec priestess” Views of the Cordilleras (Plates I and II) is taken. Dupaix—whom Humboldt
often calls Dupé—was a former French naval captain of Flemish descent and a collector of
Mexican antiquities. Having lived in New Spain for most of his life, Dupaix was sent by the
Spanish king Charles IV on three archeological expeditions (in 1805, 1806, and 1807) in search
of relics of pre-Columbian art. Novo–Spanish illustrator José Luciano Castañeda (1774–c. 1840)
accompanied Dupaix, whose observations about Xochicalco, Monte Albán, Mitla, and Palenque
were among the first European efforts to distinguish the various architectural and art styles of
ancient Middle America. A letter from Humboldt to the Louisiana collector François Latour-
Allard (fl. 1827) from July 28, 1826, attested to the accuracy of Castañeda’s drawings, some 177
sketches and paintings, which Latour-Allard sold in England and France. Castañeda’s drawings
and Dupaix’s travel account resulted in a voluminous manuscript that remained unpublished until
it was incorporated into the highly acclaimed Antiquities of Mexico, edited by Edward King,
Lord Kingsborough (1795–1837) in 1831. In 1834, years after Dupaix’s death in 1819, it was
released in Paris as Antiquités mexicaines. Humboldt’s comments, alongside other favorable
reviews of Dupaix’s travelogue, created enormous interest in the Mexica among French
archeologists.
I.428. In 1765, Abraham Gottlob WERNER (1750–1817) was mining inspector and instructor at
the Freiberg School of Mines in the German state of Saxony, where he taught the study of rocks
and minerals and geognosy. Werner’s students, among them Fausto Elhuyar, Andrés del Río,
and Humboldt himself, cherished their teacher even as they set about refuting his theories about
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the Earth’s formation. The Freiberg School of Mines still exists today as the Technische
Universität Bergakademie Freiberg (Freiberg University of Mining and Technology).
I.428. For the scientific instruments of Ramsden, Adams, Lenoir, and Berthoud, see annotations
for I.14 and I.89.
I.428. Together with Claude Berthollet, Antoine-Francois de Fourcroy (1755–1809), and Louis-
Bernard Guyton de Morveau (1737–1816), the French chemist, economist, and lawyer Antoine-
Laurent de LAVOISIER (1743–94) spearheaded a revolution in chemistry between 1785 and 1789.
The four centerpieces of this revolution were the collaborative Methode de nomenclature
chimique (Method of chemical nomenclature, 1787), Fourcroy’s Élémens d’histoire naturelle et
de chimie (Elements of natural history and of chemistry, 1788), Lavoisier’s own Traité
élémentaire de chimie (Elementary treatise on chemistry, 1789), and the journal Annales de
chimie (1789). (Humboldt appears to conflate the titles of Lavoisier’s and Fourcroy’s books.)
Educated at the Collège Mazarin, where he also studied with Lacaille, Lavoisier investigated the
composition of water and air, determining that the components of water were oxygen and
hydrogen, and that air was a mixture of gases, mainly oxygen and nitrogen. Lavoisier’s theory of
oxygen enabled him to disprove Georg Ernst Stahl’s (1659–1734) phlogiston theory by
experiment (see also D’Arcet, Jean, and Kirwan, Richard). In his Traité elementaire, considered
the first modern chemistry textbook, Lavoisier presented an integrated view of new theories of
chemistry, clarifying the concept of an element as a substance and presenting his theory of the
formation of chemical compounds. Many leading chemists of the time, including Joseph
Priestley (1733–1804), refused to accept Lavoisier’s new ideas. Still, the Traité élémentaire was
sufficiently in demand in England to warrant speedy translation. Branded a traitor for having
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been a tax collector and having interceded on behalf of foreign-born scientists to help them retain
their freedom and their possessions, Lavoisier was tried and guillotined during the Reign of
Terror.
I.432. Spanish naval officer Salvador de MEDINA (d. 1769) traveled to New Spain as a
representative of Spain to observe the transit of Venus across the sun at Baja California in 1769.
A graduate of the Naval Academy at Cádiz, he was promoted from senior lieutenant to
commander for his work as part of the scientific expedition. He is not to be confused with his
namesake, Salvador de Medina, governor of Malvinas Islands from 1779 to 1781.
I.435n. Pedro Romero de Terreros (1710–1781), the first COUNT OF REGLA and one of the
wealthiest men in New Spain, owned the amalgamation factory at Regla. The factory was a mine
with sufficient water for refining silver ore. Privately owned for several generations, the count’s
mines became the property of the Mexican government in 1948. His son, José María Romero de
Terreros (1766–1815), was awarded the title of MARQUIS DE SAN CRISTOBAL in 1777. Having
begun his studies at the Real Seminario de Nobles in Madrid, the younger Terreros graduated
from the school of medicine of the University of Paris. He returned to New Spain just after his
father’s death in 1781. A member of the Société de Medicine Clinique de Paris, he published a
dissertation both in the Journal de Physique (vol. 60, 1805, pp. 205–14) and as a book: De
l'action des différentes préparations d’opium sur des animaux vivants (The action of different
preparations of opium on live a animals, 1804).
I.437. In 1529, Cortés was granted the title of Marqués del Valle de Oaxaca with over 23,000
tributaries. Cortés’s descendants married the DUKES OF MONTELEONE from Italy, who inherited
what remained of Cortés’s estate. The seventh marquis del Valle de Oaxaca, Juana de Aragón
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Carrillo de Mendoza y Cortés (d. 1653), married the fifth Duke of Monteleone; their son, Andrés
Fabricio Pignatelli de Aragón Carillo de Mendoza y Cortés (d. 1691), was the eighth marquis del
Valle de Oaxaca. The twelfth and thirteenth marquis del Valle de Oaxaca (also Dukes of
Monteleone) were Héctor María Pignatelli de Aragón (1742–1800) and Diego María Pignatelli
de Aragón (d. 1818). The marquisate del Valle de Oaxaca originally included the alcaldías
mayores (mayoralties) of Charo Matlatzinco, Coyoacan, Cuatro Villas de Oaxaca, Cuernavaca,
Cotaxtla, Tehuantepec (until 1563), Toluca, and Tuxtla. Some of the Duke of Monteleone’s
properties remained in the family until 1839, when José Pignatelli de Aragón (d. 1859) was the
fourteenth marquis del Valle de Oaxaca.
I.445. The REVOLUTION in the French colony of SAINT-DOMINGUE (1791–1804), the only
successful slave rebellion in history, created the second independent state in the Americas and
the first Black republic in the world. The catalyst for this revolution is believed to have been a
vodun service performed at Bois Caïman by the Jamaican Dutty (Zamba) Boukman (d. 1791) in
August 1791. Within a few weeks, at least 100,000 slaves joined the revolt, and the violence
escalated. Over the next few years, about 100,000 blacks and 24,000 whites were killed, and
most sugar plantations were destroyed. In 1801, Toussaint L’Ouverture (c. 1743–1803), a self-
educated domestic slave who had emerged as a major revolutionary leader, issued a constitution
for an independent country with himself as perpetual head. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)
retaliated by sending troops, and, in 1802, Toussaint was betrayed into surrendering. He was
shipped off to France as a prisoner and died in the Jura Mountains. After only a few months of
Napoleonic rule in Saint-Domingue, Jean-Jacques Dessalines (c. 1758–1806), a former ally of
Toussaint’s, initiated a rebellion that would lead to the defeat of the French troops in 1803. On
January 1, 1804, Dessalines formally declared the sovereignty of the state he called “Haiti,” after
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its Arawak name. France recognized Haiti in 1825, the United States not until 1862. The Haitian
Revolution (as we now know it) had probably even more of an impact on Cuba than had the
USAmerican Revolution. Since Saint-Domingue was ruined economically by the early 1790s,
the demand for Cuban sugar soared, as did Cuba’s demand for slaves. The revolution also
instilled profound anxieties and lasting fears about the possibility of another large-scale slave
insurrection in Cuba, known as the “Africanization of Cuba” scare. There were indeed several
slave conspiracies in Cuba that followed in the wake of the Saint-Domingue Revolution, among
them the conspiracy by José Antonio Aponte (c. 1760–1812) in 1812 and the conspiracy of La
Escalera (The Ladder) in 1844. Both were defeated.
I.445n. Robert NORRIS (d. 1791) was a British trader in West Africa from the 1750s to the 1780s.
He represented the Liverpool slave traders before governmental investigative committees that
were set up in the 1780s. In 1789, he published Memoirs of the reign of Bossa Ahádee, King of
Dahomy an inland country of Guiney, to which Humboldt seems to refer here without naming
the book. Humboldt often uses this strategy of omission when he culls the work of pro-slavery
authors for statistics and other information; a case in point is William Beckford. By defending
the slave trade in his Memoirs, Norris prevented heavy regulation of the slave trade in the early
1790s.
I.452. In Mexican vernacular, chino does not mean Chinese but refers to persons with wooly or
tightly curled hair.
I.458. Except for his enduring work about population statistics in France, the Tableau de la
population from 1789, little appears to be known about the life of journalist and counter-
revolutionary Jean-Christophe Sandrier de Mitry, CHEVALIER DES POMMELLES (b. 1776). A
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lieutenant-colonel of the 5th staff regiment (1788) and colonel of the regiment of the Royal
Grenadiers de l'Orléanais (1790), Mitry was a member of the L'Agence Royaliste de Paris, a
secret organization also known as the Alliance royaliste (Royalist alliance) and the Comité de
Paris (Paris Committee).
I.465. Humboldt’s PRINCE OF TALLEYRAND is the French statesman Charles-Maurice de
Talleyrand-Périgord, first Prince of Bénévent (1754–1838), who is widely known as an
opportunistic and unscrupulous politician. His Essai sur les avantages à retirer de colonies
nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes (Essay about the advantages of withdrawing from the
new colonies under the present circumstances, 1798), which expounds the benefits on judicious
colonization, was written when he was minister of foreign affairs in France.
Volume 2
II.2. British poet, playwright, and historian John PINKERTON (1758–1826) compiled and
published Modern Geography (1802), a book that was well received and translated into French
and Italian. Pinkerton also edited A General Collection of the best and most interesting Voyages
and Travels (1808–14) and A Modern Atlas (1815). Trained as a lawyer, he moved to London in
1781 and began publishing poetry. Under the pseudonym Robert Heron, he published a
collection of literary essays titled Letters of Literature (1785), which earned him a reputation for
eccentricity and arrogance. His most significant contribution to Scottish literary scholarship was
Ancient Scottish Poems (1786). Under the pseudonym H. Bennet, he also issued a collection of
aphorisms as The Treasury of Wit in the same year. Pinkerton’s list of publications also included
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historical works, among them the controversial A Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the
Scythians or Goths (1787), in which he argued for the congenital inferiority of the Celtic people,
and An Enquiry into the History of Scotland (1789).
II.2. Born in Quito, military officer Antonio de ALCEDO y Bexarano (also Bejarano, 1735–1812)
was one of the first to prepare a complete encyclopedia of the Spanish possessions in the
Americas. After living in Panama (1742–50) and Madrid (1752), he entered the Royal Spanish
Guards and was trained in language and history at the Colegio Imperial de Madrid. Alcedo held
the rank of field marshal by 1800 and became the governor of La Coruña (Spain) in 1802. He
was elected a member of the Royal Academy of History in 1787. After two decades of work, he
published Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales o América (The
geographical and historical Dictionary of America and the West Indies, 1786–89). In addition,
Alcedo prepared a compilation of authors in 1791 (revised in 1807), which remained in
manuscript form until published with an introduction in Ecuador in the 1960s. In 1812, Alcedo
also wrote a “Memoria sobre el mejor medio de continuación de las Décadas de la Historia de las
Indias Occidentales,” of which Humboldt may well have been aware.
II.2n. French government agent at Caracas François Raymond Joseph DE PONS (1751–1812)
traveled the Tierra Firme region of South America between 1801 and 1804. He published his
travel narrative as Voyage à la partie orientale de la terre-ferme (A Voyage to the Eastern Part
of Terra Firma, or the Spanish Main, in South-America) in 1806. English translations by
Washington Irving (1753–89) and others appeared shortly after, and the Voyage was reviewed
widely in Europe.
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II.11. Joseph Louis PROUST (1754–1826), a French chemist who held professorships in different
places in Spain but early and late in his career, worked—in the family tradition—as a pharmacist
in France. An analytical chemist, Proust is best known for his law of definite proportions. He
was exclusively concerned with inorganic binary compounds, such as metallic oxides, sulfides,
and sulfates.
II.14. Spanish field marshal Nemesio SALCEDO y Salcedo (1754–c. 1814) was commander-
general of the Interior Provinces of New Spain from 1802 to 1813 and Pedro de Nava’s
successor. Salcedo’s jurisdiction included Sonora, Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, and Texas.
Although the Provincias Internas were divided in Western and Eastern Provinces in 1804,
Salcedo remained commander-general and was independent of the viceregal administration in
Mexico City until 1813. During his term in the Interior Provinces, he arrested Zebulon
Montgomery Pike who was on an expedition to determine the extent of the Louisiana Territory
and forced him to return to the USA. Salcedo went back to Spain in 1814. His report of the state
of the Interior Provinces in 1813 was published by Isidro Vizcaya Canales as Instrucción
reservada in 1990. Salcedo’s nephew, Manuel María de Salcedo (1776–1813), was the last
Spanish governor of Texas.
II.14. Spanish military officer Pedro GRIMAREST was appointed commander-general of the
eastern part of the Internal Provinces of New Spain in 1804. His jurisdiction included Coahuila,
Nuevo Reino de León, Nuevo Santander, Texas, and Bolsón de Mapimí. Planning to arrive to
Texas in August 1805 to bolster Spanish settlement and make San Antonio (Texas) his
headquarters, Grimarest had still not taken office in September 1805. Since Grimarest and his
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troops remained in Spain and he never assumed the commandancy, Salcedo remained in charge
of both the western and eastern Provincias Internas.
II.37n. A friend and collaborator of Georges Cuvier, André Marie Constant DUMÉRIL (1774–
1860) divided his career between medicine, especially anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and
zoology. After editing the five volumes of Cuvier’s Leçons d'anatomie comparée (Lessons in
comparative anatomy, 1800–05), Duméril, who had been a professor of anatomy at the Muséum
National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris since 1801, began to fill in for Lacépède who held the
chair of herpetology and ichthyology. Duméril succeeded Lacépède in 1825. A year later,
Duméril published his influential Zoologie analytique, in which he rejected as inapplicable to
zoology the botanical precept of Carl von Linné (1707–87) and Fabricius, which assumed that
the character of classes, orders, and genera could be drawn from one and the same part of an
organism. Instead, Duméril held that studying all the parts of an organism affected its
classification; this included observations of animal behavior. In 1834, he began to publish
L’Erpétologie générale, ou Histoire naturelle complète des reptiles (General herpetology, or
complete natural history of reptiles, 1834–54), the first comprehensive and systematic work on
reptiles and amphibians in which he described almost 1,400 species in great anatomical and
physiological detail. Duméril’s was the largest herpetological collection of his time. Together
with his son, and later collaborator, Auguste Duméril (1812–1870), he created the first vivarium
for reptiles of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris’ Botanical Garden. His son succeeded him at the
museum in 1857.
II.38 In his famous ten-volume Periegesis of Greece, the Greek geographer and historian
PAUSANIAS (second century) described the period when Greece had fallen peacefully to the
Roman Empire. While fragments from this period abound, Pausanias’s Periegesis is the only
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fully preserved text of travel writing from this time. It has served scholars as a crucial link
between classical literature and modern archaeology.
II.39. Humboldt frequently refers to the writings of Greek geographer and historian STRABO (c.
64 BCE–c. 23). Strabo’s Geography is the only surviving work to discuss the peoples and
countries known to the Greeks and Romans at his time. It was first published in a Latin
translation in Rome around 1469.
II.39. The temple or Tower of JUPITER BELUS in the Sumerian city of Etemenanki is believed to
belong to the Akkadian god Bel, whom Herodotus Hellenized to Zeus Belus. In 440 BCE,
Herodotus described the sacred area as consisting of a “square enclosure two furlongs [402 m]
each way, with gates of solid brass . . . In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid
masonry, a furlong [201 m] in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on
that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds
round all the towers” (Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, vol. 1, book 1).
II.39n. While visiting his brother Wilhelm in Rome in March 1805, Humboldt met and grew
acquainted with the Danish archeologist and consul-general Johann Georg ZOËGA (1755–1809),
who introduced him to the city’s archeological collections. His works on Roman bas-relief and
sculptures made Zoëga one of the founding fathers of European archeology.
II.40. Pedro Sarmiento de GAMBOA (c. 1532–1608), author of Historia Indica (Indian history,
1572), reported that Tupac Yupanqui (r. 1471–1493) had sailed from the Ecuadorian coast to
Avachumbi (Fire Island) and Ninachumbi (outer island) with 20,000 soldiers in balsa-rafts.
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II.45. Both the French encyclopédie and the dictionnaire best represented the idea that all
knowledge could be contained between the covers of several volumes of a book—a notion of
natural history that Humboldt resisted. The fifteen volumes of the Dictionnaire raisonné
universel d’histoire naturelle (Rational universal dictionary of natural history, 1764–91) by the
French pharmacist and natural history professor Jacques-Christophe VALMONT DE BOMARE
(1731–1807) is one of the earliest examples in the latter category. In the 1750s, the French
ministry of war commissioned the Jesuit-educated Valmont to examine natural history cabinets
across Europe. The ministry’s interests were particularly in mining and metallurgy. Shortly after
returning from his travels in 1756, Valmont, who did not have academic affiliations at the time,
began to give regular public lectures on all branches of natural history. He continued to do so for
the better part of thirty years. The lectures proved immensely popular, and Valmont was offered
positions in Portugal and Russia, which he declined despite the fact that his own government did
not offer him any support except for an unpaid curatorship for the Prince de Condé’s natural
history collection. In 1788, Valmont sold his own collection to the Prince, who incorporated it
into what was the largest natural history collection in France. It was only in 1796, after the Reign
of Terror had brought him hard times, that Valmost received a professorship at a Parisian school
and became an adjunct member of the Academy of Sciences. He was widely admired for his
ability to make science comprehensive to large lay audiences.
II.47. Hydographer, diplomat, and general of the French empire, Count Antoine François
ANDRÉOSSY (1761–1828) participated in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. After his return from
that expedition, Andréossy assisted Napoleon (1769–1821) in the coup d’état of the eighteenth
Brumaire (1799). He subsequently served as ambassador to England, Austria, and the Ottoman
Empire and as military governor of Vienna. After the Battle of Waterloo, Andréossy was one of
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the commissioners sent to negotiate an armistice with the allied powers. A member of the French
Academy of Sciences, Andréossy authored works on artillery, military history, geography, and
hydrography. In 1818, he published Voyage à l’Embouchure de la Mer Noire (Journey to the
mouth of the Black Sea). The work to which Humboldt refers most, however, is Andréossy’s
much earlier Histoire du Canal de Midi (1799).
II.49n. French naturalist Horace Bénédict de SAUSSURE (1740–1799) invented many of the
scientific instruments of his time, among them the electrometer, the cyanometer, and the hair
hygrometer. In the opening chapter of his own Personal Narrative, Humboldt also acknowledges
the importance of Saussure’s account of his fourteen alpine expeditions, Voyage dans les Alpes
(1769–96), for his own writings. The example Saussure set—he was also one of the first to climb
the Montblanc—served Humboldt as a model for a type of narrative that combined the advances
in scientific exploration with the traveler’s own emotions and impressions, interweaving
meteorological observations with comments on the habits of the local population.
II.52n. Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy y Álvarez de Faria, Duke of Alcudia (1767–
1851), was given the title PRÍNCIPE DE LA PAZ (the prince of peace) for his role in negotiating the
Peace of Basel (1795). Appointed First Secretary of State (1792–98, 1801–08) by Charles IV of
Spain, Godoy was instrumental in continuing the enlightenment policies of Charles III of
Spain. Infuriated at Alejandro Malaspina, who had sought to unseat him as First Secretary,
Godoy ordered his arrest, trial, and imprisonment. In 1795, Godoy also decided to seize and
suspend the publication of any and all documents relating to the Malaspina Expedition.
Following the French invasion of Spain (1808), Godoy lived in exile with the royal family in
Rome for more than a decade. Before Isabella II of Spain (1830–1904; r. 1833–68) returned to
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him his titles and confiscated estates in 1847, Godoy lived on a modest French royal pension in
Paris, even though the Queen consort of Spain, María Luisa (1751–1819, r. 1788–1808), had
named him sole inheritor in her will. Godoy published a six-volume autobiography, Memorias de
Don Manuel Godoy, Príncipe de la Paz (1839).
II.56. Spanish conquistador Pedro de ALVARADO y Contreras (c. 1485–1541) commanded one of
Cortés’s eleven ships. He helped defeat the Mexica and then invaded Maya territory. While in
charge of Tenochtitlán, Alvarado was responsible for the famous Noche Triste (Night of
Sorrows), the retreat of the Spaniards from the city in 1520. As both indigenous and Spanish
accounts report, Alvarado had multitudes of unarmed Mexica noblemen massacred during a
ceremony for Toxcatl, which resulted in a rebellion, Moctezuma’s death, and the Spaniards’
escape from Tenochtitlán. With indigenous allies, Alvarado was able to conquer the Quiche
kingdom in present-day Guatemala. In 1524, after the surrender of the Quiche capital Utatlan, he
founded the first Guatemala City (now Antigua). He also founded San Pedro Sula (Honduras) in
1536. Charles V appointed Alvarado governor of Guatemala and extended his governorship in
Honduras, despite the fact that Alvarado’s administration was troubled by revolts and illegal
slave trading. In 1534, Alvarado led a poaching expedition to the Inca province of Quito,
disembarking at Puerto Viejo in modern-day Ecuador. After being intercepted by Francisco
Pizarro’s lieutenant Diego de Almagro (1475–1538), Alvarado sold his ships and equipment and
returned to Guatemala. He was eventually crushed to death by a horse while searching for the
chimera of the Seven Cities of Cíbola in northern Mexico. His death is depicted in the Codex
Telleriano-Remensis. Loathed by Mexica and Mayas for his brutality, Alvarado, who was
ironically nicknamed Tonatiuh (sun, in Nahuatl), is also mentioned in the surviving texts of the
Quiche Maya.
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II.56. Cortés sent Spanish conquistador Cristóbal de OLID (1488–1524) to conquer the Bay of
Honduras in 1524. In Honduras, Olid founded the port of Triunfo de la Cruz and declared
himself independent of Cortés. Francisco de las Casas (1461–1536) and Gil González Dávila (d.
1526) assassinated Olid before Cortés could travel to Honduras to discipline him.
II.57. Spanish conquistador Gonzalo de SANDOVAL (1497–1528) was Cortés’s youngest
lieutenant. An able soldier, Sandoval led the vanguard in the Spanish retreat from the Aztecs on
the Noche Triste in 1520, the year after he had arrived in Mexico. Though not highly educated,
he proved an effective administrator who founded a number of cities, including Colima. He fell
mortally ill on the return voyage to Spain.
II.57. Juan de MENDOZA Y LUNA, Marquis de Montesclaros (1571–1628), was viceroy of New
Spain (1603–07). A military officer, he entered the Order of Santiago in 1591 and was appointed
governor of Seville, a position he held until he was appointed viceroy. Because of a major flood
in the Valley of Mexico, he began modernizing Mexico City’s drainage system. As viceroy of
Peru from 1607 to 1615, Mendoza y Luna is remembered as the first poet-viceroy in the
Americas. He returned to Spain in 1616.
II.57. Born in New Spain, Franciscan missionary and historian GERÓNIMO (Jerónimo) DE
ZÁRATE Salmerón was ordained in 1579 at the Convento Grande of Mexico City. Zárate was
assigned to the Chapel of San Joseph at the Convent of Santiago Tlatelolco from 1590 to 1592
together with Torquemada. While serving as a missionary in the area around present-day Santa
Fé, New Mexico (c. 1620–26), Zárate began to draft “Relaciones de Todas las Cosas que en el
Nuevo Mexico se han visto y Sabido” (Account of all the things that I saw and learned in New
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Mexico, c. 1627), a narrative written to recruit missionaries to the northern provinces. Only
portions of “Relaciones” were published before the mid-nineteenth century.
II.58. In 1522, Catholic missionary and educator Pedro de Mura, better known as PEDRO DE
GANTE (1491–1572), left from Gante (Ghent, Belgium) for what became known as America.
Gante had entered the Franciscan Order and studied at the University of Louvain. Among the
first group of missionaries to be dispatched to New Spain, Gante arrived in New Spain in 1523.
He settled first in Texcoco and then in Mexico City, learned Nahuatl, and later served as the first
Nahuatl translator for bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548). Gante is best remembered for
establishing the first Franciscan community of New Spain in Texcoco, where he introduced a
program of education and conversion of the indigenous peoples (especially the nobility). By the
1530s, Franciscans were teaching a curriculum that included reading, writing, music, tailoring,
shoemaking, carpentry, smithing, stone-cutting, sculpture, and painting. In 1552, Gante wrote a
letter denouncing the Spaniard abuses of the indigenous population.The author of Catecismo
testeriano (Testerian catechism, 1553) and “Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Mexicana” (1553),
Gante is also believed to have written Cartilla para enseñar a leer nuevamente enmendada y
quitadas todas las abreviaturas que antes tenía (1569), a textbook in Nahuatl, Spanish, and
Latin. His death was recorded in the Aubin Codex, a pictorial Nahuatl chronicle that covers from
1168–1591, and 1595–96, with an addendum for 1597–1608.
II.59n. A lawyer by training, Spanish colonial administrator Ciriaco González CARVAJAL (fl.
1800–1812) was a judge of the Real Audiencia de Mexico City until 1809. Before this position,
he had been the first Spanish intendant in Manila. He was responsible for drafting the
administrative rules and keeping the finances of the Tobacco Monopoly in the Philippines, which
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had been established during governor José Basco y Vargas’s (r. 1778–1787) tenure in 1781.
González Carvajal later became member of the Council of the Indies. While in New Spain, he
assisted the Malaspina Expedition with all necessary documentation, by arranging instruments
for astronomical observations, by making contacts with those versed in natural history, and by
assisting officers of the expedition who had fallen ill.
I.66n. An officer in the viceroyalty of New Spain, colonial administrator Antonio BONILLA (fl.
1772–1784) wrote a summary account of the province of Texas in 1772. Commissioned by
viceroy Bucareli, Bonilla’s report was finished in fifteen days. Drawing from archival material
and official and ecclesiastical accounts of the region, Bonilla wrote Breve Compendio de los
sucesos ocurridos en la Provincia de Texas desde su conquista o reducción hasta la fecha (Brief
account of the events that have occurred in the procince of Texas fromthe conquest until today),
from 1685 to 1772. The report includes his recommendations on how to improve the province’s
administrative system. A year later, Bonilla was transferred to the Interior Provinces as assistant
inspector and secretary to the commandant-general. In that position, he drafted reports on the
state of the defense of the presidios. In addition to reports about Sonora (1774) and Chihuahua
(1774 and 1778), he wrote one for New Mexico, known as “Apuntes Historicos sobre el Nuevo
Mexico,” in 1776. By 1784, Bonilla had reached the rank of secretary of the viceroyalty and
drafted reports about each presidio and mission in the province. He was in charge of archiving
the material that became the beginning of the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City.
II.69. German theologian and philosopher Samuel Simon WITTE (1738–1802) was professor of
natural and what would now be called international law, first at the Friedrichs-Universität
Bützow (1766) and later at the University of Rostock (1789). Witte achieved some notoriety for
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his fanciful theory that the Egyptian pyramids had not been built by humans. In his 1789 essay,
“Über den Ursprung der Pyramiden in Egypten und der Ruinen von Persepolis und Palmyra”
(About the origin of the pyramids in Egypt and ruins of Persepolis and Palmyra), he explained
these ancient monuments as products of an immense volcanic eruptions. Humboldt was not the
only one to write against Witte’s thesis, which few embraced.
II.69. The pyramids at TEOTIHUACAN, the largest city of pre-Columbian America about 27 miles
(45 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City (zenith c. 150–650), include the famous monumental
structures known as the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. With hundreds of
other urban temples and compounds, Teotihuacan, a large archeological urban complex covering
more than twelve square miles (20 square kilometers), was a sacred center during pre-Columbian
times. Below the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, among the largest structures of the center,
runs a lava tube more than 100 meters that ends in four chambers. The Pyramid of the Sun might
have been the main temple for the deity Tlaloc, the head of the state cult; that of the Pyramid of
the Moon for Chalchiuhtlicue, the water deity.
II.69. An architectural wonder in the Americas, the TEOCALLI OF CHOLULA is located in the
Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley right outside the city of Puebla, Mexico. This structure is one of the
largest monuments ever built, with a total volume significantly greater than that of the Great
Pyramid of Giza. Although the pyramid at Giza is more than twice as high as the one in Cholula,
Cholula’s footprint is four times larger. The base of the Cholula pyramid measures 400 meters
along its base; it is 66 meters high. Humboldt, who was the first to measure it, arrived at smaller
measurements because accumulated layers of soil and vegetation led him to mistake one of the
upper layers for the base, which was then underground. According to Eduardo Matos
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Moctezuma, all four angles of the pyramid correspond to the four cardinal points, with a slight
deviation to the north (about 26°), which is aligned with a position of the setting sun at the
summer solstice. Excavations since the 1930s have revealed that the pyramid was expanded
gradually in four major construction phases during the course of about 1,500 years. The earliest
stage of construction probably occurred toward the end of 1 BCE. Pyramids were constructed in
stages of burial and reconstruction. A pyramid was entombed within earthen and stone fill; a new
facing was then built around these materials. Humboldt also calls this pyramid “monte hecho a
mano” (the handmade mountain), referring to Tlamachihualtepetl in Nahuatl (tla, prefix for
objects; machihua for handmade; and tepetl for mountain).
II.69. A bishop in the Church of Ireland, Richard POCOCKE (1704–1765) toured Europe in the
early 1730s, after which he embarked for the Middle East, where he traveled from 1736 until
1740. He visited Upper Egypt in 1737–38, journeying up the Nile to the Valley of Kings. He
returned to Egypt in 1738/39 after a trip to Palestine. See also Norden, Frederik Ludvig.
II.70n. A philosopher, poet, and literary scholar, Johann Gottfried von HERDER (1744–1803) was
one of the German Enlightenment’s towering and most skeptical figures.The unfinished Ideen
zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man,
1784–91) is often called his greatest work. In it, as elsewhere in his prolific writings, Herder
adopted a very critical stance toward the contemporary belief, central to Enlightenment
philosophy, that reason by itself was the sole source of progress and toward the political
consequences of this belief, which had led to the subjugation of other continents and peoples.
Herder, in many ways like Humboldt, was a proponent of the importance of local differences
connected to discrete environments. According to Herder, human individuals and groups were
like animals and plants in that they took from their environment what nourished them and
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rejected the rest. The difference was that human choices were powered by a rational principle
independent of mere passions and desires. Herder’s emphasis on language, a vehicle for culture
that reason enabled humans to invent, links him to the linguist-philosopher Wilhelm von
Humboldt perhaps more so than it does to his younger brother Alexander.
II.70n. German historian Johann Christoph GATTERER (1727–1799) was an avid student of
classical languages, theology, Oriental history, philosophy, and mathematics. Starting in 1759,
he held the chair in history at the University of Göttingen for forty years, where Humboldt would
have first encountered his ideas about universal history and the importance of fields such as
chronologie, diplomacy, genealogy, geography, heraldics, and numismatics. Gatterer’s teaching
and writings contributed much to elevating these auxiliary sciences (as they were known then) to
the status of proper academic disciplines.
II.71. On his China mission, which was far less successful than his earlier activities as an envoy
to Russia had been, Macartney was accompanied by John Barrow and Sir GEORGE Leonard
STAUNTON (1737–1801), a diplomat with a French medical education. The two had first met in
1779, when Staunton had negotiated Macartney’s release (the latter had been taken prisoner by
the French). In 1797, Staunton published a book about their diplomatic mission, Authentic
Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, to which
Humboldt is referring here.
II.74. Novo–Spanish mestizo historian Diego Muñoz CAMARGO (c. 1529–1599) was born in
Tlaxcala (Mexico) soon after its conquest by conquistador Diego Muñoz (fl. 1524–1555). Fully
bilingual in Nahuatl and Spanish, Camargo wrote the history of late pre-Conquest and early
colonial Tlaxcala from sources now lost. His Historia de Tlaxcala (written in 1560–1595) covers
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early migration, dynastic history, natural history, and the role of the people of Tlaxcala during
the conquest. The Historia was used by many colonial chroniclers, including Torquemada.
Partially published as Fragmentos de historia Mexicana pertenecientes en gran parte a la
Provincia de Tlaxcala in 1870, Historia de Tlaxcala has appeared in numerous editions.
Camargo is not to be confused with his son, Diego Muñoz Camargo (fl. 1608–1614).
II.74n. Franciscan friar Andrés DE OLMOS (c. 1491–c. 1571) arrived in New Spain in 1528 as
Juan de Zumárraga’s (1468–1548) aide. One of the primary scholars at the Colegio Imperial de
la Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco since its founding in 1536, Olmos mastered several indigenous
languages: Huastec, Totonac, and Nahuatl. His three works on Huastec and two on Totonac are
lost. He authored the first Nahuatl grammar, Arte de la Lengua Mexicana (The art of the
Mexican language), which is dated 1547. To illustrate better the beauty and charm of Nahuatl,
Olmos included in Arte a collection of ceremonial didactic speeches, or huehuetlatolli (meaning
ancient words or discourses of wisdom from the elders). Arte was partially published in 1604 by
Juan de Bautista (1555–1615); in 1875, it was printed in French as Grammaire de la langue
nahuatl ou mexicaine by Rémi Siméon (1827–90). In 1533, bishop Sebastián Ramírez de
Fuenleal (c. 1490–1547) commissioned Olmos to write about the pre-Conquest rites and
antiquities of Mexico City, Tezcoco, and Tlaxcala. Based on interviews and conversations with
the indigenous informants—among them wise men, or tlamatinime—Olmos’s Tratado de
antigüedades mexicanas (Treatise on Mexican antiquities) from 1539 was the first systematic
study of the rituals, political practices, institutions, and literature of the indigenous peoples’ in
New Spain. At least three copies and one original were sent to Spain but were lost in transit. At
the request of Bartolomé de las Casas, Olmos wrote a Summa, an epilogue or summary, of the
treatise, parts of which are included in Histoyre du Mechique (History of Mexico) (1905) and the
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Codex Tudela (1947). Olmos is the author of the earliest missionary play in Nahuatl, El juicio
final (The final judgment), performed for fourteen years (1535–1548) at the Church of San José
de Naturales in Mexico City. Many anonymous works have been attributed to Olmos, among
them Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas (History of the Mexicans in their paintings),
which was written before 1536 as part of the anonymous sixteenth-century codex, Libro de Oro y
Thesoro Indico (1882) and Costumbres, fiestas, enterramientos y diversas formas de proceder de
los indios de Nueva España (Customs, festivals, funerals, and various practices of the Indians of
New Spain, 1945). Olmos’s work served as an inspiration and source for other missionary
ethnographers, notably Sahagún, Gerónimo de Mendieta (c. 1528–1604), Motolinia, and
Torquemada.
II.74n. A lawyer by training, Spanish historian Alonso de ZURITA (alternate spelling Zorita,
1512–c. 1585) studied at the University of Salamanca and practiced law in the Audiencia of
Granada. In 1548, he arrived in Santo Domingo as judge, a position he also held in New Granada
(1550–52), Los Confines (1553–56), and New Spain (1556–66). Zurita’s Breve y sumaria
relación de los señores de la Nueva España, which provided information to the Spanish
monarchy about the tax system and government of the indigenous peoples, was initially
published in French in 1840. The first adequate edition was published by García Icazbalceta in
1891. In 1556, Zurita returned to live in Granada (Spain).
II.74n. Tezcoco-born Juan de TOVAR (c. 1541–1626) was ordained in 1570. A prebendary of the
Cathedral of Mexico City, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1573. A talented Nahuatl, Otomí, and
Mazahua speaker, he taught at the colleges of Tepozotlan and San Gregorio de Mexico. Upon
request of the then-viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almanza (d. 1583), Tovar authored a history of
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the indigenous peoples of the Valley of Mexico. After extensive research, he completed this
work around 1579. Known as the Codex Ramírez, Tovar’s Relación del origen de los indios que
habitan esta Nueva España según sus historias was privately printed by Thomas Phillipps
(1792–1872) as Historia de los indios mexicanos in 1860. Tovar’s analysis of the Aztec calender
was published by George Kubler (1912–96) and Charles Gibson (1920–85) as The Tovar
Calendar, an illustrated Mexican manuscript ca.1585 (New Haven, 1951). José de Acosta used
Tovar’s work for his own Historia natural y moral de las Indias.
II.74n. Antonio Pimentel IXTLILXOCHITL was a relative of Fernando Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl and
descendant of Nezahualpilli, king of Acolhuacan. Antonio Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl gave Juan de
Torquemada a record of expenses and maintenance of the court of Nezahualcoyotl,
Nezahualpilli’s successor. Written in Nahuatl probably around 1545, the record is missing and
survives only through information provided in Torquemada’s Monarquía Indiana. Fernando
Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl recorded genealogical information about the kingdom of Acolhuacan,
which served as one of the sources for Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s work.
II.74n. A native of Tlaxcala, TADEO DE NIZA de Santa María was the author of Historia de la
conquista de México. Written about 1548, the Historia recounts the history of the indigenous
peoples of Tlaxcala. Now lost, this work was mentioned by Boturini and survives secondarily in
Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s work.
II.74n. A notary at the Audiencia of Mexico, Tezcocan nobleman GABRIEL DE AYALA owned
annals written in Nahuatl covering the activities of the Mexica between 1243 and 1562. A source
for Chimalpahin, Ayala’s annals—deemed lost—were published with a Spanish translation by
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Librado Silva Galeana as “Apuntes de los sucesos de la nación mexicana desde el año 1243 hasta
el de 1562” in the periodical Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl in 1997.
II.74n. Juan Buenaventura ZAPATA y Mendoza (c. 1600–1689) was a Nahuatl author of the late
seventeenth century. A nobleman, Zapata was governor of Tlaxcala (1651–1674) and a coauthor
of the Historia chronológica de la noble ciudad de Tlaxcala (Chronological history of the noble
city of Tlaxcala). Written in Nahuatl in annals format and completed by Manuel de los Santos y
Salazar (d. 1715), Zapata’s Historia is a significant ethno-historical work rich in detail. Also
known as Chrónica de la muy noble y leal ciudad de Tlaxcala, the work part of the Boturini
collection. The first complete publication of Historia is Luis Reyes García and Andrea Martínez
Baracs’s bilingual edition (Nahuatl/Spanish), Historia cronológica de la noble ciudad de
Tlaxcala (1995).
II.74n. Tlaxcalan clergyman Pedro PONCE de León (c. 1540–1628) was the author of Breve
relación de los dioses y ritos de la gentilidad (Brief report on the gods and rites of the pagan
world). After studying at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Ponce gained a degree in
theology from the University of Mexico and became a priest at Zumpahuacan (1571–1626).
Written around 1569, Breve relación deals with the indigenous peoples’ socio-religious
practices. It is part of the second volume of the manuscript known as Codex Chimalpopoca and
was first published by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (1842–1916) in 1892.
II.74n. A chronicler from the capital of Mexico, CRISTÓBAL DEL CASTILLO (1526–1606) was
fluent in Nahuatl and had a prodigious knowledge of astronomy and calendrics. Despite his
Spanish name, Castillo was probably of Tezcocan descent and did not identify with the
conquerors; yet, his values were Catholic. To preserve fading indigenous records by using the
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Latin alphabet in writing Nahuatl, Castillo completed an account of Mexica history from their
departure from the legendary homeland of Aztlan to the Spanish conquest. His Historia de la
venida de los mexicanos y otros pueblos e Historia de la Conquista (History of the arrival of the
Mexica and other peoples and history of the conquest) shows the important role that
Huitzilopochtli played as the guide of the Mexica during their migration. The Historia remained
in manuscript at the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris until Francisco del Paso y Troncoso
published it as Fragmentos de la obra general sobre historia de los mexicanos (Fragments of the
general work about the history of the Mexica) in 1908. Humboldt had access to Castillo’s 1599
manuscript.
II.74n. A grandson of Montezuma II, the Nahua historian Fernando de ALVARADO TEZOZOMOC
(c. 1525–c. 1610) wrote his Crónica Mexicana (Mexica chronicles, 1598) in Spanish. This
chronicle covers the history of the Mexica from their beginnings up to the time of the conquest.
While condemning Mexica beliefs and religious practices, the Christinanized Tezozomoc
provided an indigenous point of view for the accounts of the Mexica’s rise to power in the late
fourteenth century. The second part of his chronicle, now lost, was to cover the years since the
arrival of the Spaniards. Before he died, Tezozomoc wrote the Crónica Mexicayotl (1609) in
Nahuatl.
II.74n. A scribe in Tezcoco, Mestizo chronicler Juan Bautista POMAR (c. 1527–1602) wrote a
Relación of Tezcoco in 1582 in response to a 1577 questionnaire for geographical and census
information sent by Philip II. Humboldt had access to this manuscript. To answer the Crown’s
questions, Pomar interviewed the elder members of his society and researched both pictorial and
prose manuscripts in Nahuatl and Spanish. Pomar’s Relación was first published by Joaquín
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García Icazbalceta (1825–94) in Nueva Colección de Documentos para la Historia de México in
1891 (vol. 3). Pomar is also credited with having compiled a collection of Nahuatl lyric poems
that has survived under the title “Romances de los señores de la Nueva España” (Ballads of the
Lords of New Spain). A bilingual edition (Nahuatl/Spanish) of Pomar’s own poetry was
published by Angel María Girabay Kintana (1892–1967) as Poesía Náhuatl (1964). A partial
copy of the Relación made by Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in 1615 survives at the Benson
Latin American Collection of the University of Texas at Austin, in addition to the 1577 Spanish
Crown’s questionnaire and a copy of Pomar’s Nahuatl anthology.
II.74n. The later Mexica historian Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón CHIMALPAHIN
Quauhtlehuanitzin (b. 1579) is the author of a manuscript edition of Francisco López de
Gómara’s La conquista de Mexico (The conquest of Mexico), a heroic treatment of the exploits
of his patron Cortés. Although the Spanish Crown had banned Gómara’s controversial book,
copies were still smuggled into the colonies, which is how Chimalpahin gained access to it. The
only known Spanish-language account of the conquest to include extensive critical and
corroborative commentary by an indigenous historian, Chimalpahin’s manuscript contains more
than forty chapters on Aztec culture that were not included in Leslie Byrd Simpson’s abridged
1964 translation of this text, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by his Secretary, Francisco
López de Gómara. A more complete translation appeared in 2016. While employed as a fiscal
administrator in Mexico City, a position held for thirty years, Chimalpahin also wrote a detailed
history of events in Nahuatl. Chimalpahin’s works were largely unknown until the mid-
eighteenth century, when his writings appeared in an inventory of the Boturini collection in
Mexico City.
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II.74n. While visiting the ancient site of Chanchán, the capital of the pre-Inca Chimu Empire,
Humboldt noted in his travel diary that the sixteenth-century Spanish adventurer García
GUTIÉRREZ de Toledo had been able to discover the treasure of the Toledo chamber only because
of the pity that his poor appearance generated in his friend Antonio Chayhuac, a native Indian of
Trujillo and heir of the last cacique of Manische. Chayhuac, who showed Toledo the entrance to
the grave’s golden fortune, had asked the Spaniard to commit himself to a responsible way of life
in spite of the new circumstances. Only then would he show him the way to the even larger
treasure of the legendary el peje grande chamber. Toledo who, according to the municipality
records of Toledo, collected the gold in 1577 and 1578 and managed to spend his entire fortune
in a very short time, returned to Chayhuac, imploring him to reveal his secret; the Indian refused.
Other versions of this story claim that Chayhuac had meant to reveal the secret of the grave’s
location so that part of the proceeds would benefit the local natives. The episode has become a
Peruvian popular tale, known as el peje chico.
II.75. Spanish Conquistador GARCÍ (García) HOLGUÍN took part in the conquest of Cuba and
Tenochtitlán. The captain of a brigantine, he captured Cuauhtemoc (1496–1525), the last
emperor of the Aztec empire. In 1523, Garcí Holguín established the province and city of
Holguín in Cuba, which still bears his name.
II.85. De la richesse territoriale du royaume de France (Of the territorial wealth of the kingdom
of France, 1791) has been called Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier’s major work. It was the result
of the intense interest he developed in the political and economic situation of France due to his
frequent contacts with Enlightenment intellectual circles.
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II.85. French politican and economist Ambrose Marie ARNOULD (1750–1812) was the chief of
the Bureau de la Balance du Commerce from 1791–94. His De la balance du commerce (On the
trade balance) from 1791 has been called this short-lived committee’s most significant
achievement.
II.86. The BROWNIAN (or Brunonian) system of medical practice was founded by John Brown,
MD (1735–1788), who dismissed any notion of diseases as separate entities and thus rejected
classifications systems for diseases. He believed that pathological anatomy indicated only
changeable forms of the disease and not the underlying cause. Brown postulated the fundamental
biological principle of excitability, the ability to perceive impressions and respond to them
common to all living matter. According to Brown, predisposition to disease is the result either of
too many or too few stimuli, creating either asthenic or an asthetic state. Brown’s system has
several consequences for the practitioner. One is that a physician is responsible for restoring the
equilibrium between excitability and outside stimuli, a second that it is only minimally necessary
to distinguish triggering causes of disease. Only the predisposing factors of a disease are
important. In asthenic diseases, excitement needs to be increased, for instance, by the
consumption of rich foods, liquor, camphor, or opium; hence Humboldt’s reference to wine.
Brown himself suffered from gout, which he treated as an asthenic disease. He became addicted
to alcohol and opium as a result of his treatment.
II.93n. Born in Lima, Creole military officer Juan Vázquez DE ACUÑA y Bejarano, Marquis of
Casa Fuerte (1658–1734), became the second criollo to be appointed viceroy of New Spain
(1722–34); the first was the Marquis of Cadereyta. Acuña left for Spain at age thirteen to
pursue a military career; he would become a successful and respected military officer decorated
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with the Order of Santiago. After being named military commander of Messina (Sicily), Aragon,
and Majorca (Spain), Acuña became viceroy of New Spain. After arriving in Mexico City in
1722, he soon began to work on reorganizing the colonial government. He also finished the
construction of major architectural projects and strengthened Spain’s positions in the Provincias
Internas (Acuña commissioned Pedro de Rivera to survey the Interior Provinces). He was the
great-uncle of the Limeño intellectual José Agustín Pardo de Figueroa y Acuña, the Marquis of
Valleumbroso.
II.93n. Spanish aristocrat PEDRO NUÑO COLÓN de Portugal y Castro (d. 1673) was viceroy of
New Spain in late 1673. One of the decendants of Colombus’s, he was duke of Veragua, Marquis
of Jamaica and Millamizar, and count of Gelves. Appointed viceroy of New Spain in June 1672,
he arrived in Veracruz on September 1673. He entered Mexico City on December 8 and died on
December 13, 1673. Tis tenure was the shortest ever in New Spain.
II.93n. Born in San Roman de Sajamonde (Pontevedra, Spain), JOSÉ SARMIENTO DE
VALLADARES, Count of Moctezuma (1643–1708), was viceroy of New Spain from 1696 to 1701.
He married one of Moctezuma II’s descendants, the heiress Gerónima María de Moctezuma
Loaysa de la Cueva, countess of Moctezuma, who died before he took the viceregal office. After
his tenure, Sarmiento returned to Spain, where he was named Grande de España and given the
dukedom of Atlixco in 1804.
II.94. Gaspar de la Cerda SANDOVAL Silva y Mendoza, the eighth count of Galve (1653–97), was
a close member of the King’s Court. One of the youngest viceroys of New Spain, the count of
Galve arrived in the Americas in 1688 at age thirty-five. During his term as viceroy (1688–
1696), he ordered a naval expedition to stop French forces from invading the Spanish part of
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Hispaniola; in January 1691, the Spanish were victorious at Tortuga. Supporting the
establishment of colonies in Texas and Florida, the viceroy was successful in weakening French
power in the region for several years. Food scarcity caused a riot in Mexico City in 1692. As a
result, the protesters burned the viceroy palace and other government buildings; Galve and his
family sought refuge at the monastery of San Francisco. Together with a group of students,
Sigüenza y Góngora saved the archives housed in the municipal building from the fire. As a
response to the riots, Galve prohibited indigenous persons from entering the city. He ordered that
no more than four so-called Indians could walk the streets together and executed several people
accused of being rioters. As a consequence of the 1692 riots and their aftermath, the respect
Galve and his administration had earned in defeating the French in the Caribbean waned. At his
request, Galve was relieved of duty in September 1695. Galve was patron of both Sor Juana Inés
de la Cruz and Sigüenza y Góngora.
II.95n. Spanish naval officer Francisco Javier ROVIRA (1740–1823) began his military career in
1754. After serving in Havana (Cuba), he was promoted to commander of the artillery. Rovira
taught at the Naval Academy in Cádiz and served as artillery commander in Cartagena. He was
the author of Tratado de Artillería (Treatise on artillery, 1773), Compendio de matemáticas
(Compendium of mathematics, 1785–91), and Ejercicios de cañón y mortero (Exercises with
cannon and mortar,1787).
II.95n. Spanish colonial administrator Cosme Antonio de MIER Y TRESPALACIOS (1747–1805)
was responsible for hydraulic engineering in Mexico City. As such, he managed the
reconstruction of the Desagüe del Valle de México (1796–98) and later became a judge of the
Audiencia de Mexico (1785–1805). In 1786, he was briefly married to Juana María Práxedes
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(1759–1787), a daughter of the eighth Marquis of Salinas, Juan Manuel Altamirano de Velasco
(1733–1793). Before being transferred to Mexico in 1775 for a position in the criminal chamber
of the Audiencia of Mexico, Mier y Trespalacios had been the fiscal advocate for the indigenous
peoples at the Audiencia de Lima.
II.95n. An officer of the Secretariat of New Spain in the Council of Indies in Madrid, Spanish
colonial administrator JUAN DÍEZ (Díaz) DE LA CALLE (fl. 1645–1648, d. 1662) began his
administrative career as an apprentice in this Council. Never having traveled to New Spain (or
anywhere else in the Americas), he based his writings on archival and documentary research. His
two-volume Memorial y Noticias Sacras y Reales del Imperio de las Indias Occidentales (1646)
was a statistical manual about the civil and ecclesiastical political structures in Santo Domingo,
Mexico, Guadalajara, Guatemala, and the Philippines. In 1645, he published a list of Spanish
officials in America; with the title Memorial informativo al Rey nuestro Señor, en su Real y
supremo Consejo de las Indias, it is housed at the British Library (MSS 279.h). In addition to
publishing the introduction to an expanded work about all of Spain’s overseas dominions under
the title Memorial y compendio breve del libro intitulado Noticias sacras y reales de los dos
imperios de la Nueva España, el Perú y sus islas de las Indias Occidentales (1648), he left in
manuscript form “Noticias sacras y reales de los dos imperios de la Nueva España y el Perú y sus
islas de las Indias occidentales,” now at the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (Spain). Díez de la
Calle kept working on such handbooks until his death.
II.95n. Spanish bishop Juan de PALAFOX y Mendoza (1600–1659) was viceroy of New Spain
(June to November, 1642) and archbishop of Mexico. After studying law at the Universities of
Alcala and Salamanca, he received a doctoral degree from the University-College of San
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Antonio de Portaceli at Sigüenza (Spain) in 1633. Ordained subdeacon in 1629, he served on the
Council of the Indies from 1629 to 1638. In 1639, Palafox was appointed bishop of Puebla de los
Ángeles in New Spain (1640–48) and royal envoy to the Audiencia of Mexico (1640–47). Acting
upon secret instructions from Spain, he deposed then-viceroy Marquis of Villena in 1642 and
took over his office temporarily. After handing the viceregal government to García Sarmiento
de Sotomayor, Palafox was elected archbishop of Mexico. Because of conflicts with the Society
of Jesus, he was ordered back to Spain, where he arrived in 1650. In 1653, Palafox was
appointed bishop of the diocese of Osma (Spain), where he died. In 1726, Pope Benedict XIII
began to consider requests about the canonization process for Palafox, which officially began in
1760. His canonization was supported by Charles III and opposed by the Jesuits. Palafox’s
writings were published posthumously as Obras del Ilustrísimo in 1762.
II.95n. García Sarmiento de Sotomayor, COUNT OF SALVATIERRA and Marquis of Sobroso (d.
1659), was viceroy of New Spain from 1642 to 1648; he took over from Palafox. On the
occasion of the 1645 flooding of Mexico City, he ordered the cleaning of the city’s drainage
system (Desagüe del Valle de México). He left New Spain for Peru, where he also served as
viceroy (1648–1659).
II.95n. In 1637, Spanish author Fernando de CEPEDA (also Zepeda, fl. 1636–1647) and Novo–
Spanish Creole scribe Fernando Alfonso Carrillo (d. 1640) published Relación universal,
legitima y verdadera del sito en que esta fundada la muy noble, insigne, y muy leal ciudad de
México (Universal, legitimate, and truthful account of the site where the most noble, famous, and
very loyal city of Mexico was founded). The first publication about the drainage system of the
Valley of Mexico, the Relación universal details the hydrographic work carried out in the Valley
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of Mexico between 1553 and 1637 to prevent seasonal flooding. Cepeda had arrived in New
Spain in 1636 to take a position of the office of the court reporter at the Audiencia of Mexico, to
which he had been appointed in 1625. Imprisoned in 1641 for forging witness testimonies, he
was cleared and released a year later. Back in Spain in 1643, he served as a judge for the
Audiencia of Santo Domingo.
II.95n. Having entered the military academy in 1759, Spanish military officer José Joaquín
Vicente de ITURRIGARAY y Aróstegui (1742–1815) was viceroy of New Spain from 1803 to
1808. In other words, he was viceroy when Humboldt visited New Spain. He entered the Order
of Santiago in 1765 and, after advancing to the ranks of field marshal and lieutenant-general, was
appointed governor of Cádiz in 1795. Appointed viceroy in 1802, Iturrigaray arrived in Veracruz
on December of that year and took office the following month. Because of the Napoleonic wars
and the independence movements in New Spain, Iturrigaray was ousted in 1808 and replaced
with Father Lizana.
II.99. The second viceroy of New Spain (1550–1564), Spanish colonial military officer and
administrator LUIS DE VELASCO y Ruiz de Alarcón (c. 1511–1564) was also known as Velasco I
or Velasco The Elder. He was the father of the Marquis of Salinas, who twice became viceroy
of New Spain and once of Peru. From 1547 to 1549, Velasco served as viceroy of Navarra
(Spain). Knighted by the Order of Santiago in 1549, he was named viceroy of New Spain or Peru
a year later. Once in New Spain, Velasco took office in late 1550. As Velasco I, he founded the
University of Mexico in 1553. He also began New Spain’s expansion by conquering Nueva
Vizcaya and the Philippines and enforced the “New Laws” of the Indies of 1542, which
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restricting the enslavement of the indigenous peoples. As a result of these laws, the Spaniards
began importing African slaves from the West Indies.
II.99. The son of Velasco I, Luis de Velasco y Castilla y Mendoza, MARQUIS DE SALINAS del Río
Pisuerga (1539–1617), was involved in the construction of a royal canal in Mexico City. He
himself served as viceroy of New Spain from 1590 to 1595 and 1607 to 1611 and as viceroy of
Peru from 1595 to 1604. Philip III granted him the title of Marquis of Salinas in 1609. In 1611,
the marquis was recalled to Madrid to become president of the Council of the Indies.
II.99. Spanish inquisitor Rodrigo Pacheco y Osorio de Toledo, MARQUIS OF CERRALVO (d.
1652), was viceroy of New Spain from 1624 to 1635. After a military career, Pacheco y Osorio
was appointed inquisitor of Valladolid. Because of the revolts in Mexico City that threathened
Spanish rule in New Spain, Pacheco was appointed viceroy to secure power. After the Great
Flood of Mexico City (1629–34), he hurriedly ordered the reconstruction of the Desagüe del
Valle de México, the drainage system initially designed and built by Enrico Martínez.
II.99n. Born into a family of landowners in Lyon, the French Abbot François ROZIER (1734–
1793) took an early scientific interest in agriculture, especially viniculture, a field in which he
published a treatise before turning to scientific journalism. In 1771, he bought the defunct journal
Observations sur l’histoire naturelle and changed its name to Observations et Mémoires sur le
physique, sur l’histoire naturelle, et sur les Artes (Observations and memoirs about physics, t
natural history, and the arts). This journal made it possible for scientific articles to be published
much faster than before when the main venue for disseminating scientific news had been the
annual reports of the various academies of science. The journal became known as the Journal de
physique, or simply Rozier’s Journal. Among its many contributions was a translation of an
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article by Giuseppe TOALDO (1719–97), an Italian Catholic priest and physicist interested in
atmospheric electricity and meteorology. Toaldo became chair of astronomy at the University of
Padua in 1762.
II.104. Judge of Mexico City from 1574 to 1781, Lorenzo Sánchez de OBREGÓN (fl. 1574–1581),
together with Claudio Arciniega, proposed the construction of a drainage system to prevent the
city’s recurring flood problems. Although Obregón had been commissioned to study the problem
in early 1580, their project was not approved in the end, either because of its costs or lack of
viability.
II.104. Spanish architect Claudio ARCINIEGA (c. 1524–1593) worked on the problem of draining
the valley of Mexico in 1580. After receiving training as an engraver in the Convent of San
Marcos in Leon (c. 1538), he worked in the Royal Alcázar of Madrid and at the University of
Alcalá de Henares in Spain. In 1554, he migrated to Puebla (then New Spain) where he began his
career as an architect of public works and buildings. In Mexico City, he designed and built the
Imperial Catafalque (Túmulo Imperial) to commemorate the death of Charles V. Built inside the
convent of San Francisco in Mexico City in 1559, the monument was later described by Spanish
priest and poet Francisco Cervantes de Salazar (c. 1513–75) in Túmulo imperial (1560) and in
the Codex de Tlatelolco. Arciniega was also commissioned to work on the Royal Palace (1563)
and on the new Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City (1564–93). Among his many
commissions were the convents of San Agustín in Acolman (1558–60), San Agustín of the City
of Mexico (1561), San Nicolás de Tolentino in Actopan, Santos Reyes de Metztitlan (c. 1577),
and the Franciscan convents of San Francisco in Zacatlan (1562–67) and Santiago in Tecali (c.
1569). Chief architect of the city’s Cathedral by 1570 and master builder of New Spain by 1576,
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Arciniega had gained experience in hydraulics while working on the aqueduct of Santa Fé in
1574.
II.105. Possibly from Spain, the architect Alonso MARTÍNEZ López de Vía (fl. 1607–1626, d.
1626) worked as the Chief Builder of the Cathedral of Mexico in Mexico City between 1613 and
1623. In 1624, he held the position of commissioner of public works for the Inquisition until his
death. In this prestigious position, Martínez was able to work on important architectural
landmarks, including the convent of Jesús María (c. 1618–20) and fountains attached to the
aqueduct of Santa Fé in the Plaza Mayor and the Plaza del Volador (1620–26). A wealthy man,
he bought land in 1615 to design and develop a residential and commercial area of thirty-six
houses and stores in the market district of Mexico City. In 1607 and 1611, he worked with
Enrico Martínez on the city’s drainage system.
II,105. Damián DE ÁVILA Mesura (also Dávila, fl. 1505–1514) was master carpenter and
stonemason in Mexico City. In addition to working on the city’s drainage system, he carried out
several other municipal projects, including repairing bridges and other structures.
II. 105t. OBRAS PIAS, literary “works of piety,” can be likened to a charitable foundation through
which the Catholic Church directed shares of personal bequests to the charities that the donors
had specified. Some of these funds were managed by cofraternities that invested them in secular
activities.
II.108n. A 1788 graduate from Glasgow University, British physician and writer James MILLAR
(1762–1827) took his medical degree at Edinburgh in 1795. He became a fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians of Edinburgh and was part of the Edinburgh Dispensary. The editor of the
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fourth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1810; last 15 vols of 5th edition, 1817), he also
edited the Encyclopaedia Edinensis (6 vols., 1827). In addition to publishing in several
periodicals from London and Edinburgh, he coauthored, with William Vazie, Observations on
the Advantages and Practicability of making Tunnels under Navigable Rivers, particularly
applicable to the proposed Tunnel under the Forth (1807).
II.108n. Together with James Millar, civil engineer William VAZIE (b. 1756) was involved in
the construction of a tunnel under the Forth between Rosyth and Queensferry (near Edinburgh).
Due to lack of funding, the project did not come to fruition. Nonetheless, Vazie and his brother
Robert (fl. 1790–1830) became the first advocates and pioneers of underwater tunnels for roads.
II.110. Spanish clergyman GARCÍA GUERRA (1560–1612) entered the Dominican Order at the
Convent of St. Paul in Valladolid in 1578. In 1608, he was appointed archbishop of Mexico.
Soon thereafter, he officially inaugurated Mexico City’s drainage system (Desagüe del Valle de
México) designed by Enrico Martínez. In 1611, García Guerra replaced Luis Velasco II as
viceroy of New Spain. In this position, he ordered a complete report of the accounts of the
Desagüe.
II.110. Master of architecture, fortifications, and the king’s chief armorer, ALONSO ARIAS wrote
a report on the subject, asserting that the drainage system was, in effect, useless. Although
Martínez defended his case before the king, Adrian Boot was sent to Mexico to inquire about
the state of the Desagüe.
II.110. The Dutch engineer Adrian Boot (fl. 1614–1634), who also submitted a report on the
drainage system, found Martínez’s canal inadequate and proposed plans for an extensive, and
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expensive, alternative. Martínez underbid Boot and offered to make repairs. In 1616, Phillip III
rejected Boot’s plan and approved Martínez’s. Seven years later, the work on the Desagüe was
still unfinished.
II.110. PHILIP III OF SPAIN (1578–1621) reigned from 1598 to 1621. His favorite minister,
Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, the Duke of Lerma (c. 1552–1625), in cahoots with the
Archbishop of Valencia, Juan de Ribera (1532–1611), succeeded in convincing the king to expel
the Moors from Spain; Philip III signed an edict to this effect on April 9, 1609. What finally
persuaded the king was that he could confiscate Moorish assets and properties, which brought a
dramatic boost to the royal coffers. Ribera’s proposal to enslave the moriscos for work in galleys
and mines, however, was rejected.
II.110. Spanish military general Diego Carillo de Mendoza y Pimentel (c. 1557–1636), MARQUIS
OF GELVES and Count of Priego, was viceroy of New Spain from 1621 to 1624. Before that, he
had been head of the viceroyalty of Aragón (1610–21). Carillo had entered the army around
1571, fought in the Battle of Alcântara (Portugal) in 1580, and served as commander of Sicily
and Milan. During his administration in New Spain, he sought to make the Audiencia (that is, the
judicial) system more efficient and tried to fight theft and contraband. In 1623, he stopped the
works of the desagüe of the Valley of Mexico to ascertain the actual cause of the city’s cyclical
floodings. Even though the Marquis of Cerralvo, Carillo’s successor, ordered the construction
of the drainage system to continue, the temporary halt of the works resulted in the flooding of the
city. The Great Flood, caused by the San Mateo downpour, lasted for more than four years
(1629–34). Due to conflicts with the archbishop of Mexico, Juan Pérez de la Serna (1573–1631),
Carillo was sent back to Spain.
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II.112. In March 1630, Novo–Spanish engineer SIMÓN MÉNDEZ proposed to solve the problem of
the inundation of the Valley of Mexico by way of a direct canal. His proposal came after the
Great Flood of 1629 at a time when Mexico City was still underwater: The valley’s five
interconnected lakes would drain through the slightly lower and salty Lake Tezcoco and, by way
of a canal and a tunnel, empty into the Tequixquiac River. The project approved, Méndez was
ordered to test the design and begin work. After the initial trial phase, however, Méndez’s project
was abandoned until 1774, when Joaquín Velázquez de León studied and approved it, once
again. After several attempts at finishing the canal and tunnel, it took the 1865 rainy season in
the valley to spur serious interest in completing the drainage system. The Desagüe del Valle de
México was finally inaugurated on March 17, 1900.
II.112. ANTONIO (Antón) ROMÁN and JUAN ÁLVAREZ DE TOLEDO (also Taledano) competed
unsuccessfully for the commission to design and build the drainage system of the Valley of
Mexico after the Great Flood of Mexico in 1629. A total of four projects were presented to the
viceroy: a new project from Román (with Álvarez de Toledo); two others from Alonso Pérez de
Zúñiga and Francisco Gutiérrez Naranjo; and the fourth from Enrico Martínez (which was
already underway). Román and Álvarez de Toledo proposed to build a draining system through
the Lagoon of San Cristóbal; Martínez’s project through the Huehuetoca prevailed. Competing
with Méndez, Román, in 1630, proposed yet another project that included two open canals to
drain the valley.
II.113. Spanish clergyman and missionary FRANCISCO CALDERÓN (1584–1661) held the highest
religious office in the Society of Jesus in New Spain on two occasions (1644–46 and in 1653).
Calderón was head of the Jesuits during their confrontation with Juan de Palafox. Calderón had
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arrived in the Americas in 1602 and was ordained six years later. After being dispatched to
Tepotzotlan (1610–15), Parras (1615), and the Colegio Máximo de San Pedro y San Pablo of
Mexico City (1616–31), he became rector of the Colegio de Santo Tomas in Guadalajara (1625–
28), the Colegio de San Ildefondo in Puebla (1631–34), and the seminary at Tepotzotlan (1638–
44). Stationed in Mexico City in 1630 during the Great Flood, he proposed that the
administration concentrate its efforts on finding a natural waterway to drain the city. To this end,
Calderón shared with the viceroy, the Marquis of Cerralvo, documents dating back to the
conquest: two maps of the region around the Lake Tezcoco and a pictorial manuscript that
historian Arnold Bauer has linked with the Codex Cardona. Calderón at length persuaded the
viceroy to allow a team of Jesuits to search for Pantitlan, a pre-Hispanic sacred ritual site and,
importantly for the purpose of drainage, a sinkhole in the middle of Lake Tezcoco. Although
Calderón claimed that the Jesuits found Pantitlan in 1631, the viceregal authorities did not pursue
the natural drain option any further.
II.114. Spanish clergyman Francisco MANSO (Manzo) Y ZÚÑIGA, Count of Hervías (1587–1656),
was appointed archbishop of Mexico in 1628 and took office a year later. After studying canon
law, he became rector of the University of Valladolid and later a judge in the Chancery of
Granada and member of the Council of the Indies. His response to the Great Flood in Mexico
City (1629–34) was fostering the devotion of Our Lady of Guadalupe by bringing the image to
the Cathedral and to build several hospitals to tend to the sick and injured. Because of power
struggles with then-viceroy Cerralvo, Manso y Zúñiga was transferred to Spain in 1635.
II.116. Lope Díez de Aux y Armendáriz, MARQUIS OF CADEREYTA (also Cadreita, 1575–1640),
was the first Criollo to be appointed viceroy of New Spain (1635–1640). Born in Quito, he
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followed a military career until he was chosen as viceroy. As the waters of the Great Flood were
receding in Mexico City in 1635, he managed the extensive damage of the flood. Cadereyta de
Montes, a city in Querétaro (Mexico) founded in 1640, was named after him.
II.117. Spanish military officer Diego López Pacheco, Duke of Escalona and MARQUIS OF
VILLENA (1599–1653), was viceroy of New Spain from 1640 to 1642. A member of a wealthy
and powerful family, he studied at the University of Salamanca and enjoyed a military career.
Named viceroy in 1640, he was ousted by Palafox two years later. Back in Spain, he was
appointed governor of Sicily and then of Navarra.
II.117. Franciscan friar LUIS FLORES (fl. 1637–1653) was named superintendent of works for the
desagüe (drainage system) of the Valley of Mexico in 1637. The first Franciscan (of four) to
hold this position, Flores modified Enrico Martínez’s tunnel system by opening up 1.8 miles (3
km) of the tunnel. On April 14, 1653, Flores wrote a report (Memorial) to the viceroy about the
work carried out thus far. Flores was replaced by fellow Franciscan Bernardino de la Concepción
in 1653 who held the office from 1653 to 1665. See also Manuel de Cabrera.
II.117. Educated at the University of Alcala, Spanish clergyman Marcos de TORRES y Rueda
(1591–1649) became professor of theology at his alma mater and rector of the College of San
Nicolás. He served as bishop of Yucatán from 1646 to 1649 and as interim governor of the
viceroyalty of New Spain and president of the Audiencia de México from 1648 to 1649.
II.117. Trained at the University of Salamanca and a lecturer at the universities of Burgos,
Valladolid, and Alcala, the Spanish clergyman Payo ENRÍQUEZ DE RIBERA Manrique (1622–
1684) of the Order of Saint Augustine was bishop of Guatemala (1657–67), archbishop of
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Mexico (1668–81), and viceroy of New Spain (1673–80). He introduced the first printing press
to Guatemala in 1660. After his terms as viceroy and archbishop, Ribera retired to the monastery
El Risco in Ávila (Spain) in 1681.
II.117. Spanish colonial administrator MARTÍN DE SOLÍS y Miranda (fl. 1671–1706) was the
royal prosecutor and a judge in the Audiencia (judicial court) of Mexico from 1671 to 1686.
Solís requested the position of superintendent of the Desagüe (drainage system) in the Valley of
Mexico. Promising to finish a project that would prevent further flooding of the City of Mexico
in just two months and with fewer than 400 laborers, he secured the position in 1675 and
replaced Manuel Cabrera, but only temporarily. Although the drainage system was (once again)
officially inaugurated on July 3, 1675, it (once again) did not work. As a result, Cabrera was
reinstated. Back in Spain, Solís became judge at the Chancery of Granada and later served on the
Council of the Indies.
II.118. Spanish military engineer FRANCISCO POZUELO ESPINOSA (1651–1691) was technical
adviser to Martín de Solís during the Desagüe (drainage system) fiasco in 1675. He was among
the engineers who reported on the state of the drainage system in 1687. After he had passed the
required examinations, the Council of the Indies stationed Pozuelo in New Spain at the rank of
assistant engineer. There, he worked on designs for the defense of the Castle of San Juan de Ulúa
from 1673 to 1674 and Nueva Veracruz in 1683. Pozuelo’s plans are reproduced in José Antonio
Calderón Quijano’s Fortificaciones en Nueva España by (Madrid: Escuela de Estudios
Hispanoamericanos, 1984).
II.118. Spanish military officer Melchor Antonio Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega, COUNT OF
MONCLOVA (1636–1705), was viceroy of New Spain from 1686 to 1688 and of Peru from 1689
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to 1705. He was the last person to be promoted from the viceroyalty of New Spain to that of
Peru. Having lost an arm during the Battle of the Dunes (1658), he was known as “Brazo de
Plata” (silver arm). As viceroy of New Spain and minister of the Council of the Indies, the count
focused on protecting Spanish interests in Texas and Coahuila, especially from the French, and
in the Gulf of Mexico.
II.118. Spanish friar MANUEL CABRERA (fl. 1652–1691) arrived in New Spain in August 1645.
After finishing his studies in theology, he was appointed preacher and confessor at the convents
of San Francisco of Puebla in 1652. Thereafter, he worked as a guardian, vicar, and director of
several convents, including that of Santa María de la Redonda in Mexico City. In 1665, Cabrera
was appointed superintendent of the drainage system for the Valley of Mexico and replaced
Father Bernardino de la Concepción (tenure 1653–65). Cabrera’s first term as head of works for
the Desagüe lasted for a decade, from 1665 to 1675. He was replaced by Martín Solís, who
promised to finish the long-awaited drainage system in a mere two months. Because of Solís’s
disappointing performance, Cabrera was reinstated in 1687 for another four years. Cabrera
criticized and lampooned Solís for the work on the Desagüe the latter had purportedly completed
in Verdad aclarada y desvanecidas imposturas (Cleared-up truth and disappeared deception,
1688–89).
II.131n. Novo–Spanish architect ILDEFONSO DE INIESTA Bejarano Durán (also Yniesta and
Vejarano, 1716–1781) was among the most notable artists of the mid-eighteenth century. Iniesta
had worked as a planner for the maintenance of roads, streets, avenues, and other transportation
venues since 1747. In 1763, he secured the position of construction project manager of Mexico
City. Among other achievements, Iniesta is credited with the designs of the façade of the Temple
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of San Felipe Neri (1753–58), the reconstruction of the church of San Francisco Xavier de
Tepotzotlan (1760–62), and the exterior façade and some interior spaces of the University of
Mexico (1758–61). Also a land surveyor, Iniesta wrote a report on the drainage system of the
Valley of Mexico in 1764, which Joaquín Velázquez de León considered inaccurate. In a
second report from 1774, in which he acknowledged his earlier mistake, Iniesta included maps of
of Lakes Chalco and Xochimilco in 1769. (That report is housed in the Archivo General de la
Nación; Desagüe, vol. 19.)
II.131n. PHILIP II of Spain (1527–1598) was king of Castile (as Philip II) and king of Naples,
Aragon, Sicily, and Portugal (as Philip I). Under his rule (1556–1598), Spain reached the height
of its global power and influence.
II. 132. Roman architect and engineer VITRUVIUS (fl. 70–15 BCE) is the author of the ten-book
De architectura—commonly known as Ten Books on Architecture. The only major treatise on
classical building design still extant, De architectura contains a plethora of information about
Greek and Roman art and architecture. A continuing authoritative source on Classicism,
Vitruvius’s work was possibly written between 33 and 14 BCE. De architectura has been
enormously influential since the Renaissance. The famous drawing “Vitruvian Man” by
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), in which the naked male body is bounded by a circle and a
square, is based on Vitruvian’s image of a man as the measure of proportion.
II.137n. HERODOTUS (c. 485–425 BCE), whom Cicero called the “father of history,” is the author
of the nine-volume Histories, a magisterial account of the historical context during the times of
ancient Greece, gathered on Herod’s extensive travels in the eastern Mediterranean world. His
meticulous proto-historical studies may be considered a polycentric and comparative narrative
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that moves among different voices, stories, and points of view. Together, they render the
magnitude of the wars between Greece and the expanding Persian Empire (492–479 BCE), of
whose genealogical and dynastic emergence Herodotus gives an extensive account. For
centuries, his historiographical achievements were regarded as the epitome of the empirical and
critical gathering of historical knowledge.
II.141. Swiss meteorologist and geologist Jean André DELUC (1727–1818) published his two-
volume Recherches sur les modifications de l’atmosphère (Researches on atmospheric changes)
in 1772. In it, he described experiments with moisture, evaporation, and the indications of
HYGROMETERS and thermometers. The following year, when he moved to England, the
Philosophical Transactions of 1773 printed his account of a new hygrometer that resembled a
mercurial thermometer. It had an ivory bulb that expanded as the humidity increased and caused
the mercury to move down a tube. The hygrometers Humboldt used for measuring the air’s
humidity in the tropics had all been built by the Genovese instrument-maker Théodore Marc Paul
(1760–1832). They were of two kinds: the whalebone hygrometers by André Deluc (1727–1827)
and the hair tension hygrometers by Saussure. Deluc’s concept was based on a thin whalebone
lamella that could alter its size by a maximum of ten percent, depending on its absorption of the
air’s humidity. The length of the fiber was then passed on to a needle pinpointing the rate of
moisture. Deluc’s rival Saussure used the same method, but instead of a whalebone, his
measuring fiber was dehumidified and degreased human hair. Both methods were designed for
travel and much needed during Humboldt’s expeditions. But the instruments lacked
standardization, so Humboldt had to rely on relative values for the degrees of humidity.
Humboldt’s barometers and hygrometers nonetheless provided valuable data for his studies on
the climates in the Americas. Gathering his own data on air pressure, temperature, and humidity
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and comparing that data to other sources, Humboldt was able to compose his isothermal map that
shows lines that connect different sites of average-year temperatures around the globe. The
underlying idea was inspired by the work of Tobias Mayer and also by the ongoing research on
Earth magnetism. Magnetic lines displayed the global distribution of magnetic inclination,
declination, and intensity. Humboldt alludes to these so-called isogonic curves in his Cosmos
(vol. IV), erroneously attributing them to the British astronomer Edmund Halley (1656–1742). In
fact, these lines were first drawn and presented by the Swedish physicist Johan Carl Wilke
(1732–96). Humboldt himself considered his system of isothermal lines, which he first presented
to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1817, one of his key contributions to science. Today, it is
regarded as a major example of early global climate studies.
II.143. Gaspar Clair François Marie Riche de PRONY, the Baron Riche of Prony (1755–1839),
was a French engineer. A land registrar since 1791, he oversaw the introduction of new
trigonometric tables. A member of the French Academy of Sciences since 1795, he also
measured the speed of sound with great precision and was very much involved in public works.
II.144. British industrial entrepreneur and ironmaster William REYNOLDS (1758–1803) studied
chemistry and owned a sizeable geological collection. In 1786, he led the construction of the Tar
Tunnel, a canal tunnel in the north bank of the River Severn for mining purposes. In 1787,
Reynolds built the Ketley Canal with a self-acting inclined plane, the first to be used in mainland
Britain. He also worked on the Shropshire Canal (1788–92), the Shrewsbury Canal, and
established the canal port, known as Coalport, at the Ironbridge Gorge. Among his most
significant inventions was the process for making manganese steel, which he patented in 1799.
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Reynold’s sketchbook, in which he illustrated his many engineering pursuits, is preserved in the
library of the Science Museum in London.
II.144. Before turning to engineering, USAmerican naval inventor Robert FULTON (1765–1815)
was a portrait painter for the British aristocracy. Having migrated to England around 1787 to
study painting, he later became interested in canal design and construction (1791–94). In 1793,
Fulton advocated for the use of inclined planes on the Bude Canal. His Treatise on the
Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796) established him as a civil engineer. Before returning to
the USA in 1806, Fulton worked as contractor on the peak Forest Canal. He also invented the
first successful steamboat, the North River Steam Boat. Seven years later, his company
controlled steamboats on the Hudson, Delaware, Potomac, James, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers
and the Chesapeake Bay.
II.144. British inventor Lawson HUDDLESTON (1754–1811) wrote “Method of conveying boats
and barges from a higher to a lower level, and the contrary, on canals, by means of a plunger,
instead of losing water by locks.” It was published by William Nicholson in A Journal of
Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts in 1803. British composer John Marsh (1752–1828)
dedicated his Introduction to the Theory of Harmonics (1809) to his friend Huddleston who had
nurtured his initial idea for the work.
II.144. Canarian engineer Agustín de BETANCOURT y Molina (1758–1824), who became
acquainted with Humboldt in Spain, served the Spanish Crown until 1808 and the Russian
Empire from that time until his death. Betancourt is known for his inventions in early
telegraphing and for his contributions to the Essai sur la Composition des Machines (1808)
considered the first modern treatise on machines. With his coauthor, José María de Lanz y
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Zaldívar (1764–1839) from New Spain, Betancourt was the first to propose, in the Essai, a
classification of mechanisms based on the transformation of motion. In 1808, Betancourt left
Spain to work for Czar Alexander I (1777–1825) in Russia, where he held various prestigious
positions. In addition to authoring several manuscripts on engineering, Betancourt y Molina
published the Mémoire sur la force expansive de la vapeur de l’eau (Report on the expansive
power of steam, 1790).
II.146. Of Franco-Spanish extraction, José de la Borda Sánchez aka JOSEPH DE LABORDE (1699–
1778) was once the wealthiest man in New Spain. He is not to be confused with the French
banker Jean-Joseph de Laborde (1724–94). Borda arrived in New Spain in 1716, eight years after
his older brother, Francisco, had emigrated there. After working with his brother, Borda set off
by himself to find new mineral strikes. He founded a successful mine in Tlalpujahua in 1734. In
1738, Francisco died, and Borda inherited his property. Borda’s deeper exploration of his
brother’s La Alajuela mine yielded an abundance of silver. It is from this strike that he first
funded the building of the Santa Prisca Church in Taxco in 1751. His aim in constructing this
magnificent edifice was to create a space where the priest Manuel de la Borda y Verdugo, his
son, could officiate mass. It took fifteen years to complete the structure and turn the church into
one of the most richly adorned baroque monuments in New Spain. Borda is also remembered for
founding the Borda House in the historic center of Mexico City and the Borda Garden in
Cuernavaca. The circumstances Humboldt recounts here have to do with Borda’s mortgaging the
church in Taxco in 1761, when he was practically bankrupt, to finance an expedition to
Zacatecas. The second mine Borda worked there, fittingly called “La Esperanza” (hope), restored
to him his former wealth and status as a mining magnate.
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II.148n. JUAN IGNACIO BRIONES (fl. 1793–1803) was assistant commissioner for the office of
War and Treasury in Querétaro. A landowner, he held an administrative position in Querétaro
from at least 1793 to 1803. In the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, there is a census
report with information for Querétaro for 1793 (Box 4934, Exp. 051) which Briones wrote to
viceroy Revillagigedo. This report might be similar to the manuscript about Querétaro Briones
shared with Humboldt.
II.151n. The ancient town of Tentyris or Tentyra (today’s Dendera) lies on the west bank of the
Nile in central Egypt. It is best known for the famous, well-preserved temple complex of Hathor,
whose construction lasted for over 200 years, from the reign of the Greek Emperor Ptolemy VI
(180–145 BCE) to that of the Roman Emperor Nero (37–68, r. 54–68). The composition and
design of the temple’s columns and its colonnaded street added new ornamentation and detail
that would become typical of Egyptian architecture in the Greco-Roman Period. Some of these
ornamentations were first sketched by Dominique Vivant DENON (1747–1825), a French writer,
diplomat, and antiquary. Director-general of the Imperial Museums (today’s Louvre) during the
Napoleonic Empire (1804–14), Denon had taken part in Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821)
Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) as his chronicler and courtier, a position that Denon had already
held at the Court of Louis XV (1710–74). Denon’s own impressions of the Egyptian expedition
were woven into his epic Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte pendant les campagnes du
Général Bonaparte (Voyage in Lower and Upper Egypt during the campaigns of General
Bonaparte, 1802), which made him well known among European archeologists and other
scholars.
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II.152. North Africa–born French military officer Jacques François Louis GROBERT (b. 1757)
wrote about the Pyramids of Giza in his Description des Pyramides de Ghizé de la ville du Kaire
et de ses environs (1801). He had entered the Tuscan artillery in 1773 and the French artillery in
the 1790s. By the early 1880s, he was stationed in Giza. In addition to publications on artillery,
mechanics, and opera, Grobert critically reviewed British army officer and military writer Henry
Lloyd’s (c. 1718–83) work on the defense of Great Britain: Observations sur les memoire du
général Lloyd concernant l’invasion et la defense la Grande-Bretagne (1803).
II.156. Spanish military officer MANUEL DE FLON y Tejada, count de la Cadena (d. 1811), was
governor and intendant of Puebla de los Ángeles from 1785 to 1811. He was killed during the
royalist victory over Hidalgo’s army at the battle of Calderón near Guadalajara.
II.163. A supporter of the independence movement in New Spain, Novo–Spanish mathematician
José Antonio ROJAS (also Roxas, b. 1773) met Humboldt in Guanajuato. A professor at the
Colegio de la Purísima Concepción in Guanajuato since 1803, Rojas was named chemistry
professor at the School of Mines in Mexico City. Having been condemned by the Inquisition for
heresy in 1804, Rojas died in exile in the United States.
II.165n. NIVOSE was the fifth month in the French Republican calendar. It started on December
21 and ended on January 19. The French Republican calendar started retroactively with the year I
on September 22, 1792. The new calendar was not officially adopted until late in 1793, during
the radical republican phase of the French Revolution known as the Reign of Terror (September
1793 to July 1794). Reforming the society in its reference to time and space with the goal of
counteracting superstition, fanaticism, and even Christian festivals, the calendar was the creation
of the mathematicians Charles Gilbert Romme (1750–1795) and Gaspard Monge, Count de
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Péluse (1746– 1818), the poets André de Chénier (1762–1794) and Philippe-François-Nazaire
Fabre d’Eglantine (1755–1794), and the painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), among
others. Lalande was also involved in the creation of the calendar. Napoleon I (1769–1821)
abandoned the Republican Calendar in 1806.
II.167. Guatemalan Jesuit poet RAFAEL LANDÍVAR (1731–1793) is the author of Rusticatio
mexicana, a poem in Latin hexameter that praised indigenous customs and traditions. After
completing his education at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, Landívar was ordained in
the Society of Jesus in 1755. Because of the Jesuit expulsion in 1767, Landívar lived in exile in
Bologna, Italy. He composed and published Rusticatio mexicana in Bologna in 1781.
II.171. Spanish merchant and landowner José ANDRÉS PIMENTEL y Sotomayor (d. 1768) was
town councilor of Patzcuaro. He had arrived in New Spain in 1727 and, since 1740, owned the
hacienda San Pedro del Jorullo, a sugar plantation and cattle ranch that was destroyed on
September 29, 1759, during the birth of El Jorullo, a cinder cone volcano. El Jorullo destroyed
the previously rich agricultural region that surrounded it with continuous eruptions that lasted for
fifteen years (until 1774), the longest activity span ever recorded for a cinder cone volcano. After
the disaster that befell his property, Pimentel took the opportunity to gain a tax exemption from
the Audiencia of Mexico to set up a meat business in Valladolid and other large commercial
centers. He became the main provider of meat in the region for four years (1761–65). Pimentel
also tried his luck in the silver mining business, exploiting the mines San Miguel and La Soledad
in the mining district of Curucupaseo, Michoacán.
II.178. Spanish clergyman, social reformer, and educator VASCO DE QUIROGA (c. 1470–1565)
was judge of the second Audiencia of New Spain (1531–35) and the first bishop of Michoacán
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(1538–65). He had arrived in Mexico City in 1530 and was elected to the bishopric of
Michoacán six years later; he held this position until 1539. Quiroga wrote Carta al Consejo de
Indias (Letter to the Council of the Indies, 1531), Información en Derecho (1535), Reglas y
ordenanzas (c. 1565), and Testamento (1565). Inspired by Thomas More’s (c. 1477–1535)
Utopia, Quiroga founded a series of so-called hospital towns, self-regulated towns in which
indigenous peoples could live self-sufficiently and independently of the Spanish colonists. The
first of these towns was Santa Fé near Mexico City.
II.178. A Spanish missionary and Dominican priest, BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS (1484–1566)
came to La Isla Española (today’s Haiti and Dominican Republic) in 1502, with his father, Pedro
de Las Casas, who was part of Columbus’s second journey. In 1511, Las Casas joined the
conquest of Cuba by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (c. 1461–1524) who offered Las Casas an
encomienda, a special form of repartimiento, in the form of lands or Indians. The encomienda
system was a common practice among Spanish conquerors until 1542, when it was prohibited by
Spanish law. Like most Dominican clerics an adversary of the encomienda, Las Casas finally
abandoned his life as an encomendero in Cuba and tried to establish a better form of coexistence
with the indigenous populations in his attempt of autonomous Dominican colonization and
missionary work near Cumaná. Because of repeated attacks by Spanish slave hunters, the project
soon failed. Shocked by the brutality with which the Spanish treated the so-called Indians, Las
Casas became an eager defender of the indigenous cause, first as head of the Dominican mission
in Verapaz, Guatemala, and then as bishop of the Mexican province of Chiapas from 1544 to
1546. Frustrated by his experiences, Las Casas returned to Spain in 1547, where his political
efforts to denounce the systematic violence against the indigenous peoples culminated in the
famous “Dispute of Valladolid” in 1550. In this public controversy, the Dominican cleric became
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the “Defender of the Indians,” arguing against Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1494–1573) who was
intent on legitimizing violent colonization and the enslavement of the indigenous populations as
a natural right and part of a just war against barbaric pagans. In the end, Las Casas won the
argument, which had a positive impact on the colonial legislation of the sixteenth century, known
as the “Leyes de Indias.” But Las Casas’s writings were even more influential. The Historia de
las Indias (The History of the Indies, completed in 1561) is one of the most famous early
chronicles of the Spanish “discoveries” and an authoritative biography of Columbus. The
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the
Indies, 1552) a shocking report of the Spanish violence against indigenous peoples, became a
key document in rival colonial competitors’—Britain, France and Holland—propagandist efforts
against Spain. Important contexts for the controversies surrounding the abolition of slavery in
later centuries, both the Historia and the Brevísima relación are crucial to understanding the
history of the Americas. Because of his proposal to replace indigenous peoples with African
slaves (which he later withdrew), Las Casas’s personal and political integrity has often been
called into question. Humboldt, however, typically emphasized Las Casas’s humanitarian goals.
II.183. A Novo–Spanish lawyer from Zacatecas, José GARCÉS y Eguía (d. 1824) was a graduate
of the Royal School of Mines and member of the Mining Board. Garcés published Nueva
Teórica y Práctica del beneficio del oro y plata por fundición y amalgamación (New theory and
practice of the benefit of gold and silver for smelting and amalgamation, 1802).
II.187. The gable-roofed Tomba di Annia Regilla (.61 CE) was thought to be the temple of DEUS
REDICOLUS (more properly spelled Deus Rediculus or God of Return) that marked the spot where
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Hannibal turned back and began his retreat in 211 BCE. The temple is today regarded as the
tomb of Annia Regilla (d. 161), wife of politician and writer Herodes Atticus (103–177).
II.190. NIMA QUICHÉ (or Nima K’iche’) was an allied Quiché-speaking group that formed a
powerful military state in the highlands of Guatemala (zenith c. 1450). The Nima Quiché
occupied Utlatlán (Quiché = K’umarcaah or Place of the Ancient Reeds), the capital of the
Quiché Maya confederation.
II.190. Humboldt’s Plate XI in Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous
Peoples of the Americas shows a stucco bas-relief from the northern part of the pre-Columbian
Maya Palace at PALENQUE, a Maya city and ceremonial center located at the foot of the
northernmost hills of the Chiapas highlands and overlooking the forest of the Gulf coast plain.
The Palace, with its impressive four-story tower, is the central and largest building of the site that
also includes a ballcourt and several temples. With several interior courts, galleries, and rooms,
the palace served as the residence of most of Palenque’s rulers. Its stucco, once painted, is one of
the finest in the world. Palenque was occupied from c. 1500 BCE until eighth century CE. The
drawing on which the Plate is based was created by Ricardo or Ignacio Almendáriz (fl. c. 1787),
the artist who accompanied artillery captain Antonio del Río (fl. 1786–1789) on an excavation of
the Maya site at Palenque in 1787. Almendáriz prepared thirty—often inaccurate—figures on
twenty-six sheets. They were part of del Ríos’s report, Description of the Ruin of an Ancient City
Discovered near Palenque from 1787. The report’s manuscript is housed at the Academía Real
de Historia in Madrid, Spain.
II.191. Nicolas-Joseph THIÉRY DE MENONVILLE (1739–1780) was a French botanist who, in
1776, volunteered to be sent to Mexico by the French Ministry of the Navy to attempt to break
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the Spanish trade monopoly in cochineal, an insect valued for its scarlet dye. On his clandestine
mission, he worked without official papers and would have been treated brutally had he been
caught. He succeeded in obtaining and naturalizing the insect and the prickly pear nopal cactus
on which it depended in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. He describes his exploits in
Voyage à Oaxaca (Travels to Oaxaca, 1787).
II.192. French military physician Nicolas Pierre GILBERT (1751–1814) became a professor at the
Military School Hospital Val-de-Grace in Paris in 1796 and physician in chief of the army in
1806. He had begun his career as a surgeon of the Navy in 1770 and was deployed to the East
Indies. Before being named chief medical officer at Sambre-et-Meuse (1795) and professor at
Val-de-Grace, he studied medicine at Angers and served as president of the administration of the
French department of Ille-et-Vilaine from 1791 to 1794). In 1802, Gilbert was dispatched to
Saint-Domingue, where he served as head military physician until 1806. A correspondent of the
Academy of Medicine, his held the position of physician in chief of the army for six years, until
1812.
II.195. Thought to be born and educated in the Yucatán, clergyman PEDRO BELTRÁN de Santa
Rosa María (fl. 1705–1757) was a grammarian who lived in the Convent of San Pedro y San
Pablo de Teabo in Yucatán. Trained in Latin grammar at the Jesuit Colegio in Mérida, 1705, he
joined the Franciscan Convent in Merida in 1705, became a member of the Franciscan Order in
1713, and rose to the office of custodian of the order in Yucatán between 1720 and 1740. A
teacher of the Maya language in the convent, he published a collection of prayers titled Novena
de Christo crucificado con oraciones en lengua Maya (1740) and Declaración de la Doctrina
Christiana en el Idioma yucateco (1757). In 1746, he published Arte de el idioma Maya reducido
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a succintas reglas y semilexicón Yucateco (The art of the Mayan language reduced to concise
rules and a Yucateco semi-lexicon).
II.195. Spanish Franciscan ANDRÉS DE AVENDAÑO y Loyola (1695–1705) was a missionary in
seventeenth-century Middle-America (Yucatán). On two, possibly three, occasions, he visited the
territory of the Itza and Cehach in present-day Petén. He left an extensive report of his journey in
1696, on the eve of the conquest of the Maya by Martín de Ursúa (1653–1715). After his sojourn
to Petén, Avendaño became a member of the provincial council of the Franciscan Province of
Yucatán (1705). His travelogues were edited by Temis Vayhinger-Scheer and published as
Relación de las dos entradas que hice a la conversión de los gentiles ytzáex, y cehaches in 1997.
An English edition was published by Frank E. Comparato as Relation of Two Trips to Petén
made for the Conversion of the Heathen Ytzaex and Cehaches in 1987.
II.195. Having arrived in Yucatán in 1573, Franciscan friar ANTONIO DE CIUDAD REAL (1551–
1617) was secretary to Alonso Ponce (fl. 1584–89), commissary-general for the Franciscan
Order in New Spain. During Ponce’s inspections of the Franciscan provinces from Guadalajara
to Nicaragua, Ciudad Real most likely served as a scribe. His report of Ponce’s visit, which
provides invaluable detail about life in Middle America at the end of the 1500s, was published in
two volumes as Relación breve verdadera de algunas cosas de las muchas que sucedieron al
Padre Fray Alonso Ponce en las provincias de la Nueva España in 1873. Ciudad Real is thought
to be the compilator of a Motul dictionary written between 1584 and 1610 and published by
René Acuña as Calepino Maya de Motul in 1984.
II.195. Franciscan missionary LUIS DE VILLALPANDO (d. c. 1552) arrived at the Yucatán
peninsula from Guatemala in 1544 to become the head of the order there. Founding Mérida in
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1542, he established the first Maya schools in 1547 and was a teacher of the indigenous
languages to newcomers. In his efforts to control and convert the Maya, he burned many of their
manuscript writings. It is believed that he wrote an Arte y vocabulario de la lengua de Yucatán o
lengua maya, which did not survive.
II.195. Francisco HERNÁNDEZ DE CÓRDOBA (also Córdova, d. 1517) was the first Spanish
conquistador to make landfall on the east coast of Yucatán, intentionally and not by error. He
took part in the conquest of Cuba under the command of Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (c. 1461–
1524). From Cuba, Hernández de Córdoba sailed with three ships in search of slaves, reaching
Cozumel Island (Mexico) about 150 miles east of Cuba. He continued northwest to Cabo
Catoche (present-day Quintana Roo, Mexico) and landed in Campeche on February 23, 1517,
where he was repeatedly wounded during a battle with the indigenous population. He succumbed
to his wounds shortly after returning to Cuba with news about gold in the Yucatán. He is not to
be confused with his namesake Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (d. 1526), also a Spanish
conquistador who sailed the Río Desagüadero (now Río San Juan) and founded the cities of
Granada and León in Nicaragua.
II.206n. The engraver is Jean-Baptiste Louis MASSARD (1772–1810). His “Bust of a Mexica
Priestess” dates from 1805 and is now housed at the Bibliothèque National de France.
II.208. Pedro José MÁRQUEZ (1741–1820) was forced to leave New Spain, the land of his birth,
when Spain expelled the Jesuits from its colonies in 1767. In Due antichi Monumenti (Two
ancient monuments), his short study on two pre-Columbian Mexica ruins (Tajín, Xochicalco),
Márquez partly adopted Alzate y Ramírez’s 1791 “Descripción de las antigüedades de
Xochicalco” and expressed his deep concern for the indigenous cultures of Mexico. Due antichi
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Monumenti is among the many early historiographical and archeological accounts of Mexico, the
most famous of them Clavijero’s Storia antica del Messico.
II.210. Spanish colonial administrator Gaspar de Zúñiga y Acevedo (1560–1606), COUNT OF
MONTERREY, was viceroy of New Spain from 1595 to 1603 and of Peru from 1604 to 1606.
During his tenure in New Spain, he continued the administration’s policy of expansion and
supported land and maritime explorations, including travels by Sebastián Vizcaíno to the
Atlantic and by Juan de Oñate y Salazar to New Mexico. Vizcaíno named present-day
Monterey (California) in Zúñiga y Acevedo’s honor.
II.212. PHILIP V (1683–1746) was king of Spain from 1700 to 1724, when he abdicated in favor
of his son Louis, only to reassume the throne in August 1724 upon his son’s untimely death. The
first member of the House of Bourbon to rule Spain, Philip V reigned for a total of more than
forty-five years—the longest reign in modern Spanish history.
II.217. Humboldt is possibly referring to maps by Nicolás Lafora, Manuel Agustín Mascaró,
and Miguel Costanzó of the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers. Lafora’s map, dated July 27,
1771, is entitled “Mapa de la Frontera del Virreinato de Nueva España” (Map of the border of
the viceroyality of New Spain). One of Mascaró’s many cartographic works is dated July 29,
1782, and is titled “Mapa geográfico de una gran parte de la América septentrional”
(Geographical map of a large part of South America). The “Mapa geográfico” is based on
Costanzó’s “Carta reducida del Oceano Asiático ó Mar del Súr,” dated October 30, 1770. The
first two maps are housed at the British Library (MS 17,660a and 17,652a). Costanzó’s map, the
original of which is at the Real Academia de Historia (Spain), is available online at Spain’s
Virtual Library of Bibliographical Heritage (http://bvpb.mcu.es).
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II.221. Humboldt refers here to the ill-fated settlement that the Frenchman René-Robert Cavelier,
Sieur DE LA SALLE (1643–1687), who explored the Great Lakes region of the USA and Canada,
the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico, established on the Texas coast in the summer of
1685. As a result of faulty geography, La Salle believed that the Mississippi River emptied into
the Gulf of Mexico in the Texas coastal bend. The settlement he founded on the right bank of
Garcitas Creek in southern Victoria County (Texas) was called Fort St. Louis. His colony gave
the French a claim to Texas and caused the Spaniards to occupy eastern Texas and Pensacola. It
later gave the USA the ability to claim Texas as part of the Louisiana Purchase (1804). While La
Salle had the merit of having discovered the last 700 miles of the lower course of the Mississippi
and was responsible for opening the Mississippi Valley for development, he proved as inept as
he was bold and indirectly caused the death of most of the 200 colonists who landed in Texas in
1685. La Salle never did locate the mouth of the Mississippi, and his Fort St. Louis colony lasted
for only another year after his violent death.
II.224. A corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, French naval captain
Pierre Marie Francois de PAGÈS (1748–1793) deserted his ship in Saint-Domingue in mid-1767
to commence his own voyage around the world. Pagès sailed for New Orleans and then set out
for Texas, taking the route Humboldt describes, now known as the Old San Antonio Road. When
Pagès returned to France four years later by way of the Far East, the king, rather surprisingly,
forgave him for his desertion and reinstated him. This has raised the suspicion that the captain
might have been on an unofficial government mission. In 1776, Pagès fought with the French
navy against the USAmerican revolutionaries and later retired to a plantation in Haiti, where he
was slain during a slave uprising. Questions have been raised about the authenticity of Pagès’s
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narrative, Voyage autor de monde (Travels around the World, 1791). Humboldt’s comments on
Pagès in these pages laid most doubts to rest.
II.227. REAL DE CATORCE is located near the city of Matehuala in the State of San Luis Potosí in
north-central Mexico. Sebastián Coronado (fl. 1772–1779) and Manuel Martínez (fl. 1772)
discovered a silver vein there in 1772 and requested that the location be registered as a mining
district. In 1778, Bernabé Antonio de Zepeda found and registered a rich silver vein famously
called “La Veta Grande” (The large vein) in the Sierra de Catorce. Zepeda’s discovery caused a
silver rush. A year later, Coronado registered the mines “Santísima Trinidad” and “La
Descubridora.” Zepeda continued with a successful mining enterprise as owner of three mines,
“La Concepción,” “Guadalupe,” and “San Miguel.” Although the mining district was initially
named Real de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Guadalupe de Álamos, the name “Catorce”
was added in 1777.
II.230. The recipient of a doctorate of canon law from the University of Caracas, Spanish
clergyman Pedro TAMARÓN y Romeral (1695–1768) was appointed bishop of Durango, Nueva
Vizcaya, in 1758, a post he served until his death. Tamarón had previously served as rector of the
cathedral at Caracas in 1727 and had been a censor for the Inquisition there. Once in New Spain,
Tamarón carried out a series of episcopal inspections of his jurisdiction, the Tierra Caliente (hot
land). His travel journal, Demostración del vastísimo obispado de la Nueva Vizcaya 1765 was
first published and edited by Mexican historian Vito Alessio Robles in 1937.
II.235. In 1783, Spanish military officer Miguel RUBÍN DE CELIS (b. 1746) inspected the Mesón
de Fierro, a large mass of iron located in the Campo del Cielo in present-day Argentina. Leading
a group of 200 men to examine the iron deposit, he drew a map of the location and sketches of
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the metal; both are housed at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. Rubín de Celis sent
several iron samples to European institutions for further analysis and wrote a detailed report to
the then-viceroy of Buenos Aires, Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo (1719–1799), which is kept at
the Archivo General de la Nación Argentina. Joseph Banks read a letter at the Royal Society of
London about the expedition in November 1787; it was later published in English and Spanish in
the Philosophical Transactions. The first European to inspect the Mesón was Hernán Mexia de
Miraval in 1576; his account is lost. The Hoyo Rubín de Celis, the meteorite crater he also
inspected, is named after him. In addition to writing about the amalgamation of metals, Rubín de
Celis published a pamphlet supporting the ideals of the French Revolution while he was living in
France. His Discours sur les Principes fondamentaux d'une Constitution libre (Discourse on the
fundamental principles of a free constitution, 1792) was widely disseminated in Buenos Aires.
Because of his support of the French cause, Rubín de Celis was investigated and stripped of his
military rank in 1793; his possessions were also confiscated.
II.235. Educated at the universities of Berlin, Halle, Göttingen, and Leiden, Berlin-born
naturalist Peter Simon PALLAS (1741–1811) was elected a foreign member of the British Royal
Society at the age of twenty-three. After exploring natural history collections in London,
Amsterdam, and The Hague, he accepted the invitation of Russian Empress Catherine II (1729–
1796) in 1768 to become a professor of natural history at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in
St. Petersburg. For the next eight years, he participated in a scientific expedition throughout
Russia and Siberia, whose immediate purpose was to observe the transit of Venus in 1769. This
expedition proved remarkably fruitful. Pallas began to set down the results of his observations in
1771 as Reisen durch verschiedende Provinzen des Russischen Reichs (Travels through the
southern provinces of the Russian empire, 1812). Worthy of special mention is also his collection
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of historical information about the Mongolian people (Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten
über die Mongolischen Völkerschaften, 1776–1802). The empress bought Pallas’s impressive
natural history collection for well above the asking price and allowed him to keep it for life. In
1793–94, Pallas undertook another expedition, this time to the southern parts of Russia. The
results of that voyage saw print as Bemerkungen auf einer Reise durch die südliche
Statthalterschaft des Russischen Reiches (Observations made during a journey through the
southern province of the Russian empire, 1799–81). Pallas was also editor of and contributor to
the journal Neue Nordische Beiträge zur physikalischen Erd- und Völkerbeschreibung,
Natugeschichte, und Ökonomie (Nordic contributions to the physical description of lands and
peoples, 1781–96). He eventually moved to the Crimea, where he resided until 1810 when he
returned to Berlin.
II.241. An ancient region of southeast Europe and Asia (8th–2th century BCE), SCYTHIA was an
extensive wide territory that stretched from north of the Danube to the northern Caucasus (parts
of present-day Ukraine, Russia, and Western Asia). Greeks and Romans used the word “Scythia”
to talk about the lands to their north and east. “Scythia extra Imaum” means Scythia east of
Imaus; it refers to the lands beyond Imaus, the mountain system in Central Asia (Himalayas).
II.242. In 1771, Spanish Franciscan missionary Francisco Tomás Hermenegildo GARCÉS (1738–
1781) traveled through the present-day southwest USA across the Yuma and Colorado deserts.
Ordained a priest in 1763 and arriving in New Spain three years later, he was appointed to the
remaining Jesuit missions in today’s Arizona in 1768. He was part of a reconnaissance journey to
California under military commander Juan Bautista de Anza (1736–1788) in 1774–75. Garcés’s
diaries were published as On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer in 1900.
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II.242. For FONT, see above.
II.242n. Franciscan missionary and historian Juan Domingo ARRICIVITA (1720–1794) published
the second part of Isidro Félix de Espinosa’s (1679–1755) Crónica de los Colegios de
Propaganda Fide de la Nueva España (Apostolic and seraphic chronicle of the schools of the
Propaganda Fide in New Spain). Born in Toledo, Arricivita had entered the College of Santa
Cruz de Querétaro in 1735. In 1768, he traveled to Spain to recruit Franciscan missionaries to
replace the expelled Jesuits in Coahuila, Texas, and Sonora. From 1777 to 1794, Arricivita
served as assistant to the superior of the College at Querétaro, where he was also representative
of the Franciscan community at the Pimería Alta. Selected as the official chronicler of the
college in 1787, he focused on the life and missionary work of the Franciscans Order of the
College at Querétaro in Sonora and around the Colorado and Gila Rivers. Arricivita’s Crónica
from 1792 is considered a continuation of Espinosa’s work from 1746 and the last classic
Franciscan chronicle in New Spain. Translated into English by George P. Hammond (1896–
1993) and Agapito Rey (1892–1987), it appeared as Apostolic Chronicle of Juan Domingo
Arricivita in 1996.
II.243. European explorers in America sought the legendary city of QUIVIRA, believed to be full
of gold and other riches. As the Spanish expedition continued farther inland, the locale of this
fantastic city kept being reimagined. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1510–1554), for example,
sought the mythical city as far as present-day central Kansas, of course in vain. See also Marcos
de Niza.
II.248. Novo–Spanish explorer JUAN DE OÑATE y Salazar (c. 1551–1626) established the colony
of New Mexico for Spain. In 1595, Oñate had received authorization to colonize and the
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privilege of claiming land (that is, becoming an adelantado) from Luis de Velasco I and set out
for New Mexico in late 1597. After crossing the Rio Grande at present-day El Paso in 1598,
Oñate took formal possession of the province of New Mexico in April of that year. Forever in
search of gold and fame, he tried unsuccessfully to find the fabled city of Quivira and the
legendary Northwest Passage as far north as Kansas and west to the Gulf of California. Oñate
resigned his post as governor in 1607, returned to Mexico City, and was tried for cruelty,
mismanagement, and misrepresentation of the riches of New Mexico. He was found guilty,
temporarily expelled from Mexico City, and exiled from the colony of New Mexico in 1614. Ten
years later, he was appointed royal inspector of the mines back in Spain, where he died.
II.248. An organized rebellion of Pueblo Indians against their Spanish colonizers, known as the
Pueblo REVOLT of 1680, occurred in New Mexico from August 10–21 of the year. By 1598,
Spanish Franciscan missionaries had well established their colonizing enterprise in New Mexico.
Tensions between the indigenous peoples and the Franciscans had grown since 1675, when Juan
Francisco Treviño, then-governor of New Mexico, arrested, tortured, and murdered forty-seven
native religious leaders. A Tewa religious leader named Popé (c. 1630–c. 1688), who had been
imprisoned, escaped to Taos, a center of anti-Spanish resistance. The Pueblo peoples united to
attack the Spaniards on August 10, 1680. After suffering losses in the hundreds—about 400
Spaniards, including twenty clergymen—the Spaniards fled on August 21, 1680, most of them to
El Paso. New Mexico remained free of colonizers for the next twelve years.
II.249. Jornada del MUERTO (Spanish for “dead man’s journey”) is a desert region in southern
New Mexico. Known as such by Spanish explorers during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, the Jornada typically referred to a near-waterless strip, ninety miles long and about
266
twenty-five miles wide, in the Chihuahua Desert. The direction of the Jornada del Muerto was to
the northwest, from Rincón to San Marcial and between the San Andrés Mountains and Caballo
and the Fray Cristobal Mountains (Coahuila, Chihuahua, and New Mexico). That the first atomic
bomb was detonated at Trinity Site, on the northern part of the Jornada del Muerto, on July 16,
1945, lends additional, and unexpected, significance to this old appellation.
II. 257. Portuguese navigator, explorer, and writer Pedro Fernández de QUIRÓS (also Queirós or
Quir, c. 1563–1615) discovered for Spain what he believed was the Terra Australis (southern
land), the then-unknown continent in the Mar del Sur (Pacific Ocean)—unknown to the
Europeans at least. Having entered the Spanish navy, Quirós served as a pilot for the second
Mendaña expedition to the South Pacific. Back in Spain from the Phillipines, Quirós proposed,
to the crown and the Catholic Church, an exploratory expedition to the South Pacific and
received their approval in 1603. Commanding a fleet composed of the San Pedro and Los Tres
Reyes, with Luis Váez de Torres (b. c. 1565–d. c. 1615) as second-in-command, Quirós left
Callao in search of the so-called Terra Australis in December 1605. The following year, Quirós’s
expedition claimed for the Europeans the Espíritu Santo Islands in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu),
which he named “La Australia del Espíritu Santo.” Forced to return to Acapulco, Quirós was
back in Spain in 1607. In 1614, he headed up another expedition to follow up his “discovery” of
Australia. He died on his way to the South Pacific in June 1615. Of the nearly fifty reports
Quirós wrote to support a third expedition, a few have survived, including the Relación de un
memorial… sobre la población y descubrimiento de la quarta parte del mundo, Austrialia
incognita (Report about the population and discovery of the fourth part of the world, unknown
Australia, 1610). His story is also the subject of the narrative poem Captain Quiros (1964) by
Australian poet James McAuley (1917–76).
267
II.257. Spanish navigator and explorer Álvaro de MENDAÑA de Neira (also Neyra, 1542–1595)
commanded two maritime expeditions to the Pacific Ocean in search of Terra Australis.
Mendaña arrived in the Americas in 1567 when his uncle and protector, Lope García de Castro
(1516–1576), was appointed president of the Audiencia of Lima and governor of Peru (1564–
69). In November 1567, Medaña’s expedition sailed from Callao on Los Reyes and Todos los
Santos with the captains Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and Pedro de Ortega. The first European
expedition to sight the Solomon Islands (in 1568) and to cross the Pacific Ocean, Medaña and his
men returned via the Marshall Islands, Wake Islands, and Acapulco, landing at Callao in 1569.
In 1595, Mendaña commanded another expedition to the South Pacific, with Captain Quirós as
the pilot of the flagship San Gerónimo. Isabel Barreto (d. 1612), Medaña’s wife since 1586 and
facilitator of the expedition, accompanied him. The second Mendaña expedition laid claim to the
Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia), so named after the Marques of Cañete, García Hurtado
de Mendoza, viceroy of Peru. Mendaña died after losing control of the expedition on Nendo
(Santa Cruz Islands). Barreto took over as the leader of the expedition; she successfully led the
only surviving ship, the flagship piloted by Captain Quirós, back to the Philippines.
II.257n. Núño Beltrán de Guzmán, or NÚÑO DE GUZMÁN (c. 1490–1544), was president of the
First Audiencia in Veracruz, the judicial and administrative body created in 1528 to replace
Cortés’s rule in New Spain. In this role, Nuño de Guzmán repeatedly clashed with Cortés and
the Franciscans, including bishop Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548), who would be responsible
for the former’s removal from power in 1530. In 1525, Nuño de Guzmán had been appointed
governor of the northern province of Panuco, where he was notorious for selling the indigenous
population as slaves to traders in Saint-Domingue. He began the expansion of Spanish control
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into northern and western Mexico through murder and pillage of indigenous settlements, causing
the famous rebellion against the Spanish known as the Mixton Wars (1532–1542).
II.257n. In 1533, Bishop SEBASTIÁN RAMÍREZ DE FUENLEAL (c. 1490–1547) commissioned friar
Andrés de Olmos to write about the pre-conquest rites and antiquities of Mexico City, Tezcoco,
and Tlaxcala.
II.260. CHARLES II (1661–1700) was the last Habsburg to rule Spain and Spain’s overseas
empire. The product of inbreeding, he was born physically and mentally disabled. He is noted for
his ineffectual rule at a time when Spanish power and prestige were already seriously on the
decline.
II.260. A follower of Eusebio Kino, Italian missionary and strategist Juan María de
SALVATIERRA (also Giovanni Maria Salvatierra, 1648–1717) was a founder of the Jesuit
missions in California and became the leader of the Jesuits in New Spain. Salvatierra had entered
the Society of Jesus in 1665. Ten years later, he was sent to New Spain where he completed his
training. For more than a decade, from 1680 to 1693, he served as a missionary in the
Tarahumara region in present-day Chihuahua, east of Sonora and Sinaloa. Named royal envoy to
the Jesuit missions in northwest New Spain in 1691, he was recruited by Kino and became an
advocate of and strategist for the Jesuits missionizing visions for California. To obtain
permission for their plan while serving as a rector of the Jesuist College in Guadalajara (1693–
95), Salvatierra lobbied the Guadalajaran civil and ecclesiastical authorities to develop
California. Salvatierra and Kino finally received viceregal permission to establish a mission in
California on the condition that the venture be fully self-funded in exchange for the autonomy
within the mission. To finance these efforts at a time when he served as rector of the Jesuit
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seminary of Tepotzotlán, Salvatierra began to create an endowment; it became the Poius Fund
for the Californias administrated by Juan de Ugarte. The Sicilian missionary Francisco María
Piccolo (1654–1729) replaced Kino in these missionizing efforts, as the later was not allowed to
leave the missions at Pimería Alta for California. Salvatierra and his followers founded the Jesuit
mission of Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in Baja California in October 1697, of which he
was the head for seventeen years, until his death. From his position, he oversaw the Jesuit
expansion in California. Salvatierra’s reports and letters were important sources for Miguel
Venegas and Francisco Javier Clavigero. In 1971, Ernest J. Burrus published a collection of
Salvatierra’s papers in English translation as Juan María de Salvatierra Selected Letters about
Lower California.
II.260. Brigadier TOMÁS DE UGARTE Y LIAÑO (1754–1804) was one of several Spanish Royal
Navy officers whom Humboldt met in Lima and Callao. In 1799, Ugarte was in charge of
designing the ports of the South Sea from Chiloë to the north coast of the province Veraguas.
Three years later, he became chief of the entire Spanish fleet but retired a year later. Humboldt
was familiar with Ugarte’s maps, several of which can be found in the Karpinski Collection of
the Library of Congress.
II.263. Croatian Jesuit missionary and explorer Fernando CONSAG (also Ferdinand Konscak,
1703–1759) led an exploration party to the Sea of Cortés (Gulf of California) in 1746. Assistant
missionary at San Ignacio (Nuestro Señor San Ignacio de Kadakaamán) for over a decade (1733–
46), Consag organized a reconnaissance expedition to the mouth of the Colorado River to
confirm the peninsularity of California once again. In 1746, he traveled up the California coast
with four canoes and confirmed that the land was indeed not an island. The following year,
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Consag was named head missionary at San Ignacio, a position he held until his death. He was
also appointed royal envoy to California on two occasions (1747–50, 1758–59), reporting to the
superior priests of the order in New Spain and in Rome. He also laid the foundation for
establishing the mission of Santa Gertrudis in the northern part of Baja California. All told,
Consag worked in Baja California for over twenty-six years. His journal of the 1746 expedition
was printed as an appendix to Miguel Venegas’s work.
II.264. Working for Spanish captain Tomás de Cardona (fl. 1611–1634), the owner of a pearl
fishing enterprise and holder of a license to exploit that activity in the western coast of New
Spain, navigator Juan de ITURBE (fl. 1615–16) explored the Gulf of California in a pearl fishing
expedition together with Nicolás de Cardona (fl. 1610–1639), Tomás’s nephew. After spending
some time in Acapulco to help defend the port against foreign attacks, the expedition sailed to
the Gulf of California in March 1615. Upon reaching about 30º northern latitude, they sailed
eastward and south. When Cardona returned to Acapulco to inform the viceroy of their findings,
Iturbe took charge of the expedition and sailed again into the Gulf but farther north than 30º
northern latitude. Iturbe returned to New Spain the following year. In 1632, Spanish pilot
Esteban Carbonel related to then-viceroy of New Spain Iturbe’s success in finding a pearl-filled
land. Iturbe also claimed to have seen a strait at the end of the Gulf of California, fostering the
mistake that California was an island, not a peninsula.
II.264. Spanish admiral Bernardo BERNAL DE PIÑADERO (fl. 1663–1677) explored California in
the mid-seventeenth century. Sailing in the Gulf of California by royal commission in 1664,
Bernal de Piñadero focused more on searching for pearls than on establishing another Spanish
colony. In 1665, he was granted the title of lieutenant captain-general and authorized to recruit
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military personnel to colonize California. Embarking on other fruitless expeditions, he was
finally compelled to return to Mexico City, where he advocated in favor of establishing Jesuits
missions in California with funding from the viceregal treasury. A royal decree dated February
1677 authorized some matching funds for this purpose. Even though Bernal de Piñadero had the
support of the Society of Jesus, he lost the bid for the missionizing expedition to Isidro de
Atondo y Antillón (bap. 1639) who eventually transported Kino to California.
II.264. The first entrepreneur based in California, Spanish soldier Manuel del OCIO (c. 1700–
1771) made his fortune in the pearl trade. Initially a soldier at the Jesuit mission in Baja
California (1733–41), he married Rosalía Rodríguez (d. bef. 1754), the daughter of the mission’s
military captain, in 1736. In 1741, when the Cochimí, indigenous peoples of California, had
gathered an impressive amount of pearls as a result of a storm, Ocio took advantage of his
connections with the military administration and the Cochimí and began a profitable pearling
business between the peninsula and the mainland. Resigning from his position as soldier in the
Jesuit Mission, he invested in pearl fishing and established a wholesale business in Guadalajara
(1741–44). Because of the pearl diving frenzy caused by his initial success, Ocio diversified his
business to cattle ranching, mining, and real estate. Investing in silver mining, he founded the
mining district of Santa Ana, the first permanent civil establishment of Baja California, which
had started as a mission in 1723. His properties served as headquarters for José de Gálvez y
Gallardo and Junípero Serra, from which they planned the missionization of Upper California
in 1768. Ocio was a very wealthy man when he was murdered in 1771.
II.266. A merchant involved in the Manila galleon trade, that is, the Pacific trade route from
Manila to Acapulco established in 1566, Spanish navigator SEBASTIÁN VIZCAÍNO (1548–1624)
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played a pivotal role in the Spanish expansion into the American Pacific region. A merchant and
investor, he settled in New Spain in 1589 and applied for several licences to exploit natural
resources and pearl fishing. Although the licenses were granted, his endeavors proved fruitless.
In 1601, viceroy Gaspar de Zúñiga y Acevedo appointed Vizcaíno head of an expedition to
explore and chart the coast of California. This journey, from 1602 to 1603, resulted in charts of
the entire coastline from Cabo San Lucas to Cape Mendocino. Enrico Martínez copied them in
1603. In 1608, Vizcaíno crossed the Pacific in search of the fabled islands Rica de Oro and Rica
de Plata (nomen est omen) that were to serve as ports for Spain’s Manila galleons. He reached
Japan in 1611, where he was received as the first ambassador from New Spain. During his
travels, he surveyed several ports on the east coast of Honshu. In 1614, Vizcaíno returned to
New Spain without having found the mysterious islands. Two centuries later, José Espinosa y
Tello published charts from Vizcaíno’s 1602–03 voyage in his Relación del viage hecho por las
Goletas Sútil y Mexicana en el año de 1792 (1802). The maps are reproduced in Michael
Mathes’s Vizcaíno and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean 1580–1630 (San Francisco:
California Historical Society, 1968). The charts of Vizcaíno’s 1611 trip are lost.
II.269n. Born in Casas de Millan (Extremedura, Spain), Jesuit missionary Miguel del BARCO
(1706–1790) arrived at the missions of California in 1737. An inspector of the Jesuit missions in
California on two occasions (in 1751–54 and 1761–63), he also served as a missionary at San
José del Cabo in 1737 and at San Javier from 1737 to 1768. When the Jesuits were expelled from
the Spanish territories in 1768, Barco went to live in exile in Bologna, Italy. Having been a priest
in Baja California for over thirty years, Barco corrected and added to Miguel Venegas’s Noticia
de la California (1757). Unlike Barco, Venegas and Burriel had never set foot in California;
Venega was working from Mexico City and Burriel from Madrid. Barco completed his two-
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volume “Correcciones y adiciones a la historia de la California en su primera edición de Madrid,
año 1757” in 1768. It did not see print until 1973, when Miguel León Portilla published the
manuscript as Historia natural y crónica de la Antigua California. Barco’s manuscript was a
valuable source for Francisco Javier Clavijero’s Historia de la California (1789).
II.269n. Spanish captain Juan Mateo MANGE (also Mangi, 1670–c. 1727) traveled with Father
Kino to the Pimería Alta in 1697. Mange had left Cádiz for New Spain in 1692 and arrived in
Sonora a year later. Employed in the mayor’s office in Pimería Alta, Mange explored present-
day Arizona with Kino for five years, from 1694 to 1701. Upon his return, Mange was appointed
mayor of the province of Sonora. About his expedition with Kino, he wrote “Luz de tierra
incognita en la América Septentrional,” which includes the travel journals to which Humboldt
refers Diario del Capitán Juan Mateo Mangi que accompañó a los padres apostólicos Kino y
Kappus. Mange’s manuscript also includes Primera Relación de la Pimería Alta written in 1716
by Spanish Jesuit missionary Luis Xavier Velarde (1677–1737). Mange’s journal, together with
with Velarde’s Relación, was first published in 1856 as part of the Documentos para la Historia
de México (vol. 1, pp. 226–390. México: Imprenta de Vicente Garía Torres). Mange’s complete
manuscripts were edited by Francisco Fernández del Castillo (1864–1936) and published as Luz
de Tierra Incógnita en la América Septentrional y diario de las Exploraciones en Sonora in
1926). An English edition by Harry J. Karns, titled Unknown Arizona and Sonora, 1693–1721,
appeared in 1954.
II.271. Together with the Spanish captain ÁLVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA (c. 1490–c. 1557),
Pánfilo de Narváez undertook, in 1528, an expedition through the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa
Bay to Galveston, which took a disastrous turn. After landing in Tampa Bay, Narváez had
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decided to split up his troops of 400 men and 80 horses into two expeditions, one to sail north
along the western coast, the other to follow the same route on land. But the tropical jungles of the
Florida peninsula and the steady attacks by Apalachees obstructed the land route, and the two
expeditions never saw each other again. Two years and several shipwrecks later, few
expeditioners were still alive, among them Cabeza de Vaca, who continued his odyssey along the
Texan Coast and the Rio Grande toward the heartland of New Spain (Mexico) in search of
Spanish settlements until 1536. We know of these first European pioneers to the West from
Cabeza de Vacas’s famous Naufrágios y Comentarios (Shipwrecks and commentaries). The most
complete English version is of this narrative is the three-volume Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca:
His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez by Rolena Adorno and Patrick
Pautz (1999).
II.272. During his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (c.
1540–96), in his galleon The Golden Hind, made landfall on the western coast of North America,
most likely north of what is now San Francisco. In 1579, he claimed for Queen Elizabeth I
(1533–1603) the entire west coast territory. It included Lower California, which he named New
Albion.
II.273. A successful bookseller well established in London by the 1760s, Scottish compiler John
KNOX (1720–1790) published New Collection of Voyages, Discoveries, and Travels in 1767. In
collaboration with William Guthrie (1708–70), Knox edited the popular A New Geographical,
Historical, and Commercial Grammar (1770). From a series of tours he made to northern
Scotland starting in 1764 (sixteen in all), Knox compiled A View of the British Empire, More
Especially Scotland (1784) and A Tour through the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebride Isles
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(1787). A supporter of Scotland’s economic development, he lectured to the Highland Society of
London about the possibilities of establishing a fishing industry. These lectures were published
as Observations on the northern Fisheries with a Discourse on the Expediency of establishing
Fishing Stations in 1786. Arguably a supporter of the British colonies in America, Knox is also
credited with authoring a pro-American pamphlet, The American Crisis: by a Citizen of the
World in 1777.
II.277. French botanist André THOUIN (1747–1824) was a protégé of Buffon’s who financed the
former’s college education and kept him under his wing thereafter. A student of Antoine-Laurent
de Jussieu’s (1748–1836), Thouin was appointed to the chair of horticulture at the Muséum
National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Throughout his career, he built an impressive network of
correspondents. Thouin is remembered for contributions to agronomy, including studies on how
to improve seed selection. He recommended Jean Nicolas Collignon (1762–c. 1788), a botanist
from the Jardin du Roi, to accompany La Pérouse on his ill-fated expedition to the South Seas.
II.277. Franciscan missionary Fermín Francisco de LASUÉN (1736–1803) replaced Junípero
Serra as president of the missions of Upper California. Lasuén had been admitted to the
Franciscan Order in 1751. A deacon in 1759, he was recruited for missionary work in New Spain
and reached the College of San Fernando in Mexico City that same year. Ordained a priest in
1761, Lasuén began his work at the Sierra Gorda missions near present-day Querétaro (Mexico).
In 1768, he was one of five missionaries to transfer from Sierra Gorda to the missions of Lower
California to manage the mission system the Jesuits had established; he was assigned to preside
over the Mission of San Borja (1768–73). When the Dominicans obtained control of the Lower
California missions, Lasuén transferred to Upper California. Initially working at the missions of
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San Gabriel Arcángel, San Juan Capistrano, and San Diego de Alcalá, he advanced to head of the
missions in 1785; he held that position until his death. Lasuén founded nine additional missions
between 1786 and 1798. Among the many duties, he wrote reports about the status of the mission
system; Humboldt had access to and used his reports. Lasuén’s writings, which include annual,
biennial, and statistical reports of the entire mission system, were edited and translated into
English by Finbar Kenneally as Writings of Fermín Francisco de Lasuén (2 vols., Washington
D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1965).
II.281. Enlightenment views of languages tended to focus on the diversity of human languages as
evidence for a universal grammar. So-called primitive languages, among them Native American
languages, were of particular interest to early scholars of linguistics because they hoped to find
the origins of language by studying them. The Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo HERVÁS y Panduro (1735–
1809) was a missionary in New Spain until his order was expelled in 1767. After returning to
Rome, he compiled a six-volume catalogue of the world’s languages, Idea del Universo,
published in Italian between 1784 and 1787 and in Spanish between 1800 and 1804/5. It included
detailed information on numerous American languages, which he had solicited from his fellow
missionaries. Certain inaccuracies notwithstanding, Hervás’s work represents the culmination of
Spanish colonial linguistics. Much like Humboldt himself, Hervás was interested in language
studies as a key to human history.
II.281. Alexander’s older brother WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT (1767–1835) was a philologist,
statesman, and one of the founders of what is today the Humboldt University in Berlin. Like his
brother, he was educated at the University of Göttingen. Wilhelm gave up law in favor of
studying languages while holding government posts intermittently. He became fascinated with
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Native American languages during his stay in Rome as Prussian resident minster (1801–08)
when his brother, having recently returned from the Americas, brought him many grammars
from the Jesuit missions he had visited there. Hervás’s work was among them. Wilhelm was at
the time interested in obtaining data on American languages for Johann Christoph Adelung
and Johann Severin Vater’s forthcoming overview of the world’s languages, to which he
contributed an essay on Basque languages (see their Mithridates, or General Linguistics). In
1824, Wilhelm began to mine the materials on the classification of thirty-two North American
language families that Albert Gallatin had supplied to Alexander. Wilhelm also worked on
Sanskrit (which was at the center of linguistics as it emerged in Germany between 1770 and
1830), Coptic, Old Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese, and old Javanese languages. For him, who was
conversant in English, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Hungarian, Czech, and Lithuanian, language was
a dynamic system, and the whole point of the comparative study of languages was to connect
language and linguistic typology more broadly with “the shaping of the nation’s mental power.”
Alexander, who edited his late brother’s work on linguistics, described him as a scholar who had
profound insight into the structural interrelation of all languages and their impact on the
development of human cultures on a global scale. Though undoubtedly more of a Prussian
nationalist than Alexander, Wilhelm shared with his brother an unequivocally cosmopolitan
approach to humanistic scholarship. Notable among those who introduced Wilhelm von
Humboldt’s work to audiences in the USA were Albert Gallatin and the ethnologist Daniel
Garrison Brinton (1837–1899), both of whom had a strong interest in Native American
languages and cultures.
II.281. The typological classification of languages in which Wilhelm von Humboldt was
interest was also an issue with which the brothers Schlegel grappled. The German cultural
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philosopher, literary historian, and translator Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von SCHLEGEL (1772–
1829), along with his brother August Wilhelm (1767–1845), was the originator of the core ideas
that inspired early German Romanticism. His conception of literary scholarship has had
profound influence on the rise of what is still called Geisteswissenschaften, the sciences of the
mind. After studying Sanskrit in Paris, Schlegel published Über die Sprache und Weisheit der
Indier (About the language and the wisdom of the [East] Indians, 1808), an attempt at
comparative Indo-Germanic linguistics, and the starting point of the study of Indian languages
and comparative philology.
II.292. Lorenzo FERRER MALDONADO (c. 1550–1625) was a Spaniard from Guadix (Granada)
who claimed to have discovered, in 1588, the Strait of Anian, a legendary waterway separating
Asia and America. Ferrer Maldonado published the accounts of his supposed voyage in Relación
del Descubrimiento del Estrecho de Anián (1609). On the Esperanza and the Santa Ana, he
claimed to have traveled from Lisbon to Iceland to Labrador to the Pacific Ocean via the long-
sought-after strait, the entrance of which, he claimed, was at 60º northern latitude. The Relación
was re-discovered and copied by Juan Bautista Muñoz y Ferrandis (1745–1799) in 1781. A
summary of the narrative also appeared in Historia política de los establecimientos ultramarinos
de las naciones europeas (vol. 4, pp. 588–89, Madrid, 1788) by the Duke of Almodóvar writing
as Eduardo Malo de Luque. On November 13, 1790, the nephew of Philippe Buache, Jean-
Nicolas Buache de la Neuville presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris a paper
investigating Ferrer Maldonado’s Relación. In December 1790, Antonio Valdés had ordered
Malaspina to cancel his plans of traveling to the Hawaiian Islands from Mexico’s west coast and
instead sail north and explore the Alaskan coast at 60º northern latitude in search of Ferrer’s
Strait of Anian. Although Bustamante and Cevallos considered Ferrer’s account ficticious, the
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expedition nonetheless sailed north from Acapulco in June 1791 to finally disprove the Relación.
Malaspina wrote a complete review of Ferrer’s story in 1792. Not printed until 1848 in a
posthumous work edited by Martín Fernández de Navarrete (1765–1844), the Exámen histórico-
crítico de los viajes y descubrimientos apócrifos del capitán Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, de Juan
de Fuca, y del almirante Bartolomé de Fonte [Historical-critical study of the apocryphal travels
and discoveries by captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, Juan de Fuca, and the admiral Bartolomé
de Fonte] pointed out all inconsistencies and errors. In addition to the Strait of Anian tale, Ferrer
Maldonado also authored Imagen del mundo sobre la esfera, cosmografía, y geografía téorica de
planetas y arte de navegar (1626). A Muñoz copy of the Relación is housed at the Archivo del
Museo Naval de Madrid (MS. 331, f. 293–314).
II.292. In 1592, the Greek naval captain Apóstolos Valerianos (c. 1531–1602), who took the
pseudonym JUAN DE FUCA when sailing for Spain, claimed to have discovered a passage between
the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans between 47° and 48° northern latitude. Valerianos claimed to
have used the strait to enter the North Sea (Atlantic) and then to have returned to Acapulco to
report his discovery. Michael Lok (also Locke, c. 1532–c. 1621), a British merchant who
promoted expeditions to America’s northwest coast, recounted Valerianos’s tale after meeting
him in Venice in 1596. Lok passed on the information on to Samuel Purchas (c. 1577–1626),
who published it in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (vol. 3, 1625). A map from
1752, crafted by the French geographer and cartographer Philippe Buache (1700–1773) and
titled Carte des Nouvelles Découvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud, was the first French map to
depict the supposed 1592 discoveries of Juan de Fuca. Buache and French astronomer Joseph
Nicolas Delisle used the so-called Juan de Fuca discoveries to support arguments in favor of the
Bartomolmé de Fonte’s tales. On their expeditions to the north, the Spanish carried maps from
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1774 and 1775 that located the mythical Strait of Juan de Fuca around 48º30′ northern latitude.
Spanish and British late eighteenth-century discoveries of an opening near the latitude of the
Strait revived speculation of the veracity of Valerianos’s account. In 1775, Bruno de Heceta on
the Santiago and Bodega y Quadra on the Sonora traveled north up to 58º30′ northern latitude.
On his way back, Heceta reported to have seen an entrance that went far inland, which suggested
that the Strait of Juan de Fuca did exist (in reality, it was the mouth of the Columbia River). In
1787, Charles William Barkley (1761–1832) on board the Imperial Eagle thought to have found
the strait south of Nootka. In 1788, Charles Duncan on the Princess Royal also visited the area
and supported Valerianos’s tale. In March 1789, Robert Gray in commanding Lady Washington
and John Kendrick (1740–1794) on the Columbia sailed into the strait for twenty-five miles
before turning back. In the summer of 1789, José María Narváez (1768–1840) sailed from
Nootka to the present-day Juan de Fuca Strait aboard the Santa Gertrudis la Magna. Narváez
recounted that he had found Valerianos’s mythical strait, the middle of which was located at
48º30′ northern latitude. Esteban José Martínez, then in charge of the Spanish settlement at
Nootka and the same person who set off the Nootka Sound controversy between England and
Spain, believed that the strait consisted of two branches: one toward the west-northwest
connecting to the equally mythical Strait of Almirante de Fonte, the other connecting to the
Mississippi River toward the east-southeast. Viceroy of New Spain, the Count of Revillagigedo,
also became interested in the matter and commissioned Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra
to determine the accuracy of the supposed entrance to the Northwest Passage. After several
Spanish expeditions to the strait in 1790 and 1791 by Manuel Quimper, Salvador Fidalgo, and
Francisco de Eliza, respectively, a Spanish expedition set out from Acapulco in 1792 to explore
the entire Strait of Juan de Fuca and determine whether there was a connection to the Northwest
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Passage. Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores (1767–1835) completed the
first detailed survey of the strait; they were the first Europeans to circumnavigate Vancouver
Island. The Alcalá Galiano and Valdés expedition concluded that there was no passage to the
Atlantic by way of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is located between Vancouver Island
(Canada) and Washington (USA). Captain George Vancouver, who met the Spanish expedition
there, also surveyed the Juan de Fuca Strait and the Strait of Georgia. In determining that
Vancouver Island was indeed an island, Vancouver’s expedition confirmed that the straits
divided the mainland of present-day British Columbia and its archipelago to the west, and
Vancouver Island from Washington State (USA) to the south. The strait now known as Juan de
Fuca Strait was named by Barkley in 1787.
II.292n. Bartolomé de FONTE (also Bartolomeo or Bartholomew) was supposedly a Spanish
admiral employed at Callao (Lima) who claimed to have traveled to the northwest coast of
America in 1640. The story held that Fonte had sailed north from Callao, passed the western
coast of Mexico and California, and reached as far north as 53º northern latitude. There, the story
continues, he had found the entrance to a river that directed him to a network of waterways
leading far inland, where he had met fur traders from Boston. Fonte’s narrative was published in
1708 in two parts in the journal The Monthly Miscellany or Memoirs for the Curious (April, pp.
123–6; and June, pp. 183–6). It was resurrected by Northwest Passage campaigner Arthur Dobbs
(1689–1765), who inserted an abridged version of de Fonte’s letter in An Account of the
countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (1744). Dobbs argued that the meeting of Fonte and the
New England vessel was evidence of a passage leading from California to Hudson Bay. Philippe
Buache and Joseph-Nicolas Delisle lend credence to the story. In August 1750, Delisle
addressed the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, arguing in favor of Fonte’s story, He also
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presented a map by Buache that showed, for the first time, the imaginary discoveries by Fonte
and Fuca. The map, together with Delisle’s explanation, were published as Carte des Nouvelles
Découvertes au Nord de la Mer du Sud in 1752. Several critics of Fonte’s (and Fuca’s) supposed
discoveries were John Green and Andrés Marcos Burriel (1719–1762). In his Remarks in
Support of the new Chart of North and South America (1753), Green considered both stories
fictitious. For his part, Burriel revealed several inconsistencies of Fonte’s narrative in Noticias de
la California (vol. 3, 1757). In 1792, Jacinto Caamaño, member of the Spanish expedition to
Alaska, explored southern Alaskan waters on the Aránzazu and finally disproved Fonte’s tale.
See also Venegas, Miguel, and Valerianos, Apóstolos.
II.292n. Spanish art collector and historian Juan Agustín CEÁN Bermúdez (1749–1829) was the
archivist of the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. Ceán studied at a Jesuit School, the Colegio
de San Matías, between 1762 and 1764. A friend and protégé of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos’s
(1744–1811), Ceán lived in Alcalá and Seville. In Seville, he was among the founding members
the Academía de las Tres Nobles Artes (Academy of the Three Noble Arts) in 1769 and was
commissioned to work at the General Archive of the Indies from 1791 to 1797 and from 1801 to
1808. He is best remembered for publishing Diccionario histórico de los más ilustres profesores
de las Bellas Artes en España (Historical dictionary of the most illustrious Spanish professors of
the fine arts, 1800). An avid writer and biographer of Jovellanos’s, Ceán also authored twelve
essays on painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as several unpublished manuscripts,
including Historia del arte de la pintura (Madrid, Real Academia de San Fernando, MS, 1823–
28). Several of his writings were published posthumously, including Sumario de las
Antigüedades Romanas que hay en España (Inventory of Roman antiquities in Spain, 1832).
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Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), a friend of Ceán from his Madrid residence, drew and painted
him and his wife several times.
II.293. In 1542–43, Spanish navigator and explorer Bartolomé FERRELO (also Ferrel or Ferrer, fl.
1542–1543) participated in the first recorded European expedition to what became Alta
California (present-day California and Oregon) in search of the Strait of Anian. He took
command of the expedition when captain Juan Rodríguez de Cabrillo died in 1543. Under
Ferrelo’s command, the Victoria and the San Salvador sailed close to 44º northern latitude. On
his way north, Ferrelo sighted and named Cape Mendocino. After more than 290 days, the
expedition reached Navidad on April 14, 1543. The first separate account in English of the
Cabrillo and Ferrelo expedition was published by Alexander Smith Taylor (1817–1876) in
Supplement to The San Francisco Herald (May 1853) as “The Voyage of Juan Rodríguez
Cabrillo, first discoverer of the coasts of California and of his pilot Bartolome Ferrelo.”
II.293n. Trained initially at the College of Juilly near Paris and then educated in England,
Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, French geographer Jean Baptiste Benoît EYRIÈS (1767–1846)
was a compiler and translator of travel narratives. Eyriès began collecting such narratives in
1805. First among the many works he published was the a French edition of William Robert
Broughton’s A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean (1804) as Voyage de découvertes
dans la partie septentrionale de l’océan Pacifique (1807). Eyriès also published a French edition
of Humboldt’s Ansichten der Natur (Views of Nature, 1808) as Tableaux de la nature (1808; 2nd
edition, 1828). A founding member of the Société de Géographie (Geographical Society) in
1821, Eyriès was also a fellow of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1839).
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Humboldt refers to Eyriès’s biographical essay on Francisco Gali published in Louis-Gabriel
Michaud’s (1773–1858) Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Modern (1816).
II.294. A member of the 1602–03 Vizcaíno expedition, Spanish ensign MARTÍN DE AGUILAR
Galeote (d. 1603) was a captain of the vessel Tres Reyes. Aguilar died when his ship was
separated from the flagship San Diego during a storm. Estéban López, his pilot, took command
of the Tres Reyes and reached around 43º northern latitude, near Cape Blanco. On the way south,
he reported discovering a large river that flowed to the sea; it was later named Río de Martín
Aguilar. The Tres Reyes returned to Navidad in early 1603. López’s account gave rise to the
speculation that there was a large river north of Cape Mendocino, for which many explorers,
including Bruno de Heceta, would search.
II.294. A waterway that supposedly separated Asia from the Americas, the legendary STRAIT OF
ANIAN (also Enian and Anyan) was commonly referred to as the Northwest Passage. An idea that
probably arose in the wake of Ferdinand Magellan’s (1480–1521) discovery of a southern
passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans (Strait of Magellan) in 1520, the Strait of
Anian could actually be found on several maps and has taken manifold shapes since the sixteenth
century. Explorers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries believed that the entrance to
the strait was located in present-day Canada. The strait was first shown on a 1561 map that the
Italian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi (also Jacobus Gastaldus; c. 1500–1566) referenced in his
pamphlet La universale descrittione del mondo. Gastaldi had included the kingdom of Anian in
his map of Asia (in three parts, 1559–61), likely as a reference to the country of Ania that Marco
Polo mentioned in his travelogue as published in Ramusios’s Navigationi et viaggi (1550–59).
Several influential cartographers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries followed suit. In
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1590, Abraham Ortels (also Ortelius, 1527–1598) portrayed Anian as a northern kingdom
located near present-day Alaska. Gerhard Mercator (1512–1594) depicted Anian as a strait and a
kingdom on his 1569 world map. Around 1595, Josse de Hondt (also Jodocus Hondius, 1563–
1612) situated Anian on the North American coastline with an adjacent strait extending up to 80º
northern latitude. Explorers embarked on numerous voyages, imagined and real, to find the
elusive strait. Bering’s discovery of an actual Northwest Passage north of Canada and the
voyages by Juan de Fuca, Ferrer Maldonado, and Bartholomé de Fonte amplified interest in
the subject. Gastaldi’s 1561 map Cosmographia universalis et exactissima iuxta oostremam
neotericorum traditio[n]em was found by Roberto Almagià (1884–1962) in the 1930s and is
housed at the British Library.
II.294n. Portuguese navigator GASPAR CORTE REAL (c. 1450–1501) explored the North Atlantic
in the early sixteenth century. He sailed north from Lisbon to Greenland during the summer of
1500. Believing that he had reached the coast of Asia, he returned to Lisbon. In the spring of
1501, he led a fleet of three ships to explore the Davis Strait, sighting Labrador and
Newfoundland. In September 1501, he sent two of his ships back with news and captives, which
reached Lisbon in October of that year. Corte Real himself turned south; he was lost at sea.
II.295. USAmerican fur trader Robert GRAY (1755–1806) was the first European to locate and
enter the Columbia River. With John Kendrick, he left Boston in 1787 on the Columbia Rediviva
and Lady Washington to explore the northwest coast. When Kendrick deserted, Gray took
command of the Columbia and entered the Strait of Juan Fuca for a short distance; he then
“discovered” the Columbia River. He returned to Boston via China in 1790, becoming the first
USAmerican captain to circumnavigate the globe. In 1792, Gray was ordered back to the Pacific
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Northwest as captain of the Columbia. He became the first European to enter the Columbia
River, which he named after his ship. Once settled and married in Boston after his fur-trading
tours to the American Northwest, Gray set up a mercantile service with England and the
Carolinas. Sailing to South America on the vessel Alert in 1793, he was captured and imprisoned
as a French privateer. In 1801, he sailed to the River Plate via Rio de Janeiro.
II.295. Danish-born navigator Vitus Jonassen BERING (1681–1741) is known for his two
explorations of the northeastern coast of the Asian continent and from there of the western coast
of North America. As a young man, Bering traveled the seas as far as India and the Dutch East
Indies. He also completed naval officer training in Amsterdam prior to entering the service of the
Russian Navy under Peter the Great (1672–1725) in 1703. On orders of the Czar, Bering
embarked on the First Kamchatka Expedition (1725–1730), whose significance historians have
typically neglected, despite the fact that it produced the first accurate map of Russia to the east of
Tobolsk. The Second Kamchatka Expedition Bering proposed, also known as Great Northern
Expedition, was far more ambitious, and it lasted roughly from 1733 to 1743. The academic part
of that expedition departed St. Petersburg as early as 1732. It was led by three professors from
the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Johann Georg Gmelin was in charge of
natural history research. German historian and geographer Gerhard Friedrich Müller (1705–83),
an historian at the Imperial Academy since 1725, headed up ethnographic studies and is often
referred to as the father of scientific ethnography. Finally, there was the French astronomer Louis
Delisle de la Croyere (1690–1741), the younger brother of Joseph Nicolas Delisle. Both Gmelin
and Müller published their own narratives of the expedition. Bering himself, with Aleksei
Chirikov as his deputy, set off for North America with two ships in 1741. A storm separated the
ships, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska and made landfall at or near Kayak Island.
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Unfavorable conditions forced him to turn back, and he saw some of the Aleutian Islands and
Kodiak Island on his return voyage. Bering eventually became too ill to command his ship; the
cause of his illness remains unknown. He died in December 1741 on the island near the
Kamchatka Peninsula that hencefort bore the name Bering Island. Bering’s crew reached the
shores of Kamchatka in 1742, carrying word of the expedition. The sea otter pelts they brought
sparked Russian interests in a settlement in Alaska. Although Bering’s achievements proved
immense, especially after Captain James Cook was able to confirm the former’s accuracy as an
observer, he was neither the first Russian to sight North America nor the first Russian to pass
through the strait named after him. But it was not until after his voyages that the search for the
Northeast Passage and explorations of the northwestern coastline of the Americas could begin in
earnest. Because the Russian administration carefully guarded the reports from his second
voyage, Bering’s story could not be told in full for at least a century after his death. Peter
Lauridson’s (1846–1923) important biography of Bering appeared in 1885 (the first English
translation dates from 1889), and it was not until the late 1990s that the discovery of forgotten
documents in Russian archives revitalized the study of his expeditions. Bering’s skeletal remains
were recovered in 1991 and have cast doubt upon the authenticity of the only likeness we now
have of him.
II.295. Although the credit for finding Alaska typically goes to Bering, his second-in-command,
the Russian geographer and naval instructor Aleksei Ilich CHIRIKOV (1703–1748) was actually
the first to make landfall in North America. Chirikov located the shores of northwestern America
at Prince of Wales Island (Aleksander Archipelago of present-day Alaska). Educated at the
School of Mathematics and Navigation in St. Petersburg and at the newly founded Naval
Academy there (1715–1721), Chirikov played a significant part in both of Bering’s expeditions.
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Twenty-two years Bering’s junior, Chirikov was by far the most active and learned member of
the First Kamchatka Expedition. He was in no small measure responsible for the compilation of
the four maps that that expedition produced based on his astronomical observations. While in
Kamchatka, Chirikov also collected information about meteorology, geology, natural history,
agricultural practices, and the local cultures. During the Great Northern Expedition, he was in
command of the St. Paul, the second ship, which was separated from the St. Peter in a storm in
June 1741. The following year, Chirikov, to whom the top command of the second expedition
passed after survivors reported Bering’s death, set out in search of Bering’s ship. During this trip,
when he was barely recovered from scurvy, he located Attu Island. A talented cartographer,
Chirikov did much with far more limited tools than both Cook and Lapérouse had during their
later voyages in the same waters. The great map of the Russian discoveries in the Pacific Ocean
from 1746, the year Chirikov was appointed director of the Naval Academy, was largely based
on his own very precise observations.
II.296. Second lieutenant Juan José VERNACI y Retamal-Villaredo (also Vernacci, c. 1763–1810)
was one of the three junior officers on Alessandro Malaspina’s vessel Descubierta. Vernacci
had joined the Malaspina Expedition in Acapulco in 1791 to conduct astronomical work. In
1805, when he was posted in the Philippines, he commanded the galleon Magallanes. He died in
Manila five years later. Vernaci Point in British Columbia is named after him.
II.296. An experienced pilot originally from Mallorca, Juan Antonio PÉREZ (d. 1775) had served
in the port of San Blas for many years before heading the first Spanish exploratory mission to the
Pacific Northwest. Pérez led the First Bucareli Expedition to America’s northwest coast in July
1774. Viceroy Bucareli gave Pérez detailed instructions to sail up to 60º northern latitude and
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return to Monterey (California). With Estéban José Martínez as the second-in-command on the
Santiago (aka Nueva Galicia), Pérez was to reconnoiter the west coast and take formal
possession for Spain of any site they deemed suitable for occupation. Implicit in the instructions
was that Pérez should confirm any Russian activities in the area. Since Pérez was also to supply
the missions at Monterey on his way north, Father Junípero Serra traveled with him. Pérez
departed from San Blas. After stops at San Diego and Monterey, the Santiago sailed northward
until it reaching the northern end of Queen Charlotte Island on July 18, 1774. Pérez named the
northernmost point of Langara Island Punta de Santa Margarita (present day St. Margaret Point).
After trading with the local peoples at Langara Island, he continued north to 54º40′ northern
latitude but could not sail any farther. On his way back to Monterey, he sighted Vancouver
Island, the first European to do so. The expedition anchored close to the entrance to Nootka
Sound (which he named Surgidero de San Lorenzo) near Estevan Point. After Nootka, the
Santiago returned to Monterey. In 1775, Pérez served as second-in-command to Bruno de
Heceta on the Second Bucareli Expedition to the Northwest; he died of typhoid fever on the
return trip to San Blas. Herbert K. Beals edited and translated into English documents from the
1774 expedition under the title Juan Pérez on the Northwest Coast: Six Documents of his
Expedition in 1774 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1989). Bucareli’s instructions to Pérez,
“Ynstruccion que debe observer el Alferez de Fragata graduato D. Juan Perez, primer piloto de
los de numero de el Departamento de Sn. Blas, á cuyo cuidado he puesto la Expedición de los
Descubrimientos siguiendo la Costa de Monterey á el Norte” (from the Archivo General de la
Nación, Mexico City, Historia 68) were published in English by Manuel P. Servín (b. 1920) as
“The Instructions of Viceroy Bucareli to Ensign Juan Perez” (California Historical Society
Quarterly 40.3 [September, 1961]: 237–48).
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II.296. A lawyer by training, Spanish colonial administrator GUILLERMO DE AGUIRRE y Viana (d.
1811) was a member of the Audiencia of Mexico. He was the nephew of Francisco Leandro de
Viana (1730–1804), Count of Tepa. Aguirre became a judge at the Audiencia of Guadalajara
around 1783. Five years later, he was promoted to head of the crime chamber of the Audiencia of
Mexico with the help of his powerful uncle, then a minister at the Council of the Indies.
II.296. A graduate of the San Telmo Naval College, Seville native Estéban José MARTÍNEZ
Fernández (1742–1789) arrived in San Blas in 1773. A year later, he became Juan Antonio
Pérez’s second-in-command on the Santiago and took part in the first Spanish expedition to the
Pacific Northwest. Between 1775 and 1788, Martínez transported supplies from San Blas to the
Spanish ports in Lower and Upper California. In 1788, Martínez, on La Princesa, and López de
Haro, on the San Carlos, sailed to present-day Alaska to confirm the Russian incursion in the
north. The fleet left San Blas in March, reaching Kodiak Island in June. There, López de Haro
found the Russian settlement at Three Saints Bay and met Delareff. In December, the fleet
returned to San Blas with the news that the Russians intended to occupy Nootka. Following
viceroyal orders, Martínez, in 1789, set up and commanded Santa Cruz de Nutka at Friendly
Cove, Nootka Sound, to protect Spanish territorial and trade interests in the Pacific Northwest.
After taking formal possession of Nootka, he precipitated the Nootka Sound crisis between Spain
and England by confronting British fur traders in the region. He impounded John Meares’s
Princess Royal, commanded by Thomas Hudson (d. 1790), and the Argonaut, commanded by
British captain James Colnett. He also challenged and killed Callicum, a second-ranking chief
and a relative of Chief Maquinna. Martínez’s actions led to the Nootka Sound Convention of
1790, the year Martínez returned to Nootka with Francisco de Eliza, and eventually resulted in
Spain’s withdrawal from Vancouver Island. After spending four years back in Spain, Martínez
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returned to the Naval Department at San Blas, where he served until his death. See also
Maldonado, Manuel Antonio Flores, and Fuca, Juan de.
II.297. Spanish clergyman and explorer Juan CRESPI (1721–1782) was a member of the 1767
missionary expedition to California, known as the Sacred Expedition. Having entered the
Franciscan Order in 1738, Crespi arrived in New Spain in 1749, joined the Franciscan College of
San Fernando in Mexico City, and became a missionary in the Sierra Gorda (1751–1767). In
1767, he joined Junípero Serra to staff the remaining Jesuit missions in California. When Serra
chose him to be part of the 1769 Sacred Expedition to Upper California, Crespi became part of
Gaspar de Portolá Rovira’s (1723–1784) overland journey to San Diego. Crespi also served as
chaplain on the First Bucareli Expedition to the Pacific Northwest under Juan Pérez. The first
European to locate San Francisco, Crespi was a diligent chronicler of the Spanish invasion of
California. His diaries were included in Francisco Palou’s “Noticias de la Nueva California,”
copied by Francisco García Figueroa and included in Documentos para la Historia de Mexico
(4th series, vol. 6–7. Mexico: Vicente García Torres, 1857). Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870–1953)
published an English translation of Crespi’s manuscripts as Fray Juan Crespi Missionary
Explorer on the Pacific Coast 1769–1774 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927).
II.298. A Spanish naval officer and hydrographer from Bilbao, BRUNO DE HECETA (also Hezeta
or Eceta) y Dudagoitia (1744–1807) was one of Spain’s most accomplished sailors. Heceta
joined the Real Colegio de Guardiamarinas in 1758. By 1774, he had advanced to the rank of
senior lieutenant. That same year, Heceta reached New Spain together with five other naval
officers, including Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and Juan Manuel de Ayala. In
1775, Heceta commanded the Second Bucareli Expedition to the Northwest Coast of America
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(Juan Pérez had commanded the first surveying expedition in 1774) in search of Russian
settlements there. Heceta, accompanied by Pérez as second-in-command of the Santiago and
Bodega y Quadra at the helm of the smaller Sonora, attempted to reach 65º northern latitude or
beyond and assert Spanish territorial rights along the way. A third vessel, the San Carlos under
Ayala, carried out a detailed survey of San Francisco Bay. The expedition departed from San
Blas in March 1775. The Santiago and the Sonora stopped over in northern California and the
northwest tip of present-day Washington to assert Spanish sovereignty. In July, a storm separated
the ships. Bodega y Quadra continued northward and reached Alaska. After searching in vain for
the Sonora, which had probably sailed up to Nootka Sound (Vancouver Island, British
Columbia), Heceta began the return trip to Monterey on the Santiago. He followed the coastline
and sighted the mouth of the Columbia River (known to the Spaniards as Entrada de Heceta) and
named it Bahía de la Asunción de Nuestra Señora. Unable to confirm whether the Columbia was
a river or a bay, Heceta suggested that it might be the fabled Strait of Juan de Fuca. Several
places on the Oregon coast and in Alaska are named after Heceta. Heceta’s account of the 1775
expedition was translated into English as For Honor and Country: The Diary of Bruno de Hezeta
(1985).
II.298. Born in Osuna (Andalucia, Spain), Juan Manuel de AYALA y de Aranza (1745–1797)
graduated from the Real Colegio de Guardia Marinas in 1760. After attaining the rank of alférez
de navío, he arrived in New Spain in 1774. Once at San Blas, he was to be the commander of the
Sonora (also known as Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and at times as La Felicidad) in Heceta’s
1775 expedition to explore the northwest coast of America. Because Miguel Manrique,
commander of the San Carlos (also known as Toisón de Oro) became mentally unstable, likely
an effect of scurvy, Ayala replaced him on the leg of the expedition that would make a detailed
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survey of San Francisco Bay. On March 1775, Ayala, on the San Carlos, departed for the
California missions. On August of that year, Ayala became the first European to sail through the
Golden Gate into San Francisco Bay. Remaining in the bay for over a month, the San Carlos
anchored between Angel Island (which Ayala named Nuestra Señora de los Angeles) and the
mainland. José de Cañizares and Juan Bautista Aguirre (not the poet by the same name)
explored the bay; their work produced the first comprehensive map of San Francisco Bay. Ayala
proved that San Francisco Bay was navigable, which resulted in subsequent expeditions and
settlement by the Spaniards.
II.298. Admiral Francisco Antonio MOURELLE de la Rúa (also Maurelle or Morel, 1750–1820)
graduated as a pilot from the Naval College at El Ferrol in 1765 and embarked on several sea
voyages across the Atlantic thereafter. By 1773, he had made six trips from Cádiz to Havana,
Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Veracruz. Two years later, Mourelle arrived in New Spain together
with several other naval officers. Assigned to the Naval Department at San Blas as first pilot, he
served on the Sonora under Bodega y Quadra during Heceta’s 1775 expedition to present-day
Alaska. In 1779, Mourelle sailed again to the northwest, again under Bodega y Quadra. In 1780,
he traveled from New Spain to Manila under Heceta on the Princesa (also known as Nuestra
Señora del Rosario). Commanding the Princesa on the return trip, he sighted Fonualei (Tonga
Islands) in February 1781, Toku in April, and two of the Ellice Islands (Tuvalu) in May. This
was the first of several trips on the New Spain–Manila route. In 1790, Mourelle was stationed in
Mexico City as secretary to viceroy Revillagigedo. Among other duties, he was in charge of
creating a compendium of Spanish expeditions to America’s northwest coast (a copy of
Mourelle’s manuscript is at the Museo Naval de Marina at Madrid, MSS 331). Mourelle also
recorded his own voyage across the Pacific on the Princesa as Noticia de la navegación de la
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fragata “Princesa” al mando del alférez de fragata D.F. Mourelle (1781). One of the most
senior pilots at San Blas, Mourelle served as an interim director of the Naval Department (1785)
and was admitted to the Orden Militar de Santiago (1788). After returning to Spain in 1793,
Mourelle advanced to rear admiral in 1819 and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of San
Hermenegildo. Mourelle’s travel journal of the 1775 expedition with Bodega on the Sonora fell
into the hands of British writer, judge, antiquary, and naturalist Daines Barrington (c. 1728–
1800). A supporter of arctic explorations and a believer in the Northwest Passage, Barrington
published the journal in English translation as “Journal of a voyage in 1775 to explore the coast
of America northward of California” (1781). Mourelle’s travel journals (1775, 1779, 1780–81)
were also published by Amancio Landín Carrasco in Mourelle de la Rua, explorador del
Pacifico (Madrid: Cultura Hispánica, 1971.)
II.299. A 1745 graduate of the Naval Academy in Cádiz, the Andalucian Ignacio de ARTEAGA y
Bazán (1731–1783) arrived in the Americas in 1766, when he was posted in Havana to command
the sloop Víbora. The following year, he was promoted to senior lieutenant. When he returned to
Spain (1771–74), Arteaga was imprisoned at the naval arsenal at La Carraca for insulting an
ecclesiastical tribunal by marrying without permission. In 1775, he went back to San Blas, New
Spain. Arteaga commanded the 1779 Spanish expedition to survey the Pacific Northwest. His
second-in-command on the Princesa (also known as Nuestra Señora del Rosario) was Pedro
Fernandez de Quirós; José Camacho was the senior pilot. Bodega y Quadra was in command
of the Favorita (or Nuestra Señora de los Remedios), with Francisco Mourelle as second
captain and José de Cañizares Rojas as pilot. This third Spanish expedition to present-day
Alaska departed San Blas in February 1779; in May they had reached and began to survey
Bucareli Bay; in July, they sailed into Prince William Sound. The Arteaga–Bodega expedition
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returned to San Blas in November. A year later, Arteaga replaced Bruno de Heceta as the
commander of San Blas; he held that post until his death. Arteaga’s 1779 expedition journal,
“Diario de la navegación,” was published in the Colección Chimalistac de los libros y
documentos acerca de la Nueva España in 1959. See also Bodega y Quadra.
II.300. Spanish navigator and explorer GONZALO LÓPEZ DE HARO (d. 1823) commanded the
packboat San Carlo during the first Spanish expedition to present-day Alaska under Estéban
Martínez in 1788. López served as a pilot during Francisco de Eliza’s 1790–91 exploration
expedition to the Pacific Northwest.
II.300. Royal Navy officer James KING (1750–1784) served as second lieutenant on Captain
James Cook’s final voyage. King shared the duties of astronomer with Cook, conducting
astronomical observations to determine the Resolution’s position at sea and on shore either by
sextant or by astronomical quadrant. King’s observations significantly contributed to the
accuracy of the surveys carried out during the voyage. After Cook’s death, King initially
remained on the Resolution. Upon the death of Cook’s successor, Charles Clerke (1741–1779),
King became commander of the Discovery for the remainder of the voyage. For his scientific
contributions, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1782. Because of
King’s familiarity with the earlier Russian explorations of the North Pacific, he was entrusted
with writing the third volume of the official account of the voyage, A Voyage to the Pacific
Ocean. See also Cook, James.
II.301. British naval officer and fur trader Nathaniel PORTLOCK (c. 1747–1817) entered the
Royal Navy in 1772. After gaining experience at sea under James Cook, he was appointed
commander of the 320-ton King George, which sailed to the northwest coast of America together
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with the Queen Charlotte under George Dixon. The purpose of the expedition was to promote
the fur trade in Northwest America and in China. Wintering in Hawai’i, Portlock first arrived on
the northwest coast in July 1786 and again in May 1787; he then departed for Asia. In August
1788, the fleet returned to England. The account of this voyage was published by Dixon and
Portlock as A Voyage Round the World, but more particularly to the North-West Coast of
America: performed in 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788 in 1789.
II.301. In 1786, British explorer and fur trader Charles DUNCAN (fl. 1786–92) commanded the
Princess Royal to take part in the sea otter fur trade in the Pacific Northwest. In the company of
the Prince of Wales commanded by James Colnett, Duncan arrived at Nootka Sound that same
year and had a good trading season. His exploration led him to become a believer in the
existence of a Northwest Passage. Under instructions from the Hudson’s Bay Company, Duncan
attempted to find that passage on a voyage from 1790 to 1792.
II.303. Chief MAQUINNA (b. c. 1760) was the main tais (chief) at Nootka Sound and the ranking
leader of the peoples living on the west coast of present-day Vancouver Island. He was
considered to be about thirty years old when encountering the Malaspina Expedition in 1791.
At Nootka, Maquinna negotiated with the Spanish and English naval officers and diplomats
engaged in the maritime fur trade. With the help of secondary chief Callicum, Maquinna
developed Nootka as a major commercial center for the fur trade. He provided a secure and
hospitable environment for trading and reprovisioning ships. In addition to controlling the
commerce with the Europeans, Maquinna also supplied the actual pelts, which he collected from
other regions and sold to Spanish and British traders (Nootka itself had a poor supply of pelts).
After Callicum’s murder by Estéban Martínez’s men, Maquinna’s relations with the Europeans
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was strained until Bodega y Quadra’s and Vancouver’s diplomatic inventions reestablished an
amicable atmosphere. Chief Maquinna also used these relations to consolidate his standing as
principal chief. Tomás de Suria Lozano (1761–1844), a Spanish painter trained in Mexico who
was part of the Malaspina Expedition, drew a portrait of Chief Maquinna in pencil while in
Nootka Sound in 1791. Titled “Cazique Pral de Nutka nombrado Maquina” and now at the
Museo Naval (Madrid), Suria’s portrait is the chief’s only authenticated likeness. Maquinna’s
portrait was reproduced in Carmen Sotos Serrano’s Los Pintores de la Expedición de Alejandro
Malaspina (vol. 2, fig. 606) in 1982.
II.305. Spanish military officer PEDRO DE ALBERNI (1747–1802) was part of Francisco de
Eliza’s 1789 expedition to Nootka Sound to defend Spanish territorial and trade interests.
Alberni had joined the Spanish army in Catalonia in 1762. After six years, he was transferred to
New Spain and became the military commander of the province of Nayarit. A commanding
officer since 1783, his role was to protect Spanish interests against those of the British, Russians,
and USAmericans. In Nootka, he saw to the building of infrastructure for the settlement. In 1792,
he was replaced by Bodega y Quadra. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel that same year, Alberni
then served as commander of the fort of San Juan de Ulúa in Veracruz. His last posting was to
Monterey (California), where he also served as military commander.
II.306. British naval officer and fur trader JAMES COLNETT (1753–1806) began his career at sea
in 1770. A year later, he served under James Cook and, during the USAmerican War of
Independence, as quartermaster of the ship Adventure. Promoted to lieutenant in 1779, Colnett
commanded the Prince of Wales in a fur-trading expedition to the Pacific Northwest coast, along
with Charles Duncan on the Princess Royal. Both reached the coast in 1787 and then left for
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Asia, where they remained until the following year. In Asia, Colnett met John Meares with
whom he formed the Associated Merchants Trading to the Northwest Coast. After a brief return
to England, Colnett again sailed for the Americas in 1789 to establish a permanent settlement at
Nootka Sound. Starting the famous Nootka Sound crisis between Great Britain and Spain,
Estéban José Martínez arrested Colnett and confiscated his ship, the Argonaut, and the
Princess Royal. Upon his release, he returned to England. By 1791, Colnett had returned to the
fur trade in Asia and was later involved in opening the South Pacific for sperm whale fishing. He
published A Voyage to the South Atlantic and round Cape Horn in the Pacific Ocean for the
Purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries in 1798.
II.306. In 1790, viceroy Revillagigedo appointed Spanish naval officer and explorer FRANCISCO
DE ELIZA y Reventa (1759–25) to command an expedition to reoccupy Nootka Sound. Having
graduated from the Real Compañía de Guardias Marinas (Royal Navy) in 1773, Eliza y Reventa
had arrived in the Americas in 1780. He arrived at Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, in April 1790
with the ships Concepción, San Carlos, and Princesa Real. At Nootka, he gave priority to
exploration and dispatched Salvador Fidalgo to visit the Russian outposts in Alaska and
Manuel Quimper to reconnoiter the Juan de Fuca Strait. Eliza himself explored the strait in
1791. After restoring the Spanish presense on the Northwest Pacific, Eliza returned to New Spain
a year later and served as commander of the Naval Department of San Blas from 1795 to 1801.
II.306. Spanish naval officer and explorer Salvador FIDALGO y Lopegarcía (1756–1803) served
in the Pacific Northwest under Eliza y Revento and Bodega y Quadra. At the Real Colegio de
Guardias Marinas, from which he graduated in 1775, he had been trained in cartography by
Vicente Tofiño (1732–95). As part of the Spanish expedition to occupy Nootka Sound, Eliza
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dispatched Fidalgo to explore present-day Alaska in 1790. On the San Carlos, Fidalgo sailed
north to Prince William Sound and to Cook Inlet. Finding a Russian settlement at Kodiak Island,
he took possession of several Alaskan locations for the Spanish Crown. Fidalgo subsequently
served as commander of the Naval Department in San Blas. In 1792, he participated in Bodega y
Quadra’s voyage to defend Spanish interests at Nootka Sound. Fidalgo founded a Spanish
settlement in Neah Bay that was later abandoned.
II.309. Humboldt owned a 1798 Carte de la Guiane by Jean-Nicolas BUACHE de la Neuville
(1741–1825), a nephew of the famous cartographer Philippe Buache (1700–1773), who had
contributed notably to the theory of physical geography and pioneered the use of contour lines to
represent relief on maps. Although Jean-Nicolas Buache’s fame was more due to his uncle’s
renown than to his own achievements, he was still considered the premier geographer both
during the Ancien Régime and in revolutionary France. Buache was a member of the Academy
of Sciences and the Bureau des Longitudes.
II.309. Thaddeus Peregrinus HAENKE (1761–1816) was a South American naturalist from
Bohemia, who had studied under Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin in Vienna. Haenke
joined the Malaspina Expedition in Chile, staying with it as far as Vancouver Island. He
traveled across Mexico, returned to Chile, and, in 1796, ended up in Cochabamba, Bolivia,
where he worked in a silver mine on an estate he had purchased. He accidentally poisoned
himself. Haenke donated his botanical collection to the National Museum in Prague, but only a
part of the collection reached its destination. He did not publish an account of his explorations
but left notes and manuscripts that other naturalists consulted. Most of his manuscripts are now
at the National Archives in Buenos Aires and at the Botanical Institute in Madrid.
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II.309. Louis NEE (c. 1737–c. 1807) was the French-born botanist of the Malaspina Expedition;
the other two naturalists were Antonio de Pineda y Ramírez (1751–1792) and Thaddeus
Haenke. During that expedition, he supervised the botanical artists, among them José Guio y
Sánchez, José del Pozo (c. 1757–1821), Francisco Lindo, and Francisco Pulgar. Prior to joining
the Malaspina Expedition, Née had worked in the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid and appears
to have participated in earlier expeditions as well. Pineda described Née as a botanist with a
broad knowledge of the theoretical and applied aspects of botany. The botanist Antonio José
Cavanilles tried to discredit Née in a letter to Celestino Mutis from April 28, 1795. Mutis,
however, a friend of Née’s, had a better opinion of him. Cavanilles, too, seems to have changed
his mind by 1797. Indeed, when Née’s post-expedition funding ran out, Cavanilles lobbied his
influential friend Juan Bautista Muñoz y Ferrandis to help ensure that Née’s work be continued.
Although he published little, Née collected thousands of plants, only few of which survive today
in Madrid.
II.311. English watchmaker John ARNOLD (1737–1799) had manufactured three marine
chronometers for the second of James Cook’s three expeditions to the Pacific (1772–75).
Arnold’s models, as well as the chronometer by Larcum Kendall (1721–1795) that Cook also
used, were among the first mobile time-keepers to be applied to the real-life conditions of a
maritime expedition. They derived from the first portable “H4” prototype chronometer designed
by carpenter and mechanic John Harrison (1693–1776) in 1764. All three Arnold models failed
the test. This experience prompted a series of important improvements and refinements that
enabled Arnold to build high-quality chronometers in larger amounts and for more affordable
prices. The ones on board the Malaspina expeditions were most likely part of this more
advanced batch. Because of its superb quality, Humboldt—whose instruments regularly suffered
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damage due to the rough travel conditions—had asked that an Arnold chronometer be sent to
him in Havana, but the package never reached him.
II.312. Peruvian-born navigator and explorer MANUEL QUIMPER Benítez del Pino (fl. 1789–
1819) was appointed to the Naval Department at San Blas in 1789. A member of the Francisco
de Eliza expedition to Nootka Sound, he explored the Juan de Fuca strait on the Princesa Real
between May and December 1790. Quimper sailed to the Phillipines in 1791 and returned to San
Blas the following year. About his voyage to return the Princesa Real (Princess Royal) to the
British in Asia and to end the Nootka Sound controversy, Quimper wrote Islas de Sandwich
(1822). He later served as intendant of Puno (1806–14) and Huamanga (1816–19) in Peru.
II.312. Having worked under Vicente Tofiño de San Miguel (1732–95) in 1788, the Spanish
navigator and explorer Secundino SALAMANCA y Humara (c. 1768–1839) was chosen for the
Malaspina Expedition in 1789. In 1791, Salamanca was appointed to the Sútil under Alcalá
Galiano to carry out a surveying expedition to Nootka Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. For
his services during the Malaspina Expedition and the surveying expedition to the Pacific
Northwest, Salamanca was promoted to the rank of commander in 1797. For his command of the
Rayo at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), Salamanca was awarded the rank of commodore in 1805
and was subsequently appointed governor of Sanlúcar (Spain). He retired in 1826.
II.315. Posted in the Naval Department of San Blas (Nayarit), the Spanish navigator and explorer
JACINTO CAAMAÑO Moraleja (b. 1759) arrived in New Spain in 1789 as member of the Real
Colegio de Guardias Marinas. A year later, he traveled to Nootka. Caamaño also took part in the
Expedition of Limits to the Pacific Northwest under Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra.
Commanding the Aránzazu, he arrived again at Nootka Sound on May 1792. Subsequently
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searching for the passage of Bartolomé de Fonte, Caamaño concluded that this passage was but
a myth.
II.319. PAUL I (1754–1801) was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801.
II.320. British explorer and hydrographer Joseph BILLINGS (c. 1760–1806) entered the Royal
Navy in 1776 and then joined Captain James Cook’s voyage to the Pacific Northwest. Having
applied for admission to the Imperial Russian Navy in 1783, Billings was commissioned by
Empress Catherine II (1729–1796) to command an expedition to the northeastern parts of her
domain in 1785. Drafted by natural historian and scientist P. S. Pallas, Billings was instructed to
map the area from the mouth of the River Kolyma in northeastern Siberia along the eastern
Siberian shoreline up to the Bering Strait; to chart the Chukotka peninsula inland from the
Bering Strait as far as Cape Shelagsky; and to provide accurate maps of the chain of Aleutian
and other islands between Kamchatka and the American coast. Fully equipped with scientific
instruments, Billings’s expedition began in June 1787. With Gavril Sarychev as second
commanding officer, Billings surveyed from Kamchatka large areas of the Pacific in the Slava
Rossii (1789–91); the expedition landed on Unalaska Island on June 1790 and sailed up Prince
William Sound. While Sarychev, who became hydrographer-general of the Russian Navy, took
command of the Slava Rossi in 1791 to explore the Aleutian Islands, Billings led a survey party
to chart the northeastern Russian coastline. The expedition returned to St. Petersburg in 1794. A
year later, Billings was transferred to the Black Sea where he conducted hydrographic surveys.
He retired with the rank of commodore in 1799.
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II.320n. French diplomat Nicolas Auguste Marie Rousseau de SAINT-AIGNAN (1770–1858) was
Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821) envoy to Weimar from 1811 to 1813. He was acquainted
with Wilhelm von Humboldt.
II.323. Starting in 1775, Russian seafarer and trader Grigory Ivanovich SHELIKHOV (also
Shelekhov, 1747–1795) organized commercial shipping trips to the Kuril and Aleutian Islands.
From 1783 to 1786, he led an expedition to the shores of Russian America under the auspices of
the Shelikhov-Golikov Company (the other owner was Ivan Larionovich Golikov [1729–1805]),
which would become the basis for the Russian-American Company founded in 1799. Shelikhov
arrived in Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island in 1784. Conflicts ensued with the indigenous
Koniaga, during which Shelikhov killed hundreds of this native population. Having thus
established his authority on Kodiak Island, Shelikhov founded the first permanent Russian
settlement in North America on southeast Kodiak Island. In 1786, he also organized what was
likely the earliest fishing enterprise in Alaska at the Karluk River on Kodiak Island to procure
dried salmon for the workers of his fur-trading company.
II.323. Humboldt’s Mr. SARYTSCHEW was Russian navigator, hydrographer, and later admiral
Gavril Andreevich Sarychev (also Sarichef, 1763–c. 1830), who became an honorable member
of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1809. From 1785 to 1794, Sarychev had taken part
in the expedition sent out by Catherine the Great (1729–96) and led by Joseph Billings.
Sarychev was one of the two explorers who accompanied Billings; the other was Martin Sauer,
the British secretary to the expedition. Sarychev, who was responsible for supervising the
building of ships in Okhotsk, described and mapped the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk from
Okhotsk to Aldoma and many of the Aleutian Islands, especially Unalaska. He also described a
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number of islands, among them St. Matthew Island, St. Lawrence Island, and King Island. After
heading the Baltic hydrographic expedition from 1802 to 1806, Sarychev was placed in charge of
hydrographic research in Russia. He was also in charge of the compilation of the atlas of the
northern part of the Pacific Ocean in 1826.
II.324. Although Evstratii Ivanovich DELAROV (also Yefstrat Ivanitsch Delareff or Eustrate
Delarof, c. 1740–1806) was the first documented Greek explorer and merchant to arrive in
Alaska, he is often forgotten in the annals of history. A rather exceptional figure among the
European merchants of his time, Delarov quickly developed a reputation as a fair and just trader
in an age of aggressive and often brutal European incursions into the Americas. Delarov had
come to Russia as a young man and signed on with the fur-trading company of Grigory and
Pyotr Panov, which had organized expeditions to Alaska since 1747. Delarov stayed with that
company until 1786. After meeting Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov Irkutsk, Delarov, also known
as “the Greek,” became the chief manager of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company on Kodiak Island,
a position he held from 1787 to 1791. In that position, Delarov made contact with any visitors,
including the 1788 Spanish expedition of Gonzalo López de Haro and Esteban José Martínez.
He handled visitors deftly and gracefully, succeeding brilliantly in keeping British, French, and
Spanish explorers out of Alaskan territory and maintaining it as a Russian province during the
entire tenure of his command. When the Russian-American Company was founded in 1799,
Delarov, who had by then become a partner in the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, moved to St.
Petersburg to serve on the new company’s board of directors. He did so until his death.
II.324. Presumably a former employee of the British trade office, Martin SAUER (fl. 1780s–
1790s) served as secretary and translator to the Billings-Sarychev expedition. Traveling under
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the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks, Sauer published his Account of a geographical and
astronomical expedition to the northern parts of Russia in 1802.
II.327n. German geographer and statistician Johann Georg Heinrich HASSEL (1770–1829)
published various statistical and geographical writings about Austria, Prussia, the German
Confederacy, Helvetia (a part of Switzerland), Italy, the Ionian Islands (a group of islands in
Greece), Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden with Norway, Russia, Poland, the
Asiatic kingdoms, the two East Indian peninsulas, Japan, British and Russian North America, the
USA, Mexico, Guatemala, and Australia. Humboldt owned at least seven of Hassel’s books.
Hassel had published statistics on Russia as early as 1805–1807. He also collaborated with
others, among them the geographer Adam Christian Gaspari (1752–1830), who had taught at the
University of Königsberg since 1810.
II.328. Commander of the Legion of Honor, French diplomat, writer, and translator Jean-
François, Baron DE BOURGOING (1748–1811), was a member of the Danish Academy of
Sciences and the Fine Arts Academy in Stockholm. He wrote his Nouveau voyage en Espagne,
ou, Tableau de l'état actuel de cette monarchie (New travels in Spain, or, Portrait of the present
state of this monarchy), first published in 1788–89, after spending nine years in Spain as
secretary of the French Embassy. Banned in Spain by the Inquisition, the book enjoyed moderate
success elsewhere and went through several editions under the shorter 1806 title Tableau de
l'Espagne moderne (Portrait of modern Spain). Bourgoing added new information to each
edition. In 1791, he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of Spain. After devoting several
years to his literary endeavors, he returned to the diplomatic service as ambassador to Denmark
in 1799.
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II.329. Jedidiah Morse’s sons assisted him in his 1792 American Universal Geography, whose
final revision was completed in 1819 by his son SIDNEY EDWARD MORSE (1794–1871).
II.339. British naturalist Thomas NUTTALL (1786–1859) was the author of A Journal of Travels
into the Arkansa Territory (1821), the result of a botanical expedition into the Arkansas Territory
from 1818 to 1820. Trained as an apprentice in the printing business in Liverpool (1800–07),
Nuttall had developed a passion for botany, geology, and mineralogy. He embarked for
Philadelphia in 1808, where he was employed as a botanical assistant to Benjamin Smith
Barton. With support of his mentor, Nuttall carried out his first botanical explorations from 1809
to 1811, traveling to Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, the Great Lakes region, Fort Mandon
up the Missouri River, and New Orleans. From 1815 to 1817, he explored the Ohio River,
Kentucky, and the Carolinas. The result of his exploration was Genera of North American Plants
(1818), a comprehensive botanical publication about part of North America. An instructor of
botany and natural history at Harvard College (1822–1834), Nuttall also published the textbook,
An Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany (1827). In addition to writing a book on
ornithology after a successful expedition through the Rocky Mountains (1834–1835), Nuttall
prepared a new edition of The North American Sylva (1849) by François-André Michaux (1770–
1855).
II.343. Knighted in 1833, Sir Charles WILKINS (bap. 1749–1836), a British merchant in the East
India Company from 1770 to 1786, was the first to translate into English the Bhagavad-gītā, a
small part of the epic Mahābhārata (which inspired Kālidāsa’s famous Abhijñānaśākuntala) and
an influential Hindu text. A pioneering Sanskrit scholar, Wilkins established a printing press for
Oriental languages in 1778 and published A Grammar of Sanskrit in 1779. He was one of the
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founding members of the Asiatick Society of Bengal in Calcutta. Elected to the Royal Society in
1788, Wilkins became the librarian of the East India Company in 1800.
II.343.The Arabic phrase ‘ILM AL RAML translates as science of the sand and refers to
geomancy, or “earth divination.”
II.343. The GEOMANTIC TABLEAU to which Humboldt refers here is the Dresden Codex, a ritual-
calendrical screenfold on amatl paper housed at the State Library of Saxony in Dresden. One of
the most important surviving pictorial Maya manuscripts, the Dresden Codex contains divinatory
almanacs, representations of many ceremonies and deities, multiplication tables for the synodical
revolutions of Venus, and observations about other matters, such as disease and agriculture. One
of only four Maya hieroglyphic manuscripts in existence (the others being the Madrid Codex, the
Paris Codex, and the Grolier Codex), Humboldt published five of thirty-nine of its pages in
Views of the Cordilleras (Plate XLV). Although Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–
1874) did not rediscover the fragments of the Madrid Codex until 1866, Humboldt might have
seen the Codex Troano, a seventy-page codex fragment named after Spanish paleographer Juan
Tro y Ortolano (1814–1875). Together with the Codex Cortesianus, a forty-two-page codex
fragment, that manuscript is known as Madrid Codex or Codex Tro-Cortesianus. The Madrid
Codex, a series of almanacs based on a 260-day period of time, records a variety of hunting and
agricultural practices, social and religious rites, and astronomical information about the Maya.
II.344. A Dominican monk from New Granada, FRANCISCO NÚÑEZ DE LA VEGA (1632–1706)
was appointed bishop of Chiapas and Soconusco in 1683, an office he held until his death. His
Constituciones diocesanas (1702) discuss Maya religion and the predominance of a spirit cult
called nagualism in the indigenous population of eighteenth-century southern Mexico. Núñez de
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la Vega was the first to mention Votan (Uotan, “heart”), a deity in highland Chiapas. In the
seventeenth century, the peoples of Teopisca (who spoke Tzeltal) were regarded as the
descendants of Votan. According to a myth related by Núñez de la Vega, Votan traveled through
a serpent-made subterraneous passage and brought back and deposited several tapirs and a
treasure in a dark house he constructed in Huehuetlán in Soconusco (a district in the state of
Chiapas, Mexico). In the Maya tzolk’in calendar, Votan was identified with the third day
(ak’b’al, darkness).
II.344. Humboldt’s so-called “Tetimpa Diary” can be found in Appendix I of Ulrike Leitner’s
edition of his Mexican travel diary, Von Mexico Stadt-nach Veracruz (From Mexico City to
Veracruz, Berlin: Akademiverlag, 2005).
II.346. Some believe that Humboldt’s “SAGE TRAVELER” may have been Simón Tadeo de Ortiz
y Ayala. We have been unable to verify this.
II.351. Mexican colonizer and writer Simón TADEO ORTIZ y Ayala (1788–1833) carried out a
reconnaissance mission to the Tehuantepec Isthmus to determine the feasibility of building an
interoceanic canal there. As a result of the expedition, he received approval for and attempted to
colonize the isthmus, especially the Coatzacalcos (1823–29). A supporter of Mexican
independence, Ortiz also attempted to colonize Texas. He published Resumen de la Estadística
del Imperio Mexicano (Statistical overview of the Mexican empire, 1822) and México
considerado como nación independiente y libre (Mexico viewed as an indepdent and free nation,
1832). He died of cholera on a journey to New Orleans to recruit colonists.
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II.362. MATÍAS DE GÁLVEZ y Gallardo (1717–1784) was José de Gálvez y Gallardo’s eldest
brother and the father of Bernardo de Gálvez. To serve as inspector general of the Audiencia de
Guatemala, he arrived in Guatemala in July 1778. In April of the following year, Gálvez was
promoted to president of the Audiencia, an office he held until 1782. Because the capital,
Antigua, had been destroyed in a 1773 earthquake, he relocated the capital of the Audiencia to
present-day Guatemala City during his first year as president of the Audiencia. In August 1782,
Gálvez was appointed interim viceroy of New Spain. The official transfer of office took place in
April 1783, the same year the viceregal nomination was made permanent. Gálvez was viceroy
until his death.
II.362. Spanish surveyor MANUEL GALISTEO (fl. 1781) explored present-day Nicaragua in 1781
to determine the viability of building an interoceanic canal under orders of Matías de Gálvez.
After carrying out a survey of the Lake Nicaragua region and an examination of the route to the
Pacific Ocean, he determined that the project was too difficult a task. Currently at the Biblioteca
del Palacio Real in Spain, his report is entitled “Plan de nivelación de la altura y declives que
tiene el río San Juan y Gran Laguna de Nicaragua” (MS 2857).
II.363. In 1779, Matías de Gálvez, then-captain-general of Guatemala, ordered Spanish military
officer IGNACIO MAESTRE y Fuentes (b. 1737) to determine the practicability of an interoceanic
canal through present-day Nicaragua. Joaquín de Ysasi and José Alejandre, engineers under
his command, reported back in June 1779, emphasizing the difficulty of constructing a canal on
that site. A member of the Real Compañía de Guardias Marinas (Royal Navy) since 1753,
Maestre served as commander of the fort of San Fernando de Omoa in present-day Honduras.
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While stationed in Nicaragua, Gálvez put Simon Dexnaux, a French engineer, in command of the
fort at Honduras.
II.363. Spanish military engineer JOAQUÍN DE YSASI (also Isasi, fl. 1762–1780) was accepted as a
draftsman to the Spanish Royal Corps of Engineers in 1762. By 1774, Ysasi was posted in Spain
during the construction of the Channel of Castile. Stationed in Central America with fellow
engineer José Alejandre at the beginning of the 1770s, Ysasi worked on a reconnaissance
mission to explore the possibility of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua’s San Juan River
and Lake Nicaragua. Together, Ysasi and Alejandre produced a chart titled “Diseño en que se
procura manifestar el Reconocimiento… a fin de averiguar si tenía o podía tener comunicación el
Lago de Nicaragua con el Mar de el Sur.” The map is reproduced in Obras Hidráulicas en
América Colonial (1993).
II.363. Spanish military engineer JOSÉ MARÍA ALEJANDRE Guerrero (fl. 1764–1803), whom
Humboldt calls José Alejandro, served in Guatemala and was transferred to the Castillo de San
Juan in present-day Nicaragua in 1771. Alejandre had begun his military service in Spain as
second lieutenant and draftsman in Catalonia and subsequently advanced his career in the
Kingdom of Guatemala for more than three decades. While stationed in Central America,
Alejandre drew a croquis of the San Juan River (1781) and a map of the port of Granada (1783).
To defend Lake Nicaragua against a British invasion, he designed a fort at Granada (1785),
another at San Carlos (1785), and drew a plan of the San Carlos fort (1803).
II.371n. Spanish pharmacologist Juan José TAFALLA Navascués (1755–1811) was a member of
the Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru and Chile, led by Spanish botanists Hipólito
Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez from 1777 to 1788.
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II.371n. French botanist Augustin (Auguste) François César Prouvençal de SAINT-HILAIRE (c.
1779–1853) traveled in South America—mainly in south and central Brazil—between 1816 and
1822. From 1813 to 1820, he explored the flora, fauna, and geography of the province of Minas
Gerais with the Prussian politician and naturalist Baron Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff (1774–
1852), collecting data in all fields of natural history.
II.371n. British botanist Aylmer Bourke LAMBERT (1761–1842) studied at Oxford University
from 1779 to 1782. He had been interested in botany from an early age. In 1788, Lambert,
Samuel Goodenough (1743–1827), and Thomas Marsham (d. 1819) had founded the Linnaean
Society of London, of which Lambert became vice president in 1796. The following year,
Lambert published A Description of the Genus Cinchona (1797). The first volume of his famous
A Description of the Genus Pinus (1803–07) was initially published in a seven-part folio edition
with engraved plates by Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826). The second volume appeared in 1824,
and a second edition edited by David Don (1799–1841) was published between 1828 and 1837.
Lambert had a collection of dried plants (herbaria) that was freely available to botanists for
study. Upon Lambert’s death, the collection comprising of about 50,000 specimens was divided
into 317 lots, sold by auction, acquired by sixteen buyers, and dispersed throughout Europe and
the USA. Lambert was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1791 and the Society of
Antiquaries in 1838.
II.381n. Italian naturalist, explorer, and amateur musician Giuseppe ACERBI (1773–1846)
published Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape (1802) after his
1798–99 travels in northern Europe. Although he was appointed a diplomat to Lisbon, he turned
down the position to serve as editor of the Biblioteca italiana (1816–1825), a literary magazine.
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Acerbi was named consul of Austria in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1825. He also published Delle viti
italiane (1825), a horticultural book about grapes.
II.382. At age seventeen, Humboldt’s close friend Johann GEORG Adam FORSTER (1754–1794)
traveled the world as the assistant to his father, the Lutheran pastor and naturalist Johann
Reinhold Forster (1729–98) who, on short notice, replaced Sir Joseph Banks as the official
scientist on Captain Cook’s second voyage. While Georg Forster’s main responsibility was to
draw the flora and fauna that the expedition encountered, his real fields of interest were
comparative geography and ethnology. He would soon conduct his own research in these areas.
Forster’s unofficial account of that voyage, A Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty's
Sloop Resolution (1777), is still deemed a foundational text for modern scientific travel
literature. Because of the family’s desperate finances, which Forster’s book failed to alleviate,
his father had to sell the complete collection of botanical and zoological drawings his son had
made during the Cook expedition to their rival Banks who kept them under lock and key for the
rest of his life. It was not until 2007 that an edition of Forster’s text and drawings saw print in
German. Georg Forster and Alexander von Humboldt met during Humboldt’s study years in
Göttingen, where they were introduced by Forster’s father-in-law, the famous classicist and
archeologist Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812), whose lectures Humboldt attended
enthusiastically. Forster’s influence on Humboldt was substantial. His advice to study basalt
deposits encouraged Humboldt’s first book publication, Mineralogische Beobachtungen über
einige Basalte am Rhein (Mineralogical observations of some basalts in the Rhine region, 1790).
An early study on the Pacific breadfruit stimulated Humboldt’s incipient drafts of plant
geography, which he presented to his mentor the same year that a joint journey led both men
through the Low Countries, England, and France and resulted in Forster’s three-volume
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Ansichten über den Niederrhein (Views of the Lower Rhine country, 1791–94). This book
proved an important inspiration for Humboldt’s popular Ansichten der Natur (Views of Nature).
Witnessing the peoples’ enthusiasm for the French Revolution in Paris profoundly stirred the
Jacobin political beliefs in both men. When the revolutionary army seized the city of Mainz in
1792, Forster became one of the leaders of the short-lived, democratic Mainz Republic. He soon
had to flee into French exile, where he died only two years later.
II.383. Spanish clergyman Tomás Martínez Gómez, later Bishop TOMÁS DE BERLANGA (c. 1487–
1551), is credited with the European discovery of the Galapagos archipelago. On his way to Peru
from Panama to resolve a territorial dispute between Francisco Pizarro (c. 1470s–1541) and
Diego de Almagro (1475–1538), he entered the Doldrums (or Intertropical Convergence Zone)
and was swept away by the currents until accidently sighting the archipelago in March 1535. He
made a report of his journey that landed in the hands of the Flemish mapmaker Abraham Ortelius
(1527–1598), who inserted the islands in a map of Peru entitled “Peruviae Auriferae Regionis
Typus” (1574). Berlanga’s report about the Galapagos archipelago to Charles V was published
as “A Letter to his Majesty from Fray Tomás de Berlanga describing his Voyage from Panama to
Puerto Viejo, and the Hardships he encountered in this Navigation” in Colección de Documentos
Inéditos Relativos al Descubrimiento, Conquista y Organización de las Antiguas Posesiones
Españolas de América y Oceanía (1884). When he left to Peru, Berlanga, who had entered the
Dominican Order in 1507, was acting bishop of Tierra Firme with a see in Panama. Recruited for
missionary work at Hispaniola, he had arrived in America around 1510. He became vice-
provincial of the Dominican Friars in 1521 and fourth bishop of Tierra Firme in 1533. Berlanga
resigned from the bishopric in 1537 and returned to Spain in 1543.
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II.383. Spanish explorer and navigator Pero (Pedro) ALONSO NIÑO, EL NEGRO (1468–c. 1505),
had participated in several Portuguese expeditions before joining Columbus’s third voyage to the
Americas in 1498. Before returning to Spain, Niño explored the coast of present-day Venezuela
that year.
II.383. Spanish explorer and navigator Vicente Yáñez PINZÓN (c. 1492–1509) commanded the
Niña during Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas in 1492. Pinzón himself led an expedition
across the Atlantic in 1499/1500. Arriving in Brazil about three months before the Portuguese
navigator Pedro Cabral, Pinzón explored the estuary of the Amazon River and the coast of
Brazil up to the Costa Rica. In 1507, Pinzón reconnoitered the estuary of the River Plate.
II.384n. René Louiche DESFONTAINES (1750–1833) had initially come to Paris to study
medicine. But listening to Louis Guillaume Le Monnier’s (1717–99) lectures at the Jardin des
Plantes in Paris, he quickly became fascinated with botany, a field of interest in which he
excelled. (Louis Guillaume was the younger brother of astronomer Pierre Charles Le
Monnier.) Flora Atlantica (1800), a book that included 300 genera new to science, resulted from
his trip to Tunisia and Algeria, where he spent two years and amassed a large collection of
plants. Having been elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1783, Desfontaines replaced
Le Monnier as professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes three years later. Later on, he
directed France’s Natural History Museum, served as president of the Academy of Sciences, and
was inducted into the Legion of Honor. He was also a member of the French National Academy
of Medicine. Humboldt dedicated his Essay on Plant Geography (1805–07), the first work of his
American voyage, to the French botanists Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836) and
Desfontaines, both of whom he had met during his five-month stay in Paris in 1798. During these
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months, which Humboldt used as the final preparation time for his American voyage, he had laid
the groundwork for his long affiliation with Parisian scientific circles. In addition to
Desfontaines and Georges Cuvier, both of whom expanded Humboldt’s understanding of
botany and zoology, the young Prussian scientist became well acquainted with the zoologist
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and with the chemists Antoine-François de Fourcroy (1755–1809) and
Louis Nicolas Vauquelin.
II.385. German botanist and medical doctor Joseph GÄRTNER (1732–1791) is best known for his
work on plant fruits and seeds, De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum (Of plant fruits and seeds,
1788–92). After completing his medical degree in Tübingen, Gärtner traveled extensively in
Italy, France, England, and Holland, continuing his scientific work alongside his medical
practice. In addition to botany, he was also interested in optics and mechanics, even to the point
of building his own scientific instruments. Having returned from a longer sojourn to England in
1761, Gärtner was appointed professor of anatomy at his alma mater. In 1768, he was offered a
professorship of natural history and the directorship of the botanical garden and natural history
collection in St. Petersburg. Quickly dissatisfied with his largely administrative position, Gärtner
returned to Germany—and to his scientific work—only two years later. He now had the time to
turn to his true passion: seeds and plant fruits. To complete his collection, he took another trip to
Holland and England in 1778 and had the good fortune to meet up with Sir Joseph Banks and
Carl Peter Thunberg, who allowed him to make very liberal use of specimens they had brought
back from their own travels. When he finally completed it, De Fructibus included valuable
details on more than a thousand plant species (with 180 copper-plate engravings), ushering in a
new era in plant morphology. Gärtner’s son, Karl Friedrich Gärtner (1772–1850), who was
involved in editing his father’s work, also contributed important studies about hybridization. In
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his Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich, mit Hinweisung
auf die ähnlichen Erscheinungen im Thierreiche (Essays and observations about plant
hybridization, with remarks about similar phenomena among animals, 1849), the younger
Gärtner showed how the features of plants could be controlled by artificial pollination.
II.385. Scottish-descended French naturalist and traveler Michel ADANSON (1727–1806) was the
first to subject Linnaean taxonomy to a serious critique on the occasion of his five-year travels in
the Canary Islands and in Senegal (1749–1753). He found that the plants he encountered in
Senegal, part of what was then known as “the Torrid Zone,” did not fit available categories,
including Linnaean ones, which were based on more temperate climatic conditions. Adanson was
convinced that observing plants in their natural environments was crucial, and the descriptions he
published in Histoire naturelle du Sénégal (Natural History of Senegal, 1757) are always
accompanied by thermometric, barometric, and hygrometric measurements. In 1763, Adanson
published his Familles naturelles des plantes (Natural plant families), in which he proposed a
new taxonomic vocabulary. Though initially ridiculed by the defenders of Linneaus (Carl von
Linné, 1707–87), Adanson’s ideas about the natural method of classifying plants eventually won
broad-based acceptance, especially after his mentor, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836),
published his Genera Plantarum in 1789.
II.385. The work of two men, both in the employ of the Dutch East India Company
(Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC for short) marked the beginnings of European
botanical studies in Asia. One was the German-born botanist and ethnographer Georg Eberhard
RUMPF (also Rumphius, 1627–1702), the other the Dutch amateur botanist Hendrik Adriaan van
RHEEDE tot Drakenstein, Lord of Mijdrecht (1636–1691). Rumpf lived most of his adult life on
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the island of Amboina (now Ambon), part of the Maluku Islands of today’s Indonesia, of which
he became governor late in life. He is best known for his Herbarium Amboinense, a six-volume
catalogue of plants on the island of Ambon that was published posthumously in a Latin
translation in 1741. Initially a cadet with the VOC, Rumpf had set out for Batavia in 1852 and
proceeded to the so-called spice islands of the Ambon archipelago two years later. By the 1660s,
he was embroiled in his botanical work there, with the support of the governor of Batavia. There
were, however, myriad obstacles to completing and publishing his work. In 1670, Rumpf lost his
eyesight to glaucoma, and four years later an earthquake killed his wife and daughter. He
remained undeterred, even starting over the manuscript originally written in Latin as there was
no one in Batavia to whom he could have dictated in that language. In 1687, all of the original
plates were destroyed in a house fire that also consumed much of Rumpf’s library. The new
manuscript, in Dutch, was then lost in a shipwreck. A copy finally arrived in Holland in 1697,
only to be buried by the East India Company for more than four decades for containing an
abundance of sensitive information. Of Dutch nobility, Van Rheede was a military man who
quickly advanced to High Commissioner of the VOC. Having joined the VOC in 1656 as a
soldier, he was appointed commander of Dutch Malabar in 1670. Initiated because of the medical
needs of the VOC, Van Rheede’s work on the plants of the Malabar region began in 1674, and a
draft of the first volume was ready around 1675. Van Rheede employed a team of nearly a
hundred to compile and edit his twelve-volume opus Hortus Malabaricus (1678–1703), which
described 740 plants of the region. The group included physicians, professors of medicine and
botany, amateur botanists, Indian scholars, and physicians from Malabar and adjacent regions, as
well as technicians, illustrators, engravers, and company officials. In 1677, Van Rheede moved
to Jakarta as part of the Council of India, returning to Amsterdam the following year. In 1681, he
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signed a contract with botanists Jan Commelin (1629–1692) and his nephew Caspar Commelin
(1667–1731), and the physician Johannes Munnicks (1652–1711), to work on editing and
indexing Hortus. Both Rumpf and Van Rheede’s books contributed significantly to the
development of Linnaeus’s system of plant taxonomy.
II.386. GARCILASO DE LA VEGA, El Inca (1539–1616), was a relative of the Inca Atahuallpa (c.
1502–1533). Born Gómez Suárez de Figueroa, he was the son of the Spanish conquistador
Sebastián de la Vega Vargas and the Inca ñusta (princess) Chimpu Ocllo (d. 1571), baptized
Isabel Suárez. Garcilaso adopted the epithet “El Inca” to signify pride in his indigenous ancestry.
The first American to write in Spanish, he lived in Spain from 1561 until his death. He authored
an extensive history of the Incas, the Comentarios Reales de los Incas (Royal Commentaries of
the Incas), which was first published in Lisbon in 1609 and 1617. The Comentarios was banned
in Peru in 1780 at the outset of the rebellion against colonial dominance led by José Gabriel
Condorcanqui, better known as Tupac Amaru II.
II.386. The Spanish Jesuit José de ACOSTA (1540–1600) was a missionary mainly in Peru, but he
was also briefly stationed in Mexico. Trained in Greek philosophy, Latin rhetoric, and Christian
theology, Acosta arrived in Peru in 1572, the year in which the Jesuit order was formally
instituted in the Americas; he visited Cusco, Arequipa, La Paz, Charcas, Potosí, and Chuquisaca.
His Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Natural and moral history of the Indes) was written
in both Latin and Spanish. Its preliminary version was published under the title De natura novi
orbis (Of the nature of the new world, 1588–89). The final edition was published in 1590 and
translated into several European languages—Italian, French, Dutch, German, Latin, and
English—between 1596 and 1604. Acosta’s Historia was based on his direct interactions with
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the local peoples; he also benefitted from conversations with and writings by Juan de Tovar and
Polo de Ondegardo. In addition to publishing a catechism in Aymara and Quechua in 1583, the
first book to be printed in Peru, Acosta wrote De Christo revelato (Of the revelation of Christ,
1590), De temporibus novissimis (Of modern times, 1590), and a book of sermons. In 1597, a
decade after having returned to Spain, Acosta was appointed dean of the Jesuit College in
Salamanca, a position he held until his death.
II.389. French physician and agronomist Henri-Alexandre TESSIER (1741–1837) was best known
for his works on the cultivation of sugar beets and his contributions to the Paris Journal des
Savants. Tessier was a student and lifelong friend of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu’s (1748–1836),
who introduced him to Paris’s scientific community. In 1776, Tessier became one of the
inaugural members of the Royal Society of Medicine. Together with Lavoisier, he was also a
member of the Agricultural Society of Paris and, because of his abiding interest in introducing
merino sheep to France, was appointed inspector-general of sheep farms by the newly formed
Agricultural Office. A member of the French Academy of Sciences since 1795, Tessier was a
prolific writer on a wide range of medical and especially agricultural topics. On the latter, he
contributed regularly to the agricultural section of the Encyclopédie méthodique. Tessier was
also an editor of note, founding the Journal d’agriculture in 1791 and the Annales de
l’agriculture françoise in 1798. When hiding from the Reign of Terror under an assumed name
in Normandy in 1792, he had a chance encounter with Georges Cuvier, then an unknown young
zoologist, and recommended him to his friends in Paris, notably to Jussieu, Auguste-Antoine
Parmentier, and Étienne Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, then a professor of zoology at the newly
constituted National Museum of Natural History. Soon after, Cuvier became Saint-Hilaire’s
assistant. Humboldt apparently did not care much for the “annoying” Tessier.
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II.391. The legendary king and conqueror ALEXANDER III of Macedonia, known as Alexander
the Great (356–323 BCE), overthrew the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the battle of Arbela in
331 BCE, in which he defeated Darius III of Persia. Historians and archaeologists have long
debated the exact location of this battle, which is assumed to have taken place not in Arbela
(today’s Arbil in northern Iraq) but close to Gaugamela (today’s Mosul). The hard-won battle
gave Alexander control of the vast Persian territories—at the time the largest empire of the
ancient world—and opened the way for Hellenistic forays into Asia.
II.391. Gaius Plinius Secundus (23–79 BCE), also known as PLINY the Elder, was a Roman
naturalist, politician, and naval commander. His monumental Naturalis Historia, an
encyclopedic work of thirty-seven books, is the most valuable compilation of ancient Greek and
Roman science, covering the physical universe, geography, anthropology, biology, mineralogy,
medicinal plants, and the fine arts. Humboldt, who first read Pliny during his studies at the
University of Göttingen (1789–90), cites the Roman encyclopedist extensively and adopted
Pliny’s maxim as the motto of his own Cosmos: “Naturae vero rerum vis atque maiestas omnibus
momentis fide caret si quis modo partes eius ac non totam conplectatur animo” (Indeed the
power and majesty of the nature of the universe at every turn lacks credence if one’s mind
embraces parts of it only and not the whole” (Naturalis historia, VII, 1).
II.393n. French lexicographer, printer, and civilian officer Pierre-Marie-Sébastien CATINEAU
LAROCHE (1772–1828) wrote about French Guyana in 1822. Narrowly escaping death in Saint-
Domingue, he traveled through England on his way to Paris in 1797. The owner of a press, he
published a pocket dictionary of the French language as Nouveau dictionnaire de poche de la
langue français (1797). When his business burned, Catineau Laroche was appointed chief clerk
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in the bureau of commerce in the colonies in 1826. In 1819, he was commissioned for an
expedition to Guiana to study the climate and resources of that province. The results of his
voyage were published as De la Guyane Française and Notice sur la Guyane Française, both in
1822.
II.395n. French naturalist and plant collector François Richard de TUSSAC (1751–1837) was born
on Martinique into a wealthy planter family. He traveled extensively in Saint-Domingue,
Jamaica, and Cuba, and lived in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Haiti until 1802. Tussac is noted
for one of the earliest floras of the Antilles, the four-volume Flora Antillarum; seu, Historia
generalis botanica, ruralis, oeconomica vegetabilium in Antilles indigenorum (Antillean flora, or
general botanical, rural, and econoic history of the native vegetation of the Antilles, 1808–27).
Methodologically influenced by Linnaeus (Carl von Linné, 1707–1787) and Antoine Laurent de
Jussieu (1748–1836; see also annotation on Desfontaines), Tussac’s Flora marks the beginning
of modern botanical study of the Antilles. It was unmatched for decades until the 1896
publication of Flore Phanérogamique des Antilles françaises (Phanerogamic flora of the French
Antilles) by Antoine Duss (1840–1924). Perhaps surprisingly, Flora also includes an account of
Toussaint l‘Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution. In 1816, Tussac accepted a position as
director of the Jardin Botanique d'Angers in the Loire region of France, which he would hold for
ten years. His book Cri des Colons (Cry of the colonizers, 1810) is largely an anti-reformist
polemic opposing legal rights for Antillean Blacks.
II.397n. In 1637, German naturalist Georg MARGGRAF (also Markgraf or Marcgrave, 1610–
1644) was appointed astronomer of a company formed to sail to the Dutch colony in northeastern
Brazil. This was the first scientific expedition to the colony that had existed for thirty years
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(1624–54). The zoological, botanical, and astronomical expedition was sponsored by Count
Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), governor of the Dutch possessions in Brazil.
Marggraf was accompanied by Dutch physician and naturalist Willem PISO (also Guilherme
Piso, 1611–1678), who was van Naussau-Siegen’s personal physician and also served as the
expedition doctor. Arriving in Brazil in early 1638, they traveled from the Rio Grande to south of
Pernambuco to study its natural history and geography as they accompanied the governor on his
military missions. On his later exploratory visit to Angola, Marggraf succumbed to fever in
1644. Four years later, the Dutch geographer Joannes de Laet (1589–1649), who came into
possession of Marggraf’s notes after Johan Maurits brought them to Europe, edited and
published them, together with Piso’s own work on medicine, under the title Historia naturalis
Brasiliae. In addition to his work on astronomy—Marggraf had an observatory in Recife—he
made signature contributions to zoology and botany. Much of his work, especially his notes on
astronomy, remains lost. Piso, who returned to Holland to become one of the founders of tropical
medicine, was later accused of attempting, in subsequent publications such as the second edition
of the Historia published under his name, to downplay Marggraf’s accomplishments, which
include the large map published in 1647 by the Dutch polymath Caspar Barlaeus (1584–1648)
and attributed to Marggraf.
II.397n. Scottish botanist ROBERT BROWN (1773–1858) was part of a British expedition under
the command of Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) along the northern and southern coasts of
Australia from 1801 to 1805. In 1810, Brown took charge of Joseph Banks’s library, which he
inherited after Banks’s death. Brown donated the library to the British Museum when he became
Keeper of Botany there. Humboldt esteemed Brown, whom he had met in Paris in 1816, so
highly that he procured an annual pension for him through Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850).
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II.397n. A Scottish Orientalist employed by the East India Company, John CRAWFURD (1783–
1868) successfully combined scholarship with diplomacy. Having received his medical
education in Edinburgh, Crawfurd, aged twenty, was appointed to the northwestern provinces of
India. He held various posts in Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. After the first Anglo-
Burmese war, he served as the first Briton at the court of Ava in 1827. Crawfurd retired to
England in the 1830s and unsuccessfully tried for Parliament. He published a number of books
based on his far-ranging experiences, including a three-volume History of the Indian
Archipelago (1820); Humboldt quotes from it. Crawfurd’s Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian
Islands and Adjacent Countries (1856) remains an important contribution to the study of early
nineteenth-century maritime Southeast Asia.
II.397n. The Scottish botanist and physician William ROXBURGH (c. 1751–1815) studied
medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In his late teens, he was appointed surgeon’s mate and
sailed twice to the East, eventually settling in Madras. He started submitting papers on natural
history to the Royal Society and sometimes also sent seeds. In 1781, he moved to Samulcottah
where, among other things, he occupied himself with improving the manufacture of sugar,
writing several papers on the Hindu method of cultivating the sugarcane. In 1793, he was
appointed superintendent of the new Botanical Garden in Calcutta.
II.397n. Auguste-Nicaise DESVAUX (1784–1856) started out as the director of the Botanical
Garden of Poitier and regularly went to Angers to listen to François Richard de Tussac’s
lectures on botany. Tussac was then the head of the Angers Botanical Garden, a position in
which Desvaux succeeded him in 1826. Desvaux wrote and published on botany, zoology,
mineralogy, and related subjects. His scholarly output was extensive, but he seems not to have
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been admired for his precision. In 1808, he was a vocal part of group of French naturalists
responsible for founding the first journal of botany in France five years later, in 1813. For
reasons that remain unclear, the broadly conceived Journal de Botanique was short-lived.
II.397n. Inspired by Humboldt, the chemist and mineralogist Alexander CALDCLEUGH (d. 1858)
served as a private secretary to a British diplomat in Rio de Janeiro and traveled extensively in
Brazil, Chile, and parts of present-day Argentina.
II.397n. British surgeon WHITELAW AINSLIE (1767–1837) is best known for his work in India,
where he went in the service of the British East India Company in 1788. He remained in India
until 1815. His 1803 Materia Medica of Hindoostan, and Artisan’s and Agriculturist’s
Nomenclature includes a list of edible fruits and vegetables.
II.399. Natural historian Gonzalo Fernández de OVIEDO y Valdés (1478–1557) became the
official chronicler for Charles V in 1532. Oviedo had crossed the Atlantic for the first time in
1514 as part of an expedition to the Isthmus of Darien. He lived in America for most of his life,
serving the Crown as inspector of gold mines in Tierra Firme, governor of Cartagena, and
councilman in perpetuity and governor of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola. The firsthand accounts
of Central America’s flora, fauna, and peoples in his Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias
(Summary of the natural history of the Indies, 1526) became the basis for his seminal Historia
General y Natural de las Indias (General and natural history of the Indies, 1535). One of the
most important chroniclers of the region, Oviedo also wrote the unpublished Libro de blasón (c.
1528), a chivalric novel best known as Don Claribalte (1519), and Quinquagenas de la nobleza
de España (1880), in addition to poetry and other literary works.
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II.401. Giorgio GALLESIO (1772–1839) was an Italian botanist who, although trained in law at
the University of Pavia in Italy, had a passion for pomology. He published several books on the
topic, including Teoria della Riproduzione Vegetale (Theory of plant reproduction, 1816) and his
famous Pomona Italiana ossia trattato degli alberi fruttiferi (1817–39), an important collection
of images and description of fruits and fruit trees from Italy. The Gallesia, a flowery plant
species, is named after him.
II.401. British military physician and naturalist William WRIGHT (1735–1819) began his medical
career in the Navy in 1758 as a surgeon’s second mate. In 1760, he sailed to the West Indies and
remained there until 1763. After obtaining a medical degree in England, he moved to Jamaica in
1764 and established himself there as a physician until 1777. The surgeon-general of Jamaica
since 1774, Wright became a collector of Jamaican plants for the natural history museum of the
University of Edinburgh. In 1778, during a visit to England, he was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society of London. Returning to Jamaica for three years (1782–85), he continued collecting
plants for Joseph Banks. After selling his properties in Jamaica, Wright settled at Edinburgh
temporarily. From 1796 to 1798, he was the physician to the army and director of military
hospitals in Barbados. A supporter of slavery, Wright was a member of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh, the Society of Natural History of Edinburgh, the Royal Physical Society of
Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal Medical Society.
II.401. Swedish botanist Pehr LÖFLING (1729–56) was one of the apostles of Carl Linnaeus (Carl
von Linné, 1707–1787) who was responsible for carrying the intellectual seeds of Linnaean
taxonomy across the world. When King Ferdinand VI (1713–1759) asked Linné either to travel
to Spain or to send one of his students instead, Linné selected Löfling. The latter remained in
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Spain from 1751 to 1754, collecting samples of Spanish flora that he sent to Linné at Uppsala. In
Spain, José de Carvajal y Lancáster (1698–1754), secretary of foreign affairs, invited Löfling to
join what became known as the Expedition to the Limits of the Orinoco (1754–61). The purpose
of this journey was to establish the borders with the Portuguese possessions in South America
and thus to comply with the terms of the border treaty from 1750. Löfling accepted and thus
became the King’s Botanist. He was to study plants, particularly cinnamon, and collected
botanical and zoological species. With the material he gathered in and around Cumaná, he wrote
two manuscripts that are now housed at the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid: “Primer Borrador
de la Flora Cumanensis” y “Flora Cumanensis.” They are basis for the Iter Hispanicum, edited
posthumously by Linné. In the spring of 1755, Löfling went to Guayana on another botanical
mission. It was during this overland voyage that he contracted the yellow fever of which he died.
II.402. Humboldt refers to Amerigo Vespucci’s letter from September 1504, addressed to a
“Magnificent Lord” who was probably Piero Soderini (1450–1522), a Florentine statesman. A
copy of this letter in a French translation was sent to Renee II, DUKE OF LORRAINE (1451–1508).
II.404n. French pharmacist, botanist, and explorer Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée-AUBLET
(1720–78) laid the foundations of tropical American forest botany, and his work has caught the
attention of many twentieth-century ethnobotanists. In 1752, the French East India Company sent
him to Mauritius (then l’Île de France) where he was to establish a pharmacy and a botanical
garden. He returned to Paris in 1762 after freeing all of his slaves and marrying an African
woman originally from Madagascar, with whom he had a son. That same year, Fusée-Aublet was
dispatched to Cayenne in French Guiana, where he stayed for three years and assembled an
enormous herbarium. This collection became the basis for his Histoire des plantes de la Guiane
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françoise (History of the plants of French Guiana, 1775), which is notable not only for its many
generic names but also for its specific nomenclature based on local vernacular. Fusée-Aublet had
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836) check his descriptions and engravings prior to
publication. Reportedly, Sir Joseph Banks acquired Fusée-Aublet’s herbarium, which consisted
of plants and seeds from all over the world by the time the latter died. Parts of it ended up in the
British Museum and the French National Museum of Natural History.
II.408. The private physician of Philip II of Spain, Francisco HERNÁNDEZ de Toledo (c. 1515–
87) was also a renowned Spanish naturalist. In 1570, Hernández was appointed chief medical
officer of the Indies and arrived in New Spain a year later, charged with researching indigenous
flora and fauna. He used the opportunity to interview Nahua intellectuals who knew Latin. In
1577, Hernández returned to Spain, preparing eleven volumes with illustrations of 3,000
collected specimens. The work was written in Latin and struck Philip II as too philosophical.
Nardo Antonio Recchi was asked to prepare a digest limited to useful medicinal plants. Recchi’s
version was not published until several decades later. Hernández began a Spanish translation and
also ordered a Nahuatl version of his work. One of the two original manuscripts, Hernández’s
corrected draft, is divided between the Museum of Natural Sciences and the General Archive of
the Ministerio de Hacienda in Madrid. His final report to the king was housed at the Escorial and
destroyed during a 1671 fire. The Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebius Nieremberg (1595–1658), who
taught physiology at the Royal Academy in Madrid, based his Historia naturae (1635) on
Hernández’s original works, including the lost Escorial manuscript. Hernández also translated
into Spanish and annotated Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturali.
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II.415. Although Antoine-Augustin PARMENTIER (1737–1813), a French pharmacist with strong
interests in nutrition and agronomy, is best known as the father of the potato, he also wrote about
other nutritive plants, including grains, beets, and corn. As a nutritional reformer, he was most
interested in the potato, unknown as a respectable food for humans in France, as an alternative to
corn, especially in times of drought. Parmentier’s interest in potatoes apparently stemmed from
his imprisonment in Prussia during the Seven-Year War (1756–1763)—he served as a military
apothecary at the time—and was forced to subsist exclusively on potatoes. Upon his return to
France, Parmentier gained the patronage of Louis XVI (1754–93) and was able to conduct a wide
range of experiments with foodstuffs. In addition to founding a school for bakery, Parmentier
became an expert on public health matters, including vaccinations. He became a member of the
French Academy of Sciences in 1795.
II.420n. German historian Arnold Hermann Ludwig HEEREN (1760–1842) was an alumnus of the
Georg-August-University in Göttingen, where he began studying theology, philosophy, and
history in 1779. He became an adjunct professor there in 1784. That same year, in preparation
for his edition of Johannes Stobaios’s Eclogae physicae et ethicae (fifth century), he traveled to
Italy, France, and Holland. Upon his return to Göttingen three years later, he was appointed
professor of philosophy and, in 1799, professor of history. His first and most influential
historical work, Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten Völker der
alten Welt (Ideas about politics, intercourse, and trade among the most distinguished peoples of
the ancient world) appeared between 1793 and 1796. (It is likely that this is Humboldt’s source
here, but Heeren also wrote about Africa elsewhere.) In Ideen, Heeren, inspired by Montesquieu
(1689–1755) and Adam Smith (1723–90), explored the relations between economics and
politics. As an empiricist, Heeren was most fascinated by actual life conditions, the details of
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commerce, and the reconstruction of ancient trade routes. In 1809, he published Geschichte des
europäischen Staatensystems und seiner Kolonien (History of the European states and their
colonies), followed by his Handbuch der Geschichte der Staaten des Alterthums (Historical
handbook of states of antiquity) in 1810. Most of Heeren’s books went through several editions
and were widely translated.
II.421. Humboldt first mentioned the Franciscan Father Jodoco RIXI in Views of Nature (see p.
149 and pp. 143–44 in the English edition).
II.422. A Greek physician in the service of Roman emperors Claudis and Nero, Pedanius
DIOSCORIDES (first century) was the most famous pharmacologist of European Antiquity. Born
in Anatolia and trained in Tarsus in south-central Turkey, then the most significant center of
botanical–pharmacological research in the Roman empire, Dioscorides wrote his main work, De
materia medica (About natural remedies) from his perspective of someone who practiced
autopsies and by consulting scores of older writings in Greek. Comprised of five detailed
volumes, De materia medica is the earliest known pharmacopia of its realm.
II.422. Born in what is now Spain, Lucius Iunius Moderatus COLUMELLA (fl. 50) was a Roman
soldier turned farmer in Italy. The owner of several estates near Rome, Columella wrote one of
the most systematic agricultural manuals to survive from his time. Written around 60–65 in
twelve books, De re rustica (On agriculture) advocated a particular type of agricultural
management: slave-staffed estates characterized by capital investment, close supervision by the
owner, and integration of arable and animal husbandry. Another one of his extant works is a
book on trees, Liber de arboribus, which was probably part of a shorter manual on agriculture.
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His works criticizing astrologers and treatises on religion in the context of agriculture did not
survive.
II.422n. After having studied under Plato (c. 428–347 BCE) at the Academy at Athens, Tyrtamus
of Eresus, better known as THEOPHRASTUS (c. 370–c. 287 BCE), replaced Aristotle (384–322
BCE) as the head of the Lyceum at Athens in 323 BCE. Diogenes Laёrtius, Theophrastus’s
biographer, attributes to him 227 treatises on diverse subjects, ranging from biology and
geognosy to ethics and metaphysics. His major botanical works, De historia plantarum (Of the
history of plants) and De causis plantarum (Of the causes of plants), offer the first systematic
descriptions and categorizations of the plant parts. They earned Theophrastus his reputation as
the father of scientific botany.
II.431. Jacques NECKER (1732–1804) from Geneva was a banker who served as the general
director of finance under King Louis XVI of France (1754–93) between the 1770s and 1790 (he
had moved to Paris in 1750). His daughter was Madame de Staël (1766–1817). Both returned to
Switzerland in 1790 during the French Revolution.
II.437. French physician and economist François QUESNAY (1694–1774) is known for the
analytical approach to economics in his Tableau économique (Economic tableau) from 1758.
This tableau has been called the manifesto of the Physiocrats, who believed that an economy’s
power resides in its agricultural sector. Already in 1767, Quesnay’s book had disappeared from
circulation. But the substance of it has been preserved in Ami des homes, ou Traité de la
population (Friend of humankind, or treatise on population, 1756–58) by the elder Mirabeau
(1715–1789) and in La Physiocratie (Physiocracy, 1767) by Pierre Samuel du Pont de
Nemours. Quesnay’s work paved the way for classical economics and the concept of political
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economy, particularly for Adam Smith (1723–1790) who adopted Physiocratic notions of free
trade and the preeminence of agricultural production.
II.439n. Count Gilbert Joseph Gaspard de CHABROL de Volvic (1773–1843) was a French
military engineer educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris. A senior official under
Napoleon, he joined the expedition to Egypt as a scientist. As prefect of the Seine Department
and chief administrator of Paris (1812–1830), Chabrol de Volvic produced the Recherches
statistiques sur la ville de Paris et le département de la Seine in collaboration with Jean-
Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (1768–1830). Four large volumes published in 1821, 1823, 1826, and
1829, the Recherches was the first collection of demographic, economic, and meteorological
statistics on Paris. One of the landmark accomplishments in the field of urbanism, it was the
most significant source of raw population data in France in early nineteenth century.
II.441. The journal La Feuille du Cultivateur (1790–1798) began in 1772 as the short-lived
Tableau annuel des progrès de la physique, de l'histoire naturelle et des arts launched by the
French jurist, writer, and agronomist Jean-Baptiste DUBOIS DE JANCIGNY (1752–1808). Educated
in Dijon, Paris, and Warsaw, Dubois de Jancigny, who was a member of the Prussian Academy
of Sciences and the French Agricultural Commission, wrote not only about agriculture, trade,
and political economy in Poland and France, but he also authored the Essai sur l'histoire
littéraire de Pologne (Essay on the literary history of Poland, 1778), among other humanistic
works.
II.441. One of Dubois de Jancigny’s coeditors during the French Revolution was the Abbot Jean-
Laurent LEFEBVRE, procurator-general of the Order of Sainte-Geneviève and a member of the
Paris Agricultural Society since 1786 together with Parmentier and Lavoisier. Lefebvre’s most
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important works were Mémoire sur la création d’une ferme expérimentale (Report on the
creation of an experimental farm) and Réflexions générales sur l’éducation des vers à soie
(General reflections on raising silkworms), both published in 1793.
II.443. Friedrich RÜHS (1781–1820) was a German historian known for his work on
Scandinavian and Germanic history and mythology. A student of Arnold Heeren’s at
Göttingen—where he wrote a dissertation on the history of ancient Scandinavia—Rühs
published a history of Finland (1809) and edited the volume on Sweden that was part of Anton
Büsching’s Neue Erdbeschreibung. Rühs also published writings on Islandic poetry and the
Middle Ages. His major work is a five-volume Geschichte Schwedens (History of Sweden,
1803–14). In 1810, he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Berlin. Rühs’s later
polemics against the French and Jews, though not entirely unusual for his time, harmed his
academic reputation.
II.443. Humboldt’s Mr. SWARTNER is Martin von Schwartner (also Márton Schwartner, 1759–
1823), a historian who studied at the University of Göttingen and became known for his
historical and statistic work on Hungary. Initially interested in diplomacy and genealogy,
Schwartner later turned to statistics. In his Statistik des Königreichs Ungarn (Statistic of the
kingdom of Hungary, 1798), he assembled demographic and economic data about Hungary.
II.443. Spanish military engineer, cartographer, explorer, and naturalist FELIX DE AZARA (1746–
1821) was trained in the Military Academy of Barcelona from 1764 to 1767. Admitted to the
Royal Corps of Engineers, Azara was appointed draftsman in 1767. After serving in Barcelona
(1767), Algiers (1775), Girona (1778–79), and Gipuzkoa (1780), he was appointed part of a team
meant to study the territorial boundary between Spanish and Portuguese in South America on the
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basis of the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777). During the twenty years he spent in South America,
Azara drew a map of the border regions with Brazil. In addition, he greatly contributed to science
by describing about 450 species, most of them not known to Europeans. From his notes and
travel journals, Azara published major works on natural history, which were among the earliest
and most important accounts of the fauna of South America. His first book on natural history
appeared as Essais sur l’lhistoire nauturelle des quadrupeds de la Province du Paraguay (1801),
which Médéric Louis Élie Moreau-Saint-Méry (1750–1819) published in French from Azara’s
correspondence with his brother, José Nicolás de Azara (1730–1804), Spanish ambassador in
Paris. In addition to cartographical and historical works, Azara also published Apuntamientos
para la historia natural de los páxaros del Paraguay y Rio de la Plata (Notes toward a natural
history of the birds of Paraguay and Río de la Plata, 1802–05). Humboldt cites Azara’s Voyages
dans l’Amérique méridionale, depuis 1781 jusque en 1801 (1809). Azara’s works on natural
history also influenced other scientists, including Charles Darwin (1809–82).
II.447n. Venetian-born Vincenzo, Count DANDOLO (1758–1819) initially studied medicine at the
University of Padua but his intellectual passions quickly turned to chemistry and later to
agronomy. Dandolo published many treatises on chemistry, agriculture, viticulture, and animal
husbandry in Italian; he even wrote about silkworms (The Art of Rearing Silkworms). He also
translated into Italian major French works on chemistry, notably Antoine Lavoisier’s Elements
of Chemistry (Trattato Elementare di Chimicain, 1792). Dandolo became a corresponding
member of the Academy of Sciences in Turin in 1795. In 1805, Napoleon appointed him
governor of Dalmatia, a position in which Dandolo distinguished himself through his efforts to
eliminate poverty and introduce better agricultural practices to the area. He did not return to
Venice until 1809, when Dalmatia was reconquered by Austria.
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II.447n. Diplomat Albert GALLATIN (1761–1849) was the fourth Secretary of the USAmerican
Treasury and Representative and Senator-elect from Pennsylvania. He was born in Geneva,
Switzerland, graduated from the University of Geneva in 1779, and promptly ran away to
Boston. Having served in the revolutionary army, he became an instructor of French at Harvard
in 1782 but moved to Virginia three years later. Gallatin was elected to the USAmerican Senate
and took the oath of office in 1793, but a petition was filed claiming that he did not meet the
citizenship requirement. Early in 1794, the Senate declared his election void. Gallatin served in
Congress from 1795 to 1801, when he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President
Thomas Jefferson. Reappointed under James Madison (1751–1836), Gallatin served until 1814,
moving on to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. From 1815 to 1823, he served as USAmerican
special envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary to France, and from 1826 to 1827 as Minister
Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. Upon his return, he became president of the National Bank of
New York. Humboldt owned some of his later works. His reference to Gallatin, however,
appears to be based on the fairly extensive correspondence they had rather than on publications.
II.448. Dutch surgeon Isaac TITZING (also Titsingh, 1745–1812) was a merchant with the Dutch
East India Company (VOC) who was best known for his work on Japan. During his thirty-four-
year career with the VOC, which began in 1765 when he sailed to Batavia (today Jakarta,
Indonesia), Titzing held various positions and ultimately became a chief factor. After Batavia,
Titzing served the VOC as chief factor in Japan for the better part of five years, off and on from
1779 to 1784. Japan’s isolationist policy enhanced the singular importance of the VOC’s head
there during this period. The VOC’s Dutchmen were the sole official conduit for trade and for
scientific–cultural exchanges. Titzing’s ambitions were not just financial; they were also
scholarly. A well-educated man, he held doctorates in medicine and law from the University of
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Leiden. During his time in Japan, he hatched the idea of a compendium in which Japan sources
in his translation would represent Japanese history and customs from the beginnings of recorded
time to the present. His intent was to publish this work simultaneously in Dutch, French, and
English. But once away from Japan and back in Europe in 1796, after assignments in Bengal
(1785–92) and China (1795–96), Titzing was unable to complete his project. Nothing had been
published by the time of his death, and two of his friends, the sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel
Rémusat (1788–1832) and Heinrich Julius von Klaproth, were left to sort through his papers.
The result was their 1820 edition titled Mémoires y anecdotes sur la dynasty régnante djogoun
(Reports and anecdotes on the ruling dynasty of shoguns). Other publications from Titzing’s
papers followed, in French and eventually in Dutch. His library and also his collection of cultural
and scientific materials were dispersed widely. Some of them became part of the collections of
the Collège de France, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the British Museum, Kyoto University
Library, and the University of Leiden.
II.451n. French botanist Charles-François Brisseau de MIRBEL (1776–1854) was mainly
interested in studying plants’ physiological–anatomical properties. The author of Traité
d'anatomie et de physiologie végétale (Treatise on plant anatomy and physiology, 1801), he was
the founder of the science of plant cytology (or cell biology). In 1808, Brisseau de Mirbel was
elected to the French Academy of Sciences and appointed chair of the botany department at the
Sorbonne. He had previously been superintendent of the gardens of Empress Josephine at
Malmaison. After Napoleon’s fall, Mirbel became head of the Botanical Garden in Paris. In
1837, the Royal Society of London elected him as a corresponding member.
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II.453n. Swedish naturalist Carl Peter THUNBERG (1743–1828) studied botany under Carl von
Linné (1707–87) at the University of Uppsala, where he developed a fascination with Japan, a
country that was then closed to most Western explorers and missionaries. Only the Dutch East
India Company (VOC) was allowed a trading station. In late 1771, Thunberg made arrangements
with the VOC to set out for the Cape of Good Hope, where he lived among Dutch settlers to
learn their language and customs so that he could pass for a Dutchman. In 1775, Thunberg
finally embarked for Batavia (Java, Indonesia), from where he went on to Japan, following in the
footsteps of Engelbert Kaempfer. Like all foreigners, Thunberg was detained on tiny Deshima
Island near Nagasaki. Establishing cordial relations with the Japanese interpreters, with whom he
exchanged medical and botanical information, Thunberg was eventually permitted to set foot in
Nagasaki and subsequently traveled as far as Edo (Tokyo). In 1778, he returned to Sweden via
Denmark and England where he met Joseph Banks. In 1784, Thunberg succeeded to the chair
that his teacher Linné had once occupied at Uppsala.
II.454. Jesuit missionary and scientist Antoine GAUBIL (1689–1759) left for China in 1721. He
arrived in Beijing in 1723 and remained there until his death. After having studied astronomy
and mathematics at different institutions, including the Royal College of La Flèche and the
Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Gaubil was ordained in the Society of Jesus in 1718 and
dispatched to China to serve as a mathematician there three years later. His arrival coincided
with the rise of power of Emperor Yongzheng (r. 1723–35). Because of Gaubil’s linguistic
talents, the emperor named him official interpreter of the court (1725). In 1729, Gaubil served as
a professor of the newly established Latin School (which survived until 1744). Gaubil greatly
contributed to making the history of China known in Europe, especially with his of Shujing
(Book of history) published as Le Chou king, un des livres sacrés des Chinois (The Shujing: One
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of the sacred texts of the Chinese, 1770) by Joseph de Guignes. Gaubil’s copious
correspondence from Beijing made him a vital member of the academies of sciences in Paris,
London, and St. Petersburg. Among his many works on Chinese dynastic history, philosophy,
literature, astronomy, and religion, he authored Abrégé de l’histoire chinoise de la grande
dynastie des T’ang (1814).
II.455. SIR WALTER RALEIGH (c. 1552–1618) was many things: courtier, poet, spy, and explorer.
Humboldt’s reference here is to Raleigh’s 1584 plan to establish a colony at Roanoke Island in
which is now South Carolina, which ended in failure the first time. Raleigh’s second attempt
three years later proved more successful.
II.457. Sir Joseph BANKS (1743–1820) was a famous British explorer and naturalist. Having
inherited a considerable fortune in 1761, Banks traveled extensively in Newfoundland and
Labrador (1766) as well as in Iceland (1772), collecting plants and other specimens. He also
accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage around the world (1768–71), notably to
the “South Sea Paradise” of Tahiti, where the crew of the Endeavor stayed for three months, and
on to New Zealand and Australia. As long-time president of the Royal Society, Banks vigorously
promoted science, making his own residence a meeting place for the exchange of ideas. His
herbarium and library are now part of the British Museum. Humboldt met Banks in London
through his friend Georg Forster, who had been part of Cook’s second journey (1772–75)
before becoming a leader of the German Jacobins. Banks gave Humboldt the use of his extensive
private library, and the two men stayed in touch until the former’s death.
II.457. When he was crowned the ninth Sapa Inca, Titu-MANCO-CAPAC, or Inca Cusi Yupanqui
(also Inca Yupanqui), took the name Pachacutec (or Pachacuti). The creator of the
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Tahuantinsuyu Empire (known as the Inca Empire), Pachacutec became ruler due to his victory
over the Chanca people in 1438; he led the empire for about thirty-three years, until 1471. After
conquering the neighboring states, Pachacutec turned over the command of the imperial armies
to his son, Topa Inca (aka Tupac Yupanqui, r. 1471–93), and retired to Cusco, which he rebuilt
and turned into the empire’s political capital. In Cusco, which then housed only royalty, nobility,
and religious monuments, Pachacutec ordered the construction of the Quri Kancha (or
Coricancha, “enclosure of gold”), the Temple of the Sun that became the central sanctuary of the
Inca Empire.
II.457n. German botanist and explorer Friedrich August Freiherr MARSCHALL VON BIEBERSTEIN
(1768–1826) was the first to offer a systematic account of the flora of the Caucasus and the
Crimea. His scientific career began in 1792 when he joined the Russian military in the Crimea
after having receiving military training in his hometown of Stuttgart. The different administrative
positions he filled gave him enough time to pursue his taxonomic studies. As a result of his work
in the Crimea, he published the Tableau des provinces situées sur la côte occidentale de la mer
Caspienne entre les fleuves Terek et Cour (Portrait of the provinces situated at the western edge
of the Caspian Sea between the Terek and Kura Rivers, 1798), a major work that was translated
into German, with added material, in 1790. Von Bieberstein also made several trips to the
Caucasus, which resulted in his famous Flora taurico-caucasica (1808–19). In addition to
descriptions of flora and fauna, this book includes information about topography, history,
economics, and population. After von Bieberstein’s death, the St. Petersburg Academy of
Sciences purchased his herbarium, which consisted of nearly 10,000 plant specimens. The
collection is now housed at the Botanical Institute in Komarov.
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II.460–61. Like Humboldt, an alumnus of the University of Göttingen, Johann BECKMANN
(1739–1811) was appointed adjunct professor of philosophy at that university in 1766. Educated
in theology, mathematics, physics, natural history, and public finance and administration,
Beckmann lectured on political and domestic economy, and, two years later, founded a botanic
garden based on the principles of Linnaeus (1707–78). He had met Carl von Linné during his
earlier travels in Sweden and Denmark. After being promoted to a full professorship at Göttingen
in 1770, Beckmann was also elected a member of the Royal Society of Göttingen, to which he
contributed valuable scientific writings until 1783. Among the other scientific societies of which
he was also a member are Amsterdam, Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences.
II.460-61. Swedish botanist Jonas Carlsson DRYANDER (1748–1810) was a pupil of Carl von
Linné (1707–78) at Uppsala University. Following the death of Daniel Solander in 1782,
Dryander became botanist–librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, librarian of the Royal Society, and
vice president of the Linnean Society in London. Dryander’s publications included Catalogus
bibliothecae historico-naturalis Joseph Banksi (Catalogue of the natural history library of Joseph
Banks, 1796–1800). In 1784, Dryander was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences.
II.461. Upon graduating from Oxford in 1580, British astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer,
and linguist THOMAS HARRIOT (c. 1560–1621) was hired by Sir Walter Raleigh as a
mathematics tutor and scientific advisor. Harriot made only one expedition, around 1585–86,
when he spent some time in Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. During his stay, he
improved his understanding of the now-extinct Carolina Algonquian language, which he had
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learned prior to the voyage through his contact with Manteo, a Croatan Indian, and Wanchese,
the last known ruler of the Roanoke. Both were among the first Native Americans to visit
England. Harriot was also interested in optics and became the first to observe a celestial object
through a telescope. In addition to having the observatory at the College of William and Mary
named in his honor, the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences at East Carolina University
in Greenville, North Carolina, is also named after him. Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the
New Found Land of Virginia dates from 1588. He is sometimes credited with having introduced
the potato to the British Isles, an honor that actually belonged to the slave trader John Hawkins.
II.461. British herbalist John GERARD (also Gerarde, 1545–c. 1611) was notable both for his
herbal garden and his writings on botany. Working within the early wave of Renaissance natural
historians, he sought to systematize natural history while also retaining and building on the
works of the ancients. Gerard’s The Herball or Generall historie of plantes from 1597, for
instance, included Dioscorides’s Materia Medica.
II.461n. The four-month exploration of the North American coastline by Philip AMADAS (c.
1565–c. 1618) and Arthur BARLOWE (c. 1550–1620) was a key episode in the history of the
Americas. In the employ of Sir Walter Raleigh, Barlowe and Amadas each captained his own
flagship. Their instructions were to find a location suitable for a colony. On July 13, 1584, they
made landfall at Core Banks between Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras. Amadas and Barlowe
explored and traded with the indigenous populations, then returned to England with the Native
American chiefs Manteo and Wanchese on board. Amadas and Barlowe’s narratives, which
Barlowe wrote in the form of a letter to Raleigh, were designed to promote Raleigh’s efforts to
entice settlers and backers. There are indications that Barlowe distorted the account of his
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contact with the local Native Americans, depicting a near-idyllic people ready to welcome and
trade with English and colonists. See also Harriot, Thomas; Raleigh, Walter.
II.464n. A second cousin of Sir Francis Drake’s, JOHN HAWKINS (or Hawkyns, 1532–95) of
Plymouth, England, was a naval hero, a freebooter, and a slave trader in the service of Queen
Elizabeth I (1533–1603). Often considered a pioneer of the British slave trade, he formed a
syndicate of wealthy merchants to invest in the trade. The voyages he made between 1555 and
1569 initiated the triangular Black Atlantic trade, with a profit at every stop. Hawkins wrote
about the details of this trade in An Alliance to Raid for Slaves (1568). In 2006, his descendant
Andrew Hawkins publicly apologized for his ancestor’s role in the slave trade. Hawkins was also
the chief architect of the Elizabethan Navy. His improvements in ship construction and rigging
made the British ships fast and nimble, which, in no small measure, contributed to the defeat of
the Spanish Armada in 1588. Hawkins served as vice admiral during that battle and received a
knighthood for his exploits. In 1595, he accompanied Drake on a voyage to the West Indies,
during which both men fell ill and died. Some have suggested that Hawkins was the one who
introduced tobacco to Britain. See also Harriot, Thomas.
II.464n. German philologist and theologian Karl Wilhelm Ernst PUTSCHE (1765–1834) was a
preacher in Wenigen-Jena. In 1815, he was awarded a doctorate from the University of Jena and
was invited to teach there two years later. In addition to his academic lecturing, he was also a
farmer and beekeeper. He also edited and published an agricultural monthly—Allgemeine
Encyklopädie der gesammten Land- und Hauswirthschaft der Deutschen, mit gehöriger
Berücksichtigung der dahin einschlagenden Natur- und andern Wissenschaften (General
encyclopedia of the entire agricultural and domestic economies of the German, with proper
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consideration of relevant natural and other sciences, 1827–31)—and published the first
expansive German treatise on the potato in 1819. See also Bertuch.
II.464. Educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and at Trinity College, Oxford,
Scottish politician Sir JOHN SINCLAIR (1754–1835) wrote extensively on finance and agriculture.
He was the first person to use the word statistics in the English language, in his twenty-one-
volume pioneering work, Statistical Account of Scotland (1791). Sinclair was instrumental in the
creation of the Board of Agriculture in Edinburgh, of which he was the first president. A member
of most of the continental agricultural societies, a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, as well as of the Antiquarian Society of London, he was elected a
foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1796.
II.464n. British astronomer EDWARD SABINE (1788–1883) experimented with determining the
shape of the Earth and studied the planet’s magnetic field. As the astronomer of the expeditions
of Sir John Ross (1818, 1777–1856) and Sir William Edward Parry (1819) in search of the
Northwest Passage, Sabine carried out pendulum measurements in the Arctic. His wife,
Elizabeth Sabine (1807–79), translated Humboldt’s Cosmos and other works into English.
II.465. William BECKFORD (1744–99) was a Jamaican sugar planter, an Oxford-educated
historian, and a patron of the arts. In 1756, Beckford inherited considerable estates in Britain and
in Jamaica, including 910 slaves. Among his published works is Descriptive Account of the
Island of Jamaica (1790), in which he defends the slave trade but urges amelioration. Beckford
came from an influential and illustrious family: his uncle, William Beckford (bap. 1709–70), was
lord mayor of London.
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II.465n. The Pennsylvania Quaker William BALDWIN (1779–1819) was a physician who made
significant contributions to botany. Baldwin served as a ship’s surgeon on two voyages overseas,
one to China during his youth, the other to South America. From 1817–18, he served on
President James Monroe’s (1748–1831) South American Commission. The Delawarian Caesar
Augustus Rodney (1772–1824) and the Virginians John Graham (1774–1820) and Theodorick
Bland (1776–1846) were the commissioners for this special diplomatic mission to South
America, and Baldwin was selected as a botanical investigator as well as the ship’s surgeon on
the USS Congress. During its voyage, the vessel stopped at Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos
Aires (where Baldwin met Aimé Bonpland), Maldonado, San Salvador, Brazil, and Margarita
Island, Venezuela, giving Baldwin ample opportunity to collect plants that he would press and
dry for later study. While he published only two scientific papers, his major contributions were
the knowledge he shared with other botanists in his letters and through the thousands of
specimens that he provided for their herbaria. After Baldwin’s untimely death during an
expedition up the Missouri River, his collection became part of the herbarium of William
Darlington (1782–1863), who also gathered all of his friend’s writings into the Reliquiae
Baldwinianae (1843).
II.465n. Michel Félix DUNAL (1789–1856) held the chair of medical natural history at
Montpelier, France, from 1816 to 1819. He is especially known for his work on the genus
Solanum, a large and diverse genus of flowering plants that includes the potato and the tomato.
II.465n. A lieutenant in the First West York Militia, JOHN SAVAGE (b. 1770) received an
appointment as assistant surgeon in New South Wales in 1802. A few years later, he left Sydney,
having been sentenced and suspended from duty for refusing to attend to the wife of a settler in
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her childbirth. Although the sentence was set aside in England, Savage did not return to Australia
but signed on with the East India Company. He took up his duties as assistant surgeon in Bengal
in 1808 and was promoted in 1823. The year 1835 found him back in London in ill health and in
dire financial straits. Savage’s Some Account of New Zealand (1807), written and published
during his earlier time in London, was the first work that had been published on New Zealand
since James Cook’s account. Savage had collected material for his book when the Ferrett, the
ship on which he sailed back to England, had stopped over at New Zealand. On this return
voyage, Savage also had a companion sail with him: the Maori Moehanga, who was the first
native New Zealander to make a round trip to England.
II,467n. Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera y TORDESILLAS (1559-1625) served as Royal
Chronicler of the Indies under Philip II (1527-98) for almost thirty years, from 1596 to1625. In
his famous Historia General [General history] (1601-15), an apology for the Conquest also
known as Décadas, he rewrote the history of the Indies from published and un-published source.
Herrera y Tordesillas never traveled to the Americas.
II.467n. After having served in the Caribbean, India, and the Far East, Irish-born British naval
officer and explorer James Hingston TUCKEY (1776–1816) was dispatched to Australia in 1802, a
journey he described in An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass’s
Strait on the south coast of New South Wales (1805). Captured by the French on the way home,
he was detained in France until the peace of 1814. Besides marrying a fellow-prisoner’s
daughter, Tuckey used his time to write a four-volume treatise on maritime geography, Maritime
Geography and Statistics (1815). In poor health, he died during an expedition to explore the
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Congo River. The journals of his voyage, Narrative of an expedition to explore the river Zaire,
usually called the Congo, in South Africa, in 1816, were published posthumously in 1818.
II.468. Venetian explorer Alvise CADAMOSTO (also Ca’da Mosta, Cà da Mosto, or Cadamusto, c.
1432–1488) led a reconnaissance mission to the western coast of Africa for Portugal. Having
entered the service of Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) in search of a sea route to India along
the coast of Africa in 1454, Cadamosto made expeditions to explore then-uncharted territory for
the Europeans in 1455 and 1456. He sailed to the River Gambia, discovered for the Europeans
the Cape Verde Islands, then went south to the River Corubal and the River Géba. After his
successful expeditions, Cadamosto became a trader in Portugal and then returned to Venice.
About his travels for Portugal, he wrote Navigazioni, a travel narrative that was widely reprinted
and translated into Latin, German, French, and Spanish. Published posthumously, it was included
in Paesi novamente retrovati et Novo Mondo da Alberico Vesputio Fiorentino intitulado (Newly
discovered countries and New World of Alberico Vesputio Florentine, 1507), a collection of
narratives of exploration compiled by Fracanzano da Montalboddo (fl. 1507–22).
II.468. Portuguese navigator and explorer Pedro ÁLVARES CABRAL (c. 1467–c. 1520) claimed
Brazil for Portugal in 1500. The commander of a thirteen-ship fleet on its way to India, he
strayed west and landed on the coast of Brazil. After claiming the land in the name of Portugal
and sending news to Lisbon, he sailed eastward to India. He was the second European to reach
Brazil, the first being Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.
II.469n. Flemish doctor and botanist Carolus CLUSIUS (also Charles de l'Écluse, 1526–1609) was
one of the most influential scientific horticulturists of the Renaissance. He has been called the
father of descriptive botany. Unlike any other botanist of his time, Clusius knew many plants
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from different regions of Europe. No one discovered and described as many new species as he
did. In 1564, Clusius accompanied the merchant Johann Jacob Fugger (1516–75) on a voyage to
the Iberian Peninsula where Clusius collected many plants, among them unknown types. From
1573 to 1576, Clusius was the botanist of Emperor Maximilian II (1527–76) in Vienna, under
whose auspices he became one of the first to study the flora of Austria. Clusius also encouraged
the dissemination of exotic plants such as the potato and the tulip. He published two major
original works: Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia (1576), one of
the earliest works on Spanish flora, and Rariorum stirpium per Pannonias observatorum
historiae (1583), the first book on Austrian and Hungarian alpine flora. In 1593, Clusius gained a
professorship at the University of Leiden. In that city, he helped create one of the earliest formal
botanical gardens in Europe, the Hortus Academicus. His collected and augmented works, to
which Humboldt refers here, were published in two parts: Rariorum plantarum historia (1601),
which includes his Spanish and Austrian flora and a pioneering study on mushrooms from
Central Europe; and Exoticorum libri decem (1605), a survey of unusual flora and fauna.
II.469n. Carl Ludwig WILLDENOW (1765–1812) classified many of the plants that Humboldt and
Aimé Bonpland had brought back from their journey and which Humboldt had sent his friend
from Havana. Willdenow can be considered one of the most influential of Humboldt’s teachers,
since he stimulated in Alexander the “infinite thirst for the examination of unknown objects” (as
Humboldt noted in 1801).
II. 470. Danish-Norwegian botanist and zoologist Martin Henrichsen VAHL (1749–1804) was a
student of Carl von Linné’s (1707–87) at the University of Uppsala from 1769 to 1777. From
1779 to 1782, Vahl lectured at the University of Copenhagen’s Botanical Garden and was
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appointed professor at the Society for Natural History there four years later. In the intervening
period, Vahl made several research trips to France and North Africa. Among his works are
Symbolæ botanicæ (1790–94), Eclogæ Americanæ (1796–1807), and the posthumous
Enumeratio Plantarum (1805–07). Vahl was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences in 1792 and became a full professor of botany at the University of
Copenhagen in 1801.
II.470. Like Vahl, the Swedish naturalist Daniel Carlsson SOLANDER (also Daniel Charles
Solander, 1733–82) was a disciple of Carl von Linné’s, whom he encountered at Uppsala in
1750. As a result of this encounter, Solander abandoned studying for the ministry and decided to
take up medicine instead. Linné was like a father for Solander and even entrusted him with the
editing of Elementa Botanica in 1756. Four years later, Solander relocated to England where,
with his mentor’s help, he became an assistant librarian at the British Museum in 1763. In this
and his later position as Keeper of the Natural History Department (1773–82), Solander was able
to promote the Linnean system of classification. In 1768, he entered the employ of Joseph
Banks to join him on James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Solander helped collect
and describe an important herbarium of Australian plants that later formed the basis of Banks’s
Florilegium. Upon the expedition’s return in 1771, Solander became Banks’s secretary and
librarian and the following year traveled with him to Iceland, the Faroes, and the Orkney Islands.
Linné meanwhile was incensed that his disciple seemed to enjoy traveling and collecting more
than he did taxonomic work. Though accomplished in Swedish, Dutch, English, and Latin,
Solander published virtually nothing independently. His death prevented the publication of the
descriptions of the plants collected on the voyage of the Endeavour. Twenty volumes of his
manuscript are, however, preserved in the botanical department of the British Museum.
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II.471. At the ripe old age of sixty-two, Dutch explorer Jacob ROGGEVEEN (1659–1729) set out
to find Terra Australis. In 1721, Roggeveen proposed to the Dutch West India Company (VOC),
which he had joined in 1706, an exploratory voyage to the unknown regions of the Pacific
Ocean. Once the trip was approved, Roggeveen and his brother, a merchant from their home
town Middleburg in Zeeland, first sailed down to the Falkland Islands, passed through the Strait
of Le Maire, and continued south to enter the Pacific Ocean. The expedition eventually found
Easter Island in April 1722, although Roggeveen reportedly never set foot on the island he
named “Paasch Eylandt.” The three-ship expedition then sailed on to Batavia via the Tuamotu
Archipelago, the Society Islands, and Samoa. Roggeveen returned to Holland in 1723. More than
a hundred years later, in 1836, a copy of Roggeveen’s lost journal, made by scribes of the VOC
scribes in Batavia, was found in the company’s archives in Middleburg. First published in 1838,
this journal offered the first authoritative account of the expedition, replacing the popular 1739
French translation of Karl Friedrich Behrens’s (1701–47) account from 1738. Three other
eighteenth-century expeditions—that of Spanish navigator Felipe González de Ahedo (1702–92)
in 1770, English circumnavigator James Cook in 1774, and French explorer Jean-François de
Galaup de La Pérouse in 1786—would encounter the enigmatic Easter Island.
II.472. José Francisco CORREIA DA SERRA (1750–1823), also known as Abbé Correa, was a
Portuguese polymath, botanist, naturalist, philosopher, and politician. He established his
reputation primarily as a botanist and geologist and helped found the Academy of Sciences in
Lisbon, organizing programs and activities to promote scientific research and the publication of
scientific texts. He was one of the first botanists to uphold the view that the classification of
plants should be based on their similarities rather than their differences, introducing the concept
of symmetry. He also favored that the methods in comparative zoology be extended to botany.
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His writings were considered highly controversial, and they brought him into conflict with
Portugal’s religious and political elite. Because of these conflicts, Correia fled to London and
then to Paris, in 1786, where he first met Humboldt. Although he was of Portuguese descent,
Correia’s work was not recognized by the Portuguese scientific community. His European peers,
however, more readily accepted his findings. In 1779, Correia was appointed secretary to the
Portuguese embassy in London. In 1813, he left Europe for the Americas. He spent most of his
time there in Monticello where, thanks in part to letters of introduction written by prominent
thinkers such as Humboldt himself, he developed a close friendship with celebrated scientists
and intellectuals, among them Thomas Jefferson. Correia was a member of many academies of
science in France and Italy as well as the American Philosophical Society.
II.472n. The author of Flora Cochinchinensis (1790), Portuguese missionary and natural scientist
João de LOUREIRO (1710–91) was one of the most important botanical collectors of the
eighteenth century. Loureiro lived in Asia for more than four decades. Traveling to the East in
1735, Loureiro was first stationed in Goa, Macao, and finally in Vietnam, then called
Cochinchina (1742–77). In Vietnam, he left the Society of Jesus to enter the service of the king
as mathematician and physician. Traveling to Bengal, Pondichery, and Macao, he continued his
botanical activities in Canton until 1781. Back in Portugal in 1782, he published the results of his
extensive botanical studies with the support of the Academy of Science in Lisbon. Written in
1788, Flora Cochinchinensis, Loureiro’s main work, contains the description of almost 1,300
species of Indo-Chinese fauna, more than half of which were new to Europeans. Several other
papers of his were published posthumously by the Portuguese Academy of Science.
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II.473n. ARISTOBULUS of Cassandreia (c. 375–301 BCE) was a Greek historian who
accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns.
II.478n. German Jesuit Athanasius KIRCHER (also Kirchner, 1602–80) published widely on all
fields of seventeenth-century science and became one of the most renowned Baroque scholars. In
1629, he was appointed professor of mathematics, philosophy, and Oriental languages in
Würzburg. In Rome, he taught mathematics, Hebrew, and Syriac at the Jesuit’s Pontifical
Gregorian University and invented, among other things, one of the earliest calculating machines.
He also produced the first cartographical representations of the world’s ocean currents and the
moon’s surface. Kircher had an early interest in China, telling his superior in 1629 that he wished
to become a missionary there. In 1667, he published a treatise commonly known as China
Illustrata (China illustrated). It was a work of encyclopedic breadth, combining material of
uneven quality, from accurate cartography to mythical elements. The work drew heavily on the
reports of Jesuits working in China. China Illustrata emphasized the Christian elements of
Chinese history, both real and imagined. In addition to noting the early presence of Nestorian
Christians, Kircher also claimed that the Chinese were descended from the sons of Ham, that
Confucius was Hermes Trismegistus/Moses, and that the Chinese characters were abstracted
hieroglyphs.
II.480. British naval officer and colonial administrator William BLIGH (1754–1814) made a
remarkable open-boat voyage of about 3,500 miles to Timor (Indonesia) after a mutiny on his
ship Bounty in 1789. Having entered the Navy in 1762, he was appointed to the Resolution
during James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1776–80). After advancing to lieutenant
in 1781, Bligh served in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Six years later, he was named
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commander of the Bounty to transport breadfruit and other plants to the West Indies. His crew
famously mutinied off Tonga Island. Bligh served as governor of New South Wales in Australia
from 1806 to 1808. Before his death in London, he had reached the rank of vice-admiral.
II.480n. Like Humboldt himself, the German botanist Karl Sigismund KUNTH (1788–1850) was
a student of Willdenow’s. Kunth was Humboldt’s assistant in Paris from 1813 to 1819, where he
classified the plants that Humboldt and Bonpland had collected during their journey across the
Americas.
II.482. Engelbert KÄMPFER (1651–1716) was a German physician in the employ of the Dutch
East India Company (VOC). One of the first to travel with scholarly ambitions, having studied
available materials beforehand, Kämpfer had been to Iran in the 1680s and had also traveled to
Siam (Thailand). His account of Siam, A Description of the Kingdom of Siam (1690), is probably
the most reliable one of his day. Kämpfer also visited Edo (Tokyo) twice, in 1691 and 1692. He
mentioned the Karatats-banna in his Amoenitatum exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum
fasciculi V. (1712). See also Thunberg, Carl Peter.
II.488. French biologist Jean-Baptiste Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck (also LAMARCK,
1744–1829), was an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and that it proceeded in
accordance with natural laws. Although he had initially studied medicine, Lamarck had a special
interest in botany, which he developed during his visits to the Jardin du Roi. He spent ten years
studying French flora under the famous Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836). After
publishing his three-volume Flore françoise (French flora, 1779), Lamarck gained membership
of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1788, Lamarck was appointed professor of botany at the
Jardin du Roi, the name of which he changed in 1790, at the height of the French Revolution, to
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the more appropriate Jardin des Plantes. When the French Museum of Natural History was
founded in 1793, Lamarck became a professor of zoology there, working alongside the
entomologist Pierre André Latreille, who would succeed him. Lamarck was among the most
prominent members of the French Academy of Sciences and one of the first modern naturalists
to use the term biology. In his Philosophie zoologique (Zoological philosophy, 1809), he outlined
his theory of “transformism,” discussing the persistence of types as a process of improvement
through modification and adaptation to the environment. Severely criticized in his day by rivals
such as Georges Cuvier for its tendency to mix speculation with empirism, Lamarck’s
Philosophie zoologique, along with other groundbreaking works on botany and the zoology of
invertebrates (a term he also coined), are now acknowledged as producing the evolutionary
paradigm shift in modern biology decades before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species
(1859). An October 1804 memoir written by Lamarck and the chemist Louis Bernard Guyton de
Morveau (1747–1816) only months after Humboldt’s return from the Americas shows that
Lamarck held the Prussian in high esteem. Humboldt presumably met Lamarck in Paris in 1798.
Volume 3
III.3. GONZALO DE VELOSA (also Vellosa) is often credited with being the founder of the
sugarcane industry in the Americas. In 1515, he was the owner of Hispaniola’s first trapiche—an
animal-powered sugarmill. From 1515 to 1516, with the help of brothers Francisco and Cristóbal
de Tapia, he set up the first American ingenio, a colonial sugarmill that ran on hydraulic power,
in Santo Domingo.
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III.7n. Military commissioner José Ignacio Peñalver y Cárdenas, MARQUIS DE ARCOS (1736–
1804), was the Royal Treasurer of Havana and a member of the Sociedad Económica de
Amigos del País.
III.11n. In 1799, the French chemist and politician Jean Antoine Claude CHAPTAL, Count of
Chanteloup (1756–1832), was appointed councilor of state and succeeded Lucien Bonaparte
(1775–1840), the younger brother of Napoleon I (1769–1881), as Minister of the Interior. In that
position, Chaptal established a chemical factory near Paris, along with a school of arts, and a
society of industries. He also reorganized the hospitals and introduced the metric system to
France. A popularizer of science who contributed regularly to the journal Annales de chimie, the
prolific Chaptal is probably best known for his three-volume work Éléments de Chimie
(Elements of Chemistry, 1790). He was inducted into the French Academy of Sciences in 1816.
In 1821, he published the Mémoire sur le sucre de betterave (An account of beet sugar) to which
Humboldt refers here.
III.14n. A contemporary of David Ricardo (1772–1823), Thomas Malthus, and James Mill
(1773–1836), with whom he founded the Political Economy Club in London in 1821, British
financier and economist Thomas TOOKE (1774–1858) was among the first to advocate free trade.
In his publications, he detailed the circumstances that might affect prices, notably in Thoughts
and Details on the High and Low Prices of the last Thirty Years (1823), Considerations on the
State of the Currency (1826), and History of Prices and of the State of the Circulation during the
Years 1703–1856 (1838–57). Tooke had started out his adult life in business in St. Petersburg
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and retired a governor of the Royal Exchange Corporation in 1852. He had been a Fellow of the
Royal Society since 1821 and became a correspondent of the Institut de France in 1853.
III.20t. Jules Paul Benjamin DELESSERT (1773–1847) was a French banker, philanthropist,
collector, and botanist who generously sponsored scientific research, botanical expeditions, and
individual collectors. Along with a large art collection, he had an extensive botanical library and
a notable herbarium that included specimens Humboldt had sent him. A member of the French
Academy of Sciences, Delessert founded the first beet sugar factory in Passy in 1801.
III.24. Johann Daniel Georg MEMMINGER (1773–c. 1840) edited and authored contributions for
the Beschreibung des Königreichs Württemberg (Description of the Kingdom of Württemberg)
in the 1820s and 1830s. He had started publishing accounts of that region in 1812. A notable
family from that particular German state, the Memmingers are also of interest to USAmerican
history: Christopher Gustavus Memminger (1803–88) was a German-born Confederate Secretary
of the Treasury, who has generally been held responsible for the collapse of his government’s
credit during the USAmerican Civil War.
III.27. Eli Whitney (1765–1825) invented the cotton gin, a MACHINE that separated seeds from
fiber, in 1793.
III.28n. Beginning in 1797, British chemist, writer, translator, and inventor WILLIAM NICHOLSON
(1753–1815) published and edited the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts.
This journal, to which he also contributed, was generally known as Nicholson’s Journal and was
the earliest work of its kind in Great Britain. Its publication continued until 1814. As inventor,
Nicholson devoted his attention to the construction of machines for comb-cutting, file-making,
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and printing. Among other things, he invented an aerometer and a machine for cylinder printing,
but many of his projects seem to have amounted to little. In addition to his important
contributions to the journal Philosophical Transactions, Nicholson translated several key texts
on chemistry by Antoine-François Fourcroy (1755–1809) and Jean-Antoine Claude Chaptal.
III.31. LUIS PARRILLA was director of the so-called Temporalidades program, which was
designed to provide workers with a meager amount of food in addition to some money for rent.
Due to his administrative expertise, he was named director of the San José de Chalco and San
Francisco de Borja plantations in the Chalco region of New Spain in 1780. He was in charge of
overseeing the labor by the plantations’ employees, and part of his duties included sporadic work
reports. Parrilla received a significant amount of additional responsibilities when he advanced to
director. He was in charge of all existing documentation, including contracts, instructions, and
reports. Plantation workers generally regarded Parrilla as tyrannical because he treated them as
scapegoats for the administrative and economic failures that the plantations were facing at the
time.
III.35. Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo HERVÁS y Panduro (1735–1809) was a missionary in New Spain
until his order was expelled in 1767. Much like Humboldt himself, Hervás was interested in
language studies as a key to human history. After returning to Rome, he compiled a catalogue of
the world’s languages as part of his Idea del Universo (1779–87), which may be regarded as the
culmination of Spanish colonial linguistics. The book included details on numerous American
languages, which Hervás had solicited from his fellow missionaries.
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III.47. In 1776, the French Ministry of the Navy sent French botanist Nicolas-Joseph THIÉRY (or
Thierry) DE MENONVILLE (1739–80) on a clandestine mission to New Spain to steal the cochineal
insect valued for its scarlet dye. His Voyage à Guaxaca (Travels to Guaxaca, 1787) describes
how he purchased the insects and the nopal cacti on which they depend, along with vanilla beans,
smuggling them from Oaxaca to the Saint-Domingue. There, he succeeded in naturalizing a
small colony of nopales in the botanical garden in Port-au-Prince, effectively breaking the
Spanish monopoly on the valuable red and yellow dyes made from the pulverized bodies of the
female beetles. Upon his return to France, Thiéry was rewarded for his biopiracy with the title of
King’s Botanist and a hefty pension.
III.48. Tangáxuan II (d. 1530), the last king of TZINTZUNTZAN, was the ruler of the Purépechas
or Tarascans, as the Spanish called them. Partially located in present-day Michoacán, his empire
was the second largest in Mesoamerica at the time. In 1522, Hernán Cortés sent an expedition
to the capital Tzintzuntzan in order to establish a new colony. Although the conquistadors
immediately collected tribute from the king, Tangáxuan apparently understood the presence of
the Europeans as a kind of ambassadorial visit; he continued to rule his territory and maintained
a personal relationship with Cortés. Upon the latter’s return to Spain, Nuño de Guzmán started
the systematic sacking of the Purépechan state, which also led to the murder of Tangáxuan in
1530.
III.48n. From 1756 to 1759, Swedish botanist and physician Johan Andreas MURRAY (1740–91)
was a student of Carl von Linné’s (1707–87) at the University of Uppsala. The following year,
Murray departed Sweden for Göttingen, Germany, where, in 1769, he was appointed professor of
medicine and botany, and director of the botanical garden. His most significant work was the six-
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volume compilation Apparatus medicaminum (1776–92), a fount of knowledge for later
pharmacologists. Murray and Linné corresponded until 1776.
III.52. A specialist on fiscal and financial matters, the French statesman JEAN-CLAUDE (or Jean-
Pierre) FABRE DE L’AUDE (1755–1832) was one of the architects of the French Revolution.
Though forced into exile during the Reign of Terror, he was named deputy to the Counsel of
Five Hundred in 1795 and became commissioner of finance. In 1807, he became senator.
Humboldt’s reference here is to Fabre de l’Aude’s Recherches sur l’impôt de tabac et moyen de
l’améliorer (Researches on the tax on tobacco and ways of raising it, 1802).
III.53. MARCO POLO (1254–1324) was a Venetian merchant whose travels and empirical
observations introduced Europeans to the culture, products, and ideas of Central Asia,
particularly with the dissemination of his chronicled travels titled Il Milione, commonly known
as The Travels of Marco Polo. Polo’s oral travel account was recorded by Rustichello da Pisa,
his secretary, in 1298/99 and first published in 1300. Although many scholars have questioned
the accuracy and veracity of the events recorded in this text, much of the information has been
affirmed by scrutinizing the book in relation to historical documents produced during Polo’s
lifetime. This includes his portrayal of the preparation of indigo in Hindustan.
III.54. French physician and chemist Claude Louis BERTHOLLET (1748–1822) was educated in
Turin and Paris. He collaborated with Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, Louis Bernard Guyton de
Morveau (1737–1816), and Antoine François de Fourcroy (1755–1809) on the important
Méthode de Nomenclature chimique (Method of chemical nomenclature, 1787), which became
the basis of the modern system of naming chemical compounds. Berthollet also conducted
research on dyes and bleaches and became the first to introduce the use of chlorine gas as a
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commercial bleaching agent in 1785. Another strong chlorine oxidant and bleach he investigated
and was the first to produce was potassium chlorate, known as Berthollet’s Salt. In 1794,
Berthollet was appointed professor of chemistry at the École Polytechnique. Much impressed
with Berthollet’s scientific work, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) recruited him for his
Egyptian Expedition (1798–1801), and he became one of the founders of the Institut d’Égypte. A
Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1789, Berthollet was elected a foreign member of
the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1801 and a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822. He spent the last twenty years of his life
working in his well-equipped laboratory in Arcueil near Paris. This laboratory attracted many
prominent scientists and eventually led to the formation of the Société d’Arcueil, a forum for
sharing and advancing scientific research. The Societé counted among its members Alexander
von Humboldt, Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862), Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Louis Jacques
Thénard. The group’s work was published from 1807–17 as Memoires de la Société d’Arcueil.
III.55. Don GARCÍA (de?) GRANADOS was an educated and experienced merchant from
Guatemala (see Humboldt 1826).
III.58. French naturalist and director of the Jardin du Roi, Georges Louis Leclerc, COUNT OF
BUFFON (1707–88), is renowned for the first attempt at presenting systematic knowledge in
natural history, geology, and anthropology in a single multivolume book, the Histoire naturelle,
générale et particulière (36 vols., 1749–1804). Buffon studied mountains and glaciers and was
one of the first to point out that climate, species, and the position of the continents were not fixed
but ever-changing. He also argued that separate regions with a similar environment have distinct
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faunas (this became known as Buffon’s Law). After Buffon’s death, his work was continued by
Bernard Germain Étienne Médard de la Ville-sur-Illon, the Count of Lacépède.
III.58n. Of Irish extraction, Lord George MACARTNEY (1737–1806), the first Earl Macartney,
was appointed governor of Grenada (West Indies) in 1775 and served as governor of Madras
(Chennai) from 1781 to 1785. From 1792 to 1794, he headed the first formal British diplomatic
mission to China. As special envoy to Russia in 1764, he had successfully negotiated an alliance
between Great Britain and the Russia of Catherine II (1729–96). On his China mission, which
ultimately failed to open China to the West, Macartney was accompanied by John Barrow and
George Staunton. The latter was charged with compiling a book about their diplomatic mission,
titled Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China
(1797).
III.60n. Spanish conquistador Pedro de CIEZA de León (c. 1520–54) is widely regarded as the
“prince of Peruvian chroniclers.” His celebrated Crónica del Perú (The Peru chronicle, 1553)
was the best firsthand account of the conquest of the Inca. It describes the land in detail and
narrates the history of the Inca of Cusco. A year after he saw the famed treasure being unloaded
from Francisco Pizarro’s (c. 1470s–1541) ships in Seville in 1535, Cieza set out for the New
World; he was thirteen. He spent nearly fifteen years in South America as a soldier, keeping
meticulous notes about everything he saw: flora, fauna, landscapes, ruins, events, and so on.
Being one of the first Europeans in the Andean region to use native informants for his research,
Cieza also amassed information about the indigenous peoples and their history. After having
been named official chronicler of the Indies, Cieza traveled in Peru from 1548 to 1550,
collecting material for the thousands of manuscript pages that became the basis for his Crónicas.
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He would see only the first part of his Crónicas published. The other parts of his manuscripts
were used by historians such as Herrera y Tordesillas. Because parts two to four were still
unpublished when he died, Cieza included them in his will, requesting that they either be
published by his executor or sent to Bartolomé de las Casas for that purpose—that part of the
will was not carried out. Parts two and four were published in the late nineteenth century, part
two as El señorío de los Incas (The state of the Inca, 1880) and part four as Las guerras civiles
del Perú (Civil wars in Peru, 1877–81). Historians considered part three lost until Francesca
Cantù, a modern history professor at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, found the complete
manuscript in the Apostolic Library of the Vatican in the 1970s. Cantù published part three,
which offers a detailed narrative of the Spaniards’ presence in the Andes, as Pedro de Cieza de
León e il descubrimiento y conquista del Perú (Pedro Cieza y León and the discovery and
conquest of Peru, 1979), and later as Crónica del Perú: Tercera Parte (Peru chronicle: third part,
1989).
III.60n. Sebastián de BELALCÁZAR (1480–1551) was a Spanish conquistador who took part in the
subjugation of some of the territories that today belong to Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Colombia.
His image is memorialized on the November 1988 ten-sucre bill issued by the Banco Central del
Ecuador. There are different accounts of when and how Belalcázar, whose family name might
have been Moyano, came to the New World. According to some accounts, he traveled with
Columbus on his third voyage (1498–1500). Others place him among the troops of Pedro Arias
Dávila, which arrived in the Americas in 1514. We do know that Belalcázar eventually made it
to Darién (Panama) and from there traveled west with Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (d.
1526), another Spanish conquistador who sailed up the Río Desagüadero (now Río San Juan) and
founded the cities of Granada and León (Nicaragua) in 1524. Belalcázar, who probably held the
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military rank of captain (rather than general), became the first mayor of the city of León. In
Nicaragua, he likely met Francisco Pizarro (c. 1470s–1541) and Diego de Almagro (c. 1474–
1538). In 1532, Belalcázar sold his possessions in Nicaragua to outfit two ships to join the
conquest of the Inca. A year later, as he went north, he clashed at Cañar with the troops of
Rumiñahui (d. 1535), one of Atahualpa’s (c. 1500–July 26, 1533) generals, and defeated him in
the Battle of Mount Chimborazo. On his retreat northward, Rumiñahui destroyed the main cities
of the Inca realm. Belalcázar pursued him, founding Santiago and San Francisco near today’s
Riobamba; these movable “cities” eventually became Quito and Guayaquil. Belalcázar, who
resided in Quito, eventually captured Rumiñahui but was unable to make him reveal the location
of the Inca gold. Around 1536, Belalcázar moved further north into today’s southwest Colombia,
presumably inspired by rumors of El Dorado. A year later, he founded Popayán, among other
cities. After conflicts and near-clashes with other conquistadors, notably with Pedro de
Alvarado, Nikolaus Federmann (1505–42), and Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Belalcázar, in
1540, was appointed governor of Popayán and the Provincias Equinocciales (part of today’s
Colombia and most of today’s Ecuador). Eventually, he was sentenced to death for having
executed conquistador Jorge Robledo (1500–46) in a territorial dispute but died before he could
return to Spain to appeal the judgment.
III. 63. Half-brother to Atahualpa (c. 1500–July 26, 1533), the Inca HUESCAR (also Huáscar, or
Waskar in Quechua) was the son of Wayna Qhapaq (Huayna Capac or Guayna Capac in
Hispanicized spellings, c. 1468–1527). Waskar ruled the Inca Empire from 1527 to 1532. His
heavily disputed accession to the Inca throne after his father’s sudden death led to a prolonged
bloody civil war between him and the older brother Atahualpa, who was to become the last Inca
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ruler. It is likely because of this political disunity among the Inca nobles that Francisco Pizarro
(c. 1470s–1541) was able to conquer their empire.
III.63. ASTORPILCO was the illegitimate son of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1470s–1541) and one of
Atahualpa’s daughters, Doña Angelina. At the time of Humboldt’s visit in 1802, Astorpilco’s
descendants lived in the town of Cajamarca, Peru. Humboldt writes more extensively about his
acquaintance with a descendant of this family in Views of Nature (pp. 280ff). He also mentions
the Astorpilcos in his Political Essay on the Island of Cuba and even in Cosmos.
III.66. Olivier de SERRES (1539–1619) was a French author and soil scientist who turned his
estate Pradel into a model of progressive soil management. He implemented early forms of crop
rotation and introduced numerous plants to French agriculture, such as madder root from
Flanders, hops from England, corn from Italy, and, above all, the mulberry. He was called to
Paris by King Henry IV (1553–1610) who wished to develop the sericulture in his realm. Serres
published a book on that topic in 1599. His most important work, the Théâtre d'Agriculture (The
theater of agriculture, 1600), was the textbook of French agriculture in the seventeenth century.
III.69t. The author of Recherches sur le commerce (1778–79) is Cornelis van der
Oudermeulen. See III.402n.
III.70. Johann Karl ILLIGER (1775–1813) was a German entomologist and zoologist. His teacher
Johann Hellwig (1743–1831), whose daughter Illiger later married, discovered Illiger’s early
interest in science. Hellwig’s outstanding collection of insects influenced Illiger’s decision to
dedicate himself entirely to entomology, after an attempt at studying medicine had failed due to
his fragile health. He studied natural history in Helmstedt and Göttingen and published his own
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entomological journal, Magazin für Insektenkunde (1802–07). In 1810, Illiger attained a chair in
zoology at the University of Berlin with Humboldt’s help. As head of the university’s zoological
museum, Illiger reorganized the natural history collection there and improved its scientific
accessibility. In 1811, he published Prodromus Systematis Mammalium et Avium (Systematic
prodromus about mammals and birds). His work facilitated the general acceptance of Carl von
Linné’s (1707–7878) taxonomy and terminology.
III.70. Louis JURINE (1751–1819) was a Swiss physician, surgeon, and naturalist whose main
interest was in entomology. After his studies in Paris, he moved to Geneva, where he worked as
a practical surgeon while also pursuing his scientific interests. In 1817, he returned to Paris to
assist Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) during her final illness. One of his major scientific
achievements was his proof of the significant role that hearing plays for bats.
III.70. French entomologist Pierre André LATREILLE (1762–1833) was the adopted son of
renowned mineralogist René Just Haüy. Latreille was arrested in Bordeaux during the French
Revolution and supposedly released when he discovered a new kind of beetle in his prison cell.
He came to direct the entomology department of the Museum of Natural History in 1799 and was
elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1814. In 1829, he succeeded Jean-
Baptiste Lamarck as professor of entomology. Latreille’s Melipona and Trigona are stingless
bees, for which he had a particular fascination.
III.72. Admiral Horatio NELSON (1758–1805), also known as the First Viscount Nelson, was a
British officer and explorer known for his service in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars
(1803–15). He was crucial to many victories, including the battles of the Nile (1798) and the
battle of Trafalgar (1805). He was killed during the latter while in command of the HMS Victory.
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Nelson had attended schools in Norwich and North Walsham before enrolling in the Royal Navy
at Chatham at the age of twelve. He gained significant experience and training in the Thames
estuary, and in 1773 he took part in an unsuccessful expedition to the Arctic. In 1777, Nelson
sailed to the West Indies. He was stationed in North America during the USAmerican War of
Independence (1775–82). During this time, he was also promoted to captain and soon took part
in expeditions and operations against Spanish settlements in Nicaragua. During the French
Revolutionary Wars in 1793, Nelson was given command of the Agamemnon and took part in
several inshore and blockade actions. He helped secure Corsica from the French and, during a
siege of Calvi in 1794, was famously blinded in the right eye.
III.73. In 1756, the Basque Francisco Leandro de Viana, the first COUNT OF TEPA (1730–1804),
was appointed fiscal attorney of the Audiencia of Manila, a counseling body to the captain-
general appointed by the Spanish Crown. He assumed office in 1758. In addition to writing
reports on the state of the Philippine islands after the British occupation of Manila from 1762 to
1764, he also outlined trading plans in which products such as cotton and wine would be
exported to Manila in exchange for pearls, indigo, cochineal, and several other dyes. He wrote a
series of letters to Charles III of Spain, in which he discussed ways to increase the revenue
produced by New Spain. In these letters, the count also addressed other issues, such as questions
of security, governmental mismanagement, the irresponsibility of religious orders and
institutions, and the neglect of the teaching of Spanish. Viana’s lengthy statements codified a
new condition for the continuity of colonial rule that deviated from the imperial and missionary
endeavors of the colonies. This new code focused on increasing the productivity of the financial
undertakings in the colonies.
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III.75. Antoine-Nicolas DUCHESNE (1747–1827) was a botanist from Versailles best known for
his book on strawberries, Histoire naturelle des fraisiers (1766). The Fragaria monophylla to
which Humboldt refers was a new kind of strawberry that Duchesne had discovered in 1763 and,
by collecting the seeds, was able to cultivate.
III.76–7. Second lieutenant of the frigate San Carlos Borromeo, Pantaleón RUIZ DE MONTOYA
became mayor of Nejapa, a municipality in southwestern New Spain, in 1773. He is the author of
a 1770s treatise on the production of “scarlet grain” in Nejapa province, in which he
painstakingly describes the labor-intensive process of raising the cochineal insect and harvesting
it for a crimson-colored dye known as carmine.
III.78. Swiss botanist Augustin-Pyrame de CANDOLLE (1778–1841) studied with George Cuvier
and Jean Baptiste Lamarck in Paris and eventually became professor of natural history in
Geneva. In 1813, Candolle published his famous Théorie élémentaire de la botanique (Basic
theory of botany), in which he introduced the term “taxonomy.” He proposed his own
classificatory system to replace Carl von Linné’s (1707–87). Candolle made important
contributions to the geography of plants by describing the relation between the distribution of
plants and soil types, based on observations he had made during his travels in Brazil, East India,
and North China. Humboldt refers to Candolle’s Plantarum succulentarum historia: ou Histoire
naturelle des plantes grasses published in 1799 and illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté.
III.78. Painter and botanist Pierre-Joseph REDOUTÉ (1759–1840) is known for his watercolors of
roses and lilies. From a family of painters, he started his career with church paintings and stage
settings. In 1782, Redouté moved to Paris, where he met the botanist Charles Louis L’Héritier de
Brutelle (1746–1800). Illustrating the latter’s works gained him fame and helped his remarkable
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career. Marie Antoinette (1755–93) named Redouté Painter to the Queen’s Cabinet. After the
French Revolution, he became a member of the Academy of Science, taught painting to Empress
Marie-Louise of Austria (1791–1847), and provided illustrations for many botanical
publications. He also became the protégé of Josephine Bonaparte’s (1763–1814). His most
famous publications are Les Liliacées (1802–1816) and Les Roses (1817–1824).
III.79. Leonard PLUKENET (1641–1706) was an English botanist. It is unclear where he was
educated. Though enrolled at Oxford, he did not take any degree there. He practiced as a
physician in London; after obtaining his medical degree abroad, he began to develop a small
botanical garden in Westminster. He had access to the gardens of other botanists and eventually
developed a large herbarium that contained at least 8,000 plant specimens from various parts of
the world. Plukenet’s work in botany caught the attention of Queen Mary II (1662–94) in 1689;
she made him Royal Professor of Botany and superintendent of the royal gardens at the Hampton
Court. The six volumes of his collected botanical works, Opera omnia botanica, were initially
published between 1691 and 1705. Plukenetia, a genus of mainly tropical members of the spurge
family, was named in his honor.
III.79. Spanish mathematician and cartographer Antonio de ULLOA (1716–95) accompanied the
1735 French expedition to South America as representative of the Spanish Crown. After their
return to Europe in 1745, Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilia coauthored a confidential report to
the Crown, entitled Discurso y reflexiones políticas sobre el estado presente de la marina de los
reynos del Perú (Discourse and political reflections on the present state of the royal fleet of Peru,
1749). Denouncing colonial administrators’ corrupt practices, the report was unofficially
published in London as Noticias secretas de América (Secret news from America, 1826). Ulloa
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later held several high-ranking positions in the Spanish colonial administration, including that of
governor of Louisiana (1766–8), of Huancavelica (Peru, 1758–63), and of lieutenant-general of
the Spanish Navy. In addition to several other joint publications with Juan, such as the Relación
histórica (Historical narrative), Ulloa also wrote a natural history entitled Noticias americanas
(American news, 1772). See also Bouguer and La Condamine.
III.80. A native of Santander, Spain, José FRANCISCO IBAÑEZ DE CORVERA was one of the most
influential tradesmen of the Zimatlan region in Oaxaca, Mexico, during the eighteenth century.
He was honorary administrator of the Oaxaca town hall and also the representative of the
Veracruz merchants’ guild. In 1759, he wrote a report in which he discussed the cultivation,
preparation, and distribution of cochineal in local residences, where people would keep
cochineal-infested cactus pads in their houses for a period of twenty to thirty days.
III.87. HERNÁN (or Hernando) DE SOTO (c. 1500–42) was a conquistador in Nicaragua and Peru
(with Francisco Pizarro) who became governor of Cuba. After the failed expedition to Florida
by Pánfilo de Narváez, the more experienced de Soto was sent on a second voyage to the
tropical peninsula (1539–43). On his famous route through Florida, along the Alabama River and
across the Mississippi, de Soto searched for the mythical Seven Cities and a pathway to the
Pacific—both without success. After his death, his expedition continued south across the
Mississippi and along the coast to Tampico, where the remaining crew dispersed.
III.90. German classicist and naturalist Johann Gottlob Theaenus SCHNEIDER (1750–1822)
received his education in Leipzig and Göttingen before moving to Strasbourg, where he assisted
Richard François Philippe Brunck (1729–1803) in editing the Greek classics. In 1776, Schneider
became professor of ancient languages and eloquence at Frankfurt (Oder) and later at Breslau. In
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1814, he was appointed chief librarian in Breslau. His most influential work was Kritisches
griechisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch (1797–98), a Greek-English lexicon that became the basis
of most later Greek lexicons. Schneider was especially interested in the writings of ancient
authors concerned with science and natural history, editing works by Claudius Aelianus (170–
235), Theophrastus, Nicander of Colophon (second century BCE), Aristotle (384–322 BCE),
Lucius Columella, and Epicurus (c. 341–271 BCE), among others, Schneider also edited the
Systema Ichthyologiae iconibus ex illustratum (1801) by his contemporary Marcus Elieser Bloch
(1723–1799) and the complete works of Xenophon (c. 430–c. 355 BCE). Many of his own
writings, such as his Naturgeschichte der Schildkröten (General natural history of the tortoises,
1783) were also dedicated to the natural sciences. The account on whaling to which Humboldt
refers here is from Schneider’s Sammlung Vermischter Abhandlungen zur Aufklärung der
Zoologie und der Handlungsgeschichte (Collection of diverse treatises to illuminate zoology and
the history of trade, 1784: pp. 259–303).
III.90. Bernard Germain Étienne Médard de la Ville-sur-Illon (1756–1825), the Count of
LACÉPÈDE, had considerable talents in both music and physics. In addition to attracting the
attention of several renowned composers, notably Christoph Willibald Ritter von Glück (1714–
87), Lacépède also won favor with Buffon, who secured him a position at the Jardin du Roi. He
continued Buffon’s Histoire des animaux (Natural History of Animals) after the latter’s death.
Lacépède’s best-known works deal with the oviparous quadrupeds, reptiles, fishes, and
cetaceans; the most important of these is his Histoire naturelle des poissons (Natural History of
Fishes, 1798–1803). Active in French politics, Lacépède was exiled during the Reign of Terror.
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III.101n. Joaquín MANIAU y Torquemada (1753–1820) was the major officer of the General
Directive and Treasury of Tobacco and commissioner of the royal armies in New Spain.
Maniau’s appointment to this position upset many, not only because his father was the general
accountant of Mexico City (which violated promotional procedure) but also because Maniau was
considered too inexperienced. In 1810, he became deputy of Veracruz for the royal court. During
his time as commissioner, he brought attention to issues such as the abolition of the Inquisition
and freedom of the press. Maniau is best known for his Historia de la Real Hacienda de Nueva
España (History of the Royal Treasury of New Spain) from 1794.
III.101n. Pedro ESTALA (1757–1815), was a Spanish philosopher, poet, translator, Hellenist,
Francophile, and one of the best-known literary critics of his time. The suggestion that he had
studied Greek and theology at the University of Salamanca during the early 1760s remains
unsupported. It is certain, however, that he became a professor at the College of San Fernando in
1778, where he taught humanities. Estala was then assigned a position as a professor of rhetoric
and Greek at the San Carlos Seminary in Salamanca. He is known for his Spanish translation of
the Abbot Joseph de la Porte’s (1714–79) collection Le Voyageur Francois (1767–95) as El
Viagero Universal (The universal traveler). Begun in 1776, the translation was published
between 1795 and 1801. El Viagero Universal consisted of forty-two volumes that contained
valuable information on various parts of the world, particularly South America, including
estimates of the non-indigenous population of various major cities such as Buenos Aires.
Important to note is that Estala updated the French version, so that volumes 26 and 27 (which
deal mainly with New Spain) contained the most current information available in Europe about
New Spain. Because of his close relations with Manuel Godoy, the Trespalacios family, and
returning New Spain viceroys, Estala was most likely able to obtain reliable statistics and other
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information about New Spain. It is possible that Humboldt did not at the time know that Estala,
whose work he mentions here as something to which he did not have access, had been the
translator-author of the Viagero Universal, which he cites in other places. Estala died in disgrace
and obscurity.
III.106n. Austrian-born Spanish author and philosopher Gaspar Melchor de JOVELLANOS (1744–
1811) was one of the leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. His prose works on political
and legislative economy helped cement his position as a literary authority, particularly his well-
known 1795 “Mémoire curieux sur le perfectionnement de l’agriculture” (sometimes translated
as “A Report on the Dossier of Agrarian Law”); Humboldt refers to it as Jovellanos’s “work on
the land laws.” Jovellanos’s account argues for financial and economic freedom based on the
analysis of agricultural development from physical, legal, and intellectual perspectives.
III.116. Scholars have long been intrigued by Quetzalcoatl’s complex identity. At times,
Quetzalcoatl (“Feathered Serpent” or “Precious Serpent”) is represented as a god; at others, he is
either the priest of the Great Temple or a heroic leader. Recent scholarship distinguishes three
distinct characters that have been conflated in Spanish accounts: (1) the deity of air or wind,
Ehécatl Quetzalcoatl; (2) the high priest of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán, named
Quetzalcoatl Totec Tlamacazqui (priest of the plumed serpent); and (3) the heroic figure of Ce
Ácatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. Ehécatl Quetzalcoatl is believed to be one of the creators of the
universe and the founder of civilized life; he is associated with wisdom, arts, and philosophy.
Since Ehécatl Quetzalcoatl is the patron of priests and rulers, the Great Temple’s priests are also
named Quetzalcoatl. Ce Ácatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the son of the earth/fertility goddesses
Chimalma(n)/Cihuacoatl/Coatlicue/Coacueye and the quasi-divine conqueror and founder of the
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Toltec kingdom, Mixcoatl/Camaxtli/Totepeuh. Current scholarship has shown the story about
Quetzalcoatl the foreign, white missionary to be largely fictitious, much like his alleged
opposition to human sacrifice. Both were products of the Spanish chroniclers and clearly served
their purposes.
III.120. French chemist Louis Nicolas VAUQUELIN (1763–1829) discovered chromium and
beryllium in 1797 and 1798, respectively. He served as professor of chemistry at the Paris
Faculty of Medicine where he succeeded his teacher and friend Antoine-François Fourcroy
(1755–1809). Vauquelin himself supported Louis-Jacques Thénard, another soon-to-be-famous
chemist. During his time in Paris, Humboldt was in touch with all three men. Like Humboldt,
Vauquelin was also an inspector of mines.
III.121. In 1799, French economist, statesman, and former supporter of the French Revolution
Pierre Samuel DU PONT DE NEMOURS (1739–1817), together with his two sons and their families,
emigrated to the USA. There, he befriended Thomas Jefferson, and his son Eleuthère Irénée du
Pont (1771–1834) became the founder of the powder company E.I. du Pont de Nemours and
Company in Wilmington, Delaware in 1802. A protégé of François Quesnay’s while still in
France, du Pont published writings on the national economy that drew some attention. In his
book La Physiocracie (Physiocracy, 1767), he advocated low tariffs and free trade, ideas that
deeply influenced Adam Smith (1723–90). In 1768, du Pont became editor of Ephémérides du
citoyen ou Bibliothèque raisonnée des sciences morales et politiques (Citizen’s Ephermides, or
reasoned library of moral and political sciences), taking over from the theologian Nicolas
Baudeau (1730–92). Volume 6 of the Ephermides includes du Pont’s “Observations sur
l'esclavage des nègres” (Observations about Negro slavery). There appears to be no further
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information about the Gallic axe Humboldt mentions here. The Pierre Samuel du Pont de
Nemours Papers are at the Hagley Museum in Greenville, Delaware.
III.121. French physician Jean D’ARCET (also Darcet, 1724–1801) studied chemistry with
Guillaume-François Rouelle (1703–70), a proponent of the phlogiston theory that the German
chemist Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1734) had developed. Stahl claimed that all combustible
materials, including metals, contain a special substance, which is what makes them combustible.
In 1763, when D’Arcet first encountered the ideas of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, also a
former Rouelle student, he embraced Lavoisier’s theory of the formation of chemical
compounds. Humboldt refers here to D’Arcet’s special interest in how minerals and metals
behaved at high temperatures. Among other things, this knowledge was key to the production of
hard-paste porcelain, which D’Arcet introduced to France. He also invented the D’Arcet Alloy, a
compound of lead, bismuth, and pewter that liquefied at the temperature of boiling water and
was used for stereotype printing. In 1784, D’Arcet was appointed professor of chemistry at the
Collège de France, became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and replaced the
chemist Pierre Joseph Macquer (1718–84) as director of the Royal Manufactory of Porcelain in
Sèvres. In 1798, the Academy commissioned a report from D’Arcet and Claude Louis
Berthollet on Lavoisier’s pioneering Elementary treatise on chemistry.
III.121. Often called the father of modern crystallography, the French mineralogist and honorary
canon of Notre Dame René Just HAÜY (1743–1822) owned a collection of 12,000 specimens at
the time of his death. Haüy had previously studied with the naturalist Louis-Jean-Marie
Daubenton (1716–1800), who, together with Laplace, convinced Haüy to present his discoveries
to the French Academy of Science, of which he became a member in 1783. In addition to
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producing influential work in mineralogy, Haüy was also a pioneer in the development of pyro-
electricity. He retired from his professorship at the Collège de Cardinal Lemoine at the
University of Paris after twenty years of service to devote himself fully to crystallography. Like
many other clergymen, he refusing to pledge allegiance to the French Revolution and suffered
accordingly. He lost his papers and his collection of crystals, and he was imprisoned. His former
student, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844), at length interceded for him,
so that, in 1794, Haüy was appointed curator of the Cabinet des Mines and professor of physics
at the École Normale. After the death of mineralogist Dieudonné Dolmieu (1750–1801), Haüy
advanced to chair of mineralogy at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Losing his
professorship during the Restoration, he spent his last days in poverty. Regardless, he refused to
sell his precious collection, which, in 1823, was acquired by the first Duke of Buckingham and
Chandos (1776–1839).
III.121n. Richard KIRWAN (1733–1812) was an Irish chemist who also contributed to other areas
of science and scholarship and corresponded with scientists all over Europe and the USA. He
was a fellow of the Royal Society of London and president of the Royal Irish Academy. Initially,
Kirwan was a strong advocate of the theory of phlogiston, which sought to explain burning
processes now known as oxidation (see his Essay on Phlogiston and the Constitution of Acids,
1787). During the 1780s, he was engaged in a public controversy with Henry Cavendish (1731–
1810) in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London on the subject of
carbonic acid. Humboldt mentions Kirwan several times in his Personal Narrative. Here,
Humboldt refers to Kirwan’s belief that tin could be found in its native state, a claim Kirwan
advanced in his Elements of mineralogy (1784), the first systematic study of mineralogy in
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English. Kirwan abandoned the phlogiston theory in 1791 because he failed to show the
formation of fixed air from phlogiston and oxygen. See also D’Arcet, Jean.
III.122n. Thanks to his father’s connections, Henry Thomas COLEBROOKE (1765–1837) was able
to travel to India for the East India Company in 1782. Colebrooke was a prolific scholar with
manifold interests and broad knowledge, ranging from the study of Sanskrit to natural history.
He may be seen as a successor to the philologist William Jones (1746–94), especially as he took
over the responsibility of preparing a digest of Hindu law after Jones’s death. Colebrooke
published twenty papers in Asiatick Researches, the journal of the Asiatick Society of Bengal.
See also Webb, William Spencer.
III. 138. The Freemason Ignaz Edler von BORN (1742–1791) was a mineralogist and
metallurgist. In 1776, the Hapsburg ruler Maria Theresa (1717–1780) appointed him to organize
the imperial museum at Vienna, where he was also nominated to the Council of Mines and the
mint. Born introduced a method of extracting metals by amalgamation and pioneered other
improvements in mining. The term saxum metalliferum to which Humboldt refers here was
introduced in Born’s Briefe über Mineralogische Gegenstände (Letters on mineralogical
subjects, 1774).
III.138. French mineralogist and geologist Francois Sulpice BEUDANT (1787–1850) established
his reputation in Europe with Voyage minéralogique et géologique en Hongrie (1822), in which
he published the results of his 1818 geological journey across Hungary. Beudant succeeded
Haüy at the Sorbonne (1822–1839) and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences
in 1824. In addition to his treatises on physics, mineralogy, and geology, he also published a
French and a Latin grammar.
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III.139. A student of Abraham Gottlob Werner’s, the German mineralogist Dietrich Ludwig
Gustav KARSTEN (1768–1810) made a quick and successful career in mining administration
while simultaneously pursuing his scientific interests and working as an instructor at the Berlin
Mining Academy. Karsten authored a voluminous catalogue of the mineral collection by
Nathanael Gottfried Leske (1751–1786), which was purchased by the Dublin Natural History
Museum in 1792. Karsten helped his mentor Werner prepare a similar catalogue of the Karl
Eugen Pabst von Ohain (1718–1784) collection, later sold to the government of Portugal and
shipped to Rio de Janeiro. In 1791, Karsten published a survey of mineralogical fossils
(Tabellarische Übersicht der mineralogisch-einfachen Fossilien), the definitive work on the
subject until the second half of the nineteenth century. Karsten and Klaproth describe the fire
opal Humboldt mentions here in volume 4 (pp. 156f) of Klaproths Beiträge zur chemischen
Kenntnis der Mineralkörper (Contributions to the chemical understanding of minerals, 1807).
III.155n. Alexandre BRONGNIART (1778–1847) was a professor of natural history who made
valuable contributions in paleontology, mineralogy, and zoology. His later years were dedicated
to the study and improvement of ceramic production. He held the position of professor of
mineralogy at the National Museum of Natural History (Jardin de Plantes) in Paris from 1822
until 1847. His most important work in paleontology was the study of the fossil-laden strata in
the Paris Basin, which he commenced in 1804. In the field of zoology, he proposed the division
of the class Reptilia into four different groups, three of which are still in use in modern
classification systems. His recognition in mineralogy is mainly based on his Traité élémentaire
de minéralogie (Basic treatise on mineralogy, 1807), which Humboldt mentions here, In 1800,
Brongniart was named director of the Sèvres Porcelain Factory and in 1824 opened a museum to
show the production of the factory to the public.
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III.156n. Tomás JOAQUÍN DE ACOSTA y Pérez de Guzmán (1800–52) was a geologist, historian,
and military officer known chiefly for his collection of historical and geographical research notes
titled Compendio histórico del descubrimiento y colonización de la Nueva Granada en el siglo
décimo sexto (Historical compendium of the discovery and colonization of New Granada in the
sixteenth century, 1848). He traveled to Paris in 1825 to study mineralogy, geology, and military
engineering. Humboldt wanted to meet Acosta to consult with him on the structure of the Chocó
lands. Upon noticing Acosta’s curious and intelligent nature, Humboldt decided to show and
discuss various maps that he was designing at the time in order to receive the young scholar’s
feedback. In exchange for his insights, Humboldt introduced Acosta to the major figures of the
Parisian elite.
III.156. Ignacio CAVERO y Cárdenas (c. 1756–1834), who was in charge of tobacco exports and a
customs officer in Cartagena de Indias for almost twenty years, was active in the struggle for
New Granada’s independence in 1810. As a result, he was forced to live in exile in Jamaica from
1815 to 1821, when he returned to Colombia.
III.157. JOSÉ MARÍA de MOSQUERA y Figueroa (1752–1829) was a wealthy Colombian merchant
and father of Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera (1798–1878). Cipriano was one of Colombia’s
leading political figures who would become the fourth president of Colombia in 1863. He was
also the governor of the Popayán province from January to October 1814.
III.157n. One of the founders of the Geological Society of London (1807), English mineralogist
and geologist William PHILLIPS (1775–1828) wrote several standard texts, notably Outlines of
Mineralogy and Geology (1815) and Elementary Introduction to the Knowledge of Mineralogy
(1816). In the latter work, there is a paragraph on “native platina” in which the remarks
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Humboldt criticizes here can be found. Phillips’s Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales
(1822), the first part of a larger work on which Phillips collaborated with the geologist and
paleontologist William Daniel Conybeare (1787–1857), had a major influence on the
development of British geology. A member of the Society of Friends, Phillips was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1827. His brother, Richard Phillips (1778–1851), distinguished
himself as a chemist.
III.157n. Spanish botanist Antonio José CAVANILLES (1745–1804) was among the first
naturalists in Spain to use the taxonomy developed by Carl von Linné (1707–87). Initially,
Cavanilles had studied theology and philosophy but, in 1777, he moved to Paris where he
became acquainted with botanist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836). Cavanilles gained
fame for the botanical work he carried out during the ten years of Jussieu’s tutelage. After
returning to Spain, Cavanilles dedicated himself to the description of the Spanish flora and
published Anales de ciencias naturales (1799–1804). In 1801, he was named director of the
Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid.
III.160n. A student of Abraham Gottlob Werner’s at the Freiberg School of Mines from 1791
to 1793, French geologist and mineralogist André-Jean-François-Marie BROCHANT de Villiers
(1772–1840) was a mining engineer and editor of the Journal des Mines. In 1801, he was
appointed professor of geology and mineralogy at the Paris School of Mines and inspector-
general of the mines of France. Here, Humboldt most likely refers to Brochant’s Traité
élémentaire de minéralogie (Basic treatise on mineralogy, 1801–02), in which he combined
Werner’s theories with Haüy’s discoveries.
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III.160n. After spending time in the military and as a mathematics teacher, Jean François
D’AUBUISSON de Voisins (1769–1841) studied with Werner at the Freiberg School of Mines
from 1797 to 1802. In addition to his interest in geology and mineralogy, D’Aubuisson was a
hydraulic engineer of considerable renown. In 1802, he published Des mines de Freiberg en Saxe
et de leur exploitation (About the mines in Freiberg, Saxony, and their exploitation), which
Humboldt cites here. Among D’Aubuisson’s publications are a treatise about basalt (1803), a
well-known textbook about geognosy (1818–34), and another one about hydraulics (1834). As a
resident of Toulouse, France, he concerned himself intensively with the sourcing and
maintenance of the city’s water.
III.170n. Christoph Gottlieb MURR (1733–1811) was a German polymath particularly known for
his historiographical writings on a wide array of subjects. Although has was a Protestant, he
came into contact with the Jesuits during his travels, as a result of which many of his works are
dedicated to members of the Society of Jesus. The text to which Humboldt refers is a collection
of accounts from missionaries in South America. The cited paragraph is part of the travel account
by the Würzburg-born Jesuit Joseph Och (1725–1773) describing his sojourn in New Mexico
from 1754 to 1767.
III.177. DIEGO RUL (1761–c. 1812), the first count of Casa Rul (a title he purchased), hailed from
Malaga, Spain, and was married to María Ignacia, one of the two daughters of the silver
millionaire Antonio Obregón y Alcocer, the first Count of Valenciana and patriarch of one of a
handful of influential mining families of New Spain. Marrying into the Obregón family made the
well-educated Spaniard an enormously wealthy landowner who, in addition to being part-owner
of the Valencia mine, also acquired significant stakes in other silver mines. He also owned
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refining mills and several haciendas. The count’s mansion in the city of Guanajuato is considered
an architectural jewel and has become one of the most emblematic colonial buildings in Mexico.
It is catalogued by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) as a national
treasure. A fierce opponent of the Mexican insurgency of 1810, Rul died defending the cause in
the state of Morelos in Cuautla. Humboldt stayed in Rul’s spectacular abode between the months
of August and September 1803.
III.177. Little is known about the biographical details of Indian peasant DIEGO HUALCA except
for the story of his serendipitous discovery of a silver deposit in Potosí, Peru, which immensely
fueled the desires and ambitions of explorers and miners back in 1545. Although there are
different versions of Hualca’s discovery, most accounts posit that, as he was chasing a wild goat
through the mountains of Potosí, he grabbed onto a bush to pull himself up a steep ledge. Unable
to sustain his weight, the bush came loose, revealing a cluster of silver embedded in the dirt.
Hualca eventually made a small fortune from his discovery, which he kept secret until his sudden
change of lifestyle raised the suspicions of residents in Porco. A mine was established in Potosí
on April 21, 1545 by a Porco resident known as Villaroel.
III.177n. French surveyor and mapmaker Frédéric MOTHÈS was among the group of scientists
whom Fausto de Elhuyar recruited for his 1789 scientific expedition from Buenos Aires to
study various mines in South and Central America. Potosí was at the time the mining center of
the highlands of what is now Bolivia. Mothès visited the Cerro de Potosí together with the Baron
Nordenflycht, another member of the expedition. Humboldt may well have obtained Mothès’s
unpublished manuscript from Nordenflycht.
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III.182n. Humboldt’s reference is to the geographical writer Johann Gottfried EBEL (1764–1840)
and his traveler’s guide to Switzerland, titled Anleitung, auf die nützlichste und genussvollste Art
in der Schweitz zu reisen (1793). This guide, which included an alphabetically arranged list of
places with descriptions, superseded all other books of its kind and remained the best Swiss
guidebook until the publication of John Murray’s Handbook for Travelers in Switzerland (1838).
In 1798, Ebel published Schilderungen der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz (Depiction of the
mountain peoples of Switzerland), in which he focuses on the cantons of Glarus and Appenzell.
Having been naturalized in Switzerland in 1801, Ebel settled down in Zurich to work on his
major geological work, published in 1808 as Über den Bau der Erde im Alpengebirge (About the
configuration of the earth in the Alps).
III.182n. German geologist and historian Johannes (Johann) STEININGER (1794–1874) taught
mathematics and natural sciences at the Trier provincial high school until vision problems forced
him to retire in 1857. In his spare time, he pursued significant geological research. His work Die
erloschenen Vulkane in der Eifel und am Niederrheine (The extinct volcanoes in the Eifel and
the Lower Rhine valley, 1820) was printed as a report for the Gesellschaft nützlicher
Forschungen zu Trier (Trier society for useful research) of which he was a member.
III.182n. An alumnus of the Mining School in Schemnitz, the Austrian geologist Franz Xaver
RIEPL (1790–1857) was also a specialist on railways and in metallurgy. In 1816, the Landgraf
von Fürstenberg employed him in his iron mine in Bohemia. After this, Riepl conducted
scientific explorations in Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Silesia, and Mähren (in Rhineland-
Palatinate). Upon his return in 1819, he was appointed as professor of natural history at the
Technical University of Vienna, where he stayed until 1838. In 1836, he conceptualized Emperor
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Ferdinand of Austria’s Nordbahn and proposed plans for building a railroad network across
Austria.
III.182n. The disappearance of British North Canada explorer Sir John FRANKLIN (1786–1847)
set off an Arctic-wide search. In 1844, Franklin had set out with two ships to find the Northwest
Passage. A decade after his disappearance in 1847, Scottish explorer John Rae (1813–1893) and
Admiral Sir Francis McClintock (1819–1907), respectively, found evidence to suggest that
Franklin’s ships had been frozen in the ice between Victoria Island and King William Island. No
one is known to have survived of the entire expedition of some 129 men. The search for
Franklin’s diaries still continues. In his Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea
(1823), Franklin described his travels from Great Slave Lake to the Arctic coast at the mouth of
the Coppermine River. His Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea
(1828) details his journey to Great Bear Lake, where he built Fort Franklin (now Déline).
III. 188n. Johann Carl FREIESLEBEN (1774–1846) was a German mining commissioner.
Humboldt met him while studying in Freiberg, which led to a lifelong friendship. Freiesleben
held various positions in mining administration at Marienberg, Johanngeorgenstadt, and
Eisleben. In 1824, he sold his valuable collection of minerals to the University of Moscow. In his
writings he promoted the ideas of his teacher Abraham Gottlob Werner and made them known
to a broader public.
III.200. Grandson of an immigrant from Castile, merchant and entrepreneur PEDRO LUCIANO
OTERO (1717–88) started out as a shopkeeper in the mining village of Rayas in Guanajuato. In
1760, Antonio Obregón y Alcocer, the owner of the famous Valenciana mine, unable to
properly administrate and distribute the costs of running the mine, was forced to sell part of the
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property to Otero. Otero thus became the official owner of twelve shares (approximately 42%) of
the Valenciana, one of the most productive silver mines in the world. Soon after this partnership,
the Valenciana mine became a model for all other mines in New Spain due to its use of high-
quality technology and the tight entrepreneurial organization Obregón had implemented. Otero’s
death, besides leading to the dispersal of the mine’s ownership across the various families in
New Spain, also led to an intense legal battle about who was to inherit his fortune. Humboldt
visited the Valenciana mine in August 1803. See also Mazo, José Antonio del; Rul, Diego.
III.200n. Little is known about captain Juan Antonio de SANTA ANA (also Santana and Santa
Anna), a silent investor in the Valenciana mine in Guanajuato, who held four shares of the
property (which he received in 1764). Using the profits generated by the mine, Santa Ana was
able to purchase around 450,000 pesos worth of property in Salamanca. Throughout the rest of
his life, he remained in this area, continuing to invest in the mining trade of Guanajuato and
operating a silver refinery.
III. 223. As Humboldt himself mentioned, JOSÉ ALEJANDRO BUSTAMANTE y Bustillo (d. 1750)
was a very private individual. Most of what is known of his life is found in accounts that
Francisco Javier Gamboa (1717–94) collected in his Comentarios a las ordenanzas de minas
(Commentaries on mining ordinances) in 1761. Bustamante was a wealthy miner from Pachuca
who co-owned the Veta Vizcaína mines in this region. With the help of his business partner,
Pedro Romero de Terreros, he was also responsible for building the Azoyatla gallery in the
Pachuca valley. This gallery provided ventilation and drainage facilities to the mines in the area.
See also annotation for Moran (I.60).
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III.223. PEDRO ROMERO DE TERREROS, the first Count of Regla (1710–81), was a Spanish mining
magnate and philanthropist believed to be one of the richest men of his time. In 1743, he began a
business partnership with Bustamante y Bustillo and administrated the excavation and
extraction of minerals at the Vizcaína mines. With the unexpected death of Bustamante, Romero
de Terreros became the sole proprietor of the Vizcaína, which dramatically increased his wealth.
Despite his prosperity and his charitable ventures, which included monetary donations to
religious institutions and the gift of a battleship to the Spanish navy, Romero de Terreros
severely damaged his reputation during a workers’ strike at Vizcaína in 1766. The reason for the
strike was his refusal to comply with the tradition of the tequio, which entitled miners to a
portion of the minerals they extracted.
III.228. Mr. Lachaussée was a Flemish machinist of whom little else appears to be known.
III.228n. In 1770, German mineralogist, metallurgist, and geologist Christoph Traugott DELIUS
(1728–79) became a professor of metallurgy and mineralogy at the Schemnitz Mining Academy.
Two years laer, he worked as an assessor at the Oberberg- und Münzkollegium in Vienna. He
later became councilor at the Imperial Court in Vienna, and, from 1775 to 1776, was in charge of
reorganizing and improving the Hungarian mines. Humboldt refers here to the French translation
of Delius’s Anleitung zu der Bergbaukunst (Mining manual, 1773), a mining manual that was
used until the late nineteenth century.
III.246. SALVADOR SEIN taught physics at the School of Mining in Mexico City.
III.246. Georg Friedrich von REICHENBACH (1771–1826) was a German maker of scientific
instruments and inventor of the transit circle for use in scientific observatories, such as the one in
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Mannheim, Germany, where he was first introduced to astronomy. Humboldt, however, refers to
Reichenbach’s work in hydraulics and the reputation he gained for bringing the steam engine to
Bavaria. While in England in 1791–92, Reichenbach studied with James Watt (1736–1819) and
surreptitiously made a drawing of Watt’s steam engine. In 1817, he built a twenty-five kilometer
long pipeline with a steam-driven pump through which to pump brine from Berchtesgaden to
Bad Reichenhall, an achievement for which the Bavarian king granted him a title. Later on,
Reichenbach developed similar engines that would pump water into water towers.
III.246n. The lead-mines of Huelgoat in Poullaouen, Britanny, were famous for the hydraulic
pump constructed by Auguste JUNCKER (1791–1865), an Alsatian mining engineer who was
almost related to Georges Cuvier. Juncker was mayor of Poullaouen and engineer-in-chief of
the Royal School of Mines there.
III.254. In 1779, Anton RUPRECHT (1748–1814) was a Hungarian professor of chemistry,
metallurgy, and mineralogy at the Mining Academy in Schemnitz. A year later, he became court
counsellor at the Royal Imperials Chamber of Minting and Mining in Vienna, where he
succeeded his mentor Ignaz Elder von Born at the age of forty-four. Ruprecht was the first one
to succeed in melting platinum.
III.254. German chemist and mineralogist Christlieb Ehregott GELLERT (1713–95) was a
member of the Freiberg Mining Council. After visiting the Latin school at Freiberg, he moved to
St. Petersburg where he developed an interest in chemistry and physics. Back in Freiberg, he
worked as a consultant for the mining facilities. In 1762, he became the principal curator of the
metallurgic industry at Freiberg and, in 1766, the first professor for metallurgy at the newly
founded mining academy. Gellert also introduced a new method of amalgamation based on
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Born’s works. The English translation of Gellert’s major book on metallurgy was published as
Metallurgic chymistry in 1776.
III.256. In 1571–72, Spanish miner Pedro FERNÁNDEZ DE VELASCO perfected a relatively
inexpensive method of amalgamation known as beneficio de cajones (the boxes method). After
hearing about Fernández’s method, viceroy of Peru Francisco de Toledo summoned him to
Cusco to demonstrate his technique, which used mercury to facilitate silver production. Toledo
subsequently employed Fernández to teach his process to the miners of Potosí. It has been argued
that this technological change led to the town’s economic salvation.
III.256n. Criminal judge of the Royal Audiencia of Mexico, Luís BERRIO DE MONTALVO (d.
1643) was a Spanish engineer, doctor, and lawyer who occupied various administrative positions
in New Spain. He was commissioned to assess the benefits of silver amalgamation and published
a treatise on the process, Informe del nuevo beneficio (Report on the new form of reduction), in
1643. The twenty chapters of this treatise included observations about the amalgamation process,
along with suggestions and modifications for making the process more efficient and cost-
effective. It is a common mistake to credit Berrio de Montalvo with having invented the
amalgamation process. That honor belongs to Fernández de Velasco.
III. 356n. Wilhelm August Eberhard LAMPADIUS (1772–1842) was a German metallurgist,
chemist, and agronomist. Due to his early and pronounced interest in science, he was offered to
accompany the Bohemian naturalist Kaspar Maria von Sternberg (1761–1838), who had met
Humboldt in Paris in 1805, on his expedition to Russia. In 1794, Lampadius became a professor
for chemistry at the Mining Academy in Freiberg. His Handbuch der Allgemeinen Hüttenkunde
(Handbook of mining) was published between 1801 and 1826. Among his most important
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scientific achievements were the discovery of carbon disulfide, the extraction of sugar from
potato starch, and investigations into the composition and use of coal. Lampadius was also one
of the pioneers of the use of gaslight in Europe.
III. 257n. Captain PEDRO MENDOZA MELENDEZ and PEDRO GARCIA DE TAPIA discovered a
method of amalgamation through which one could extract silver in under twenty-four hours. In
1643, Luís Berrio de Montalvo improved on Mendoza and García’s amalgamation method in
the mines of New Spain.
III.258n. Jesuit priest ALVARO ALONZO BARBA (1569–1662) was a Catalonian metallurgist who
proposed an innovative amalgamation process in which ore was crushed, heated, and treated with
mercury in order to extract silver. He is best known for his work Arte de los metales (The art of
metals, 1640), in which he summarized the mining and metallurgic procedures developed and
used in New Spain. Barba’s work was the last example of the medieval alchemical tradition. In
1761, Francisco Javier Gamboa (1717–94) redefined mining in his Comentarios a las
ordenanzas de minas (Commentaries on mining rules).
III.258n. Priest and theologian JUAN José ORDOÑEZ de Montalvo was a mining technician in the
province of Tulancingo during the eighteenth century. He was also the director of the mines and
plantations that belonged to the sons of Agustín Moreno y Castro, the Marquis of Valle-Ameno
(1670–1755). In 1758, Ordoñez compiled a report titled Arte o nuevo modo de beneficiar los
metales de oro y playa, y de plata con ley de oro, por azoque (New method of reducing metals
such as gold and silver using quicksilver), in which he tried to improve the effectiveness of the
patio method, which used heat-based amalgamation, by employing additives such as salt and
calcite. In this process, silver ore was crushed to a fine paste mixed with salt, water, copper
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sulfate, and mercury, which was then spread on a one- to two-foot layer on a patio. After weeks
of mixing, a chemical reaction converted the silver to a native metal. See also Medina,
Bartolomé de.
III.258n. FRANCISCO XAVIER DE SARRÍA (also Soria, b. c. 1750) published his Ensayo de
metalurgia, ó descripción por de las catorce materias metálicas (Essay on metallurgy, or a
description on the fourteen metallic materials) in 1784. In it, he explained the metallurgic
techniques and European chemical theories applied to amalgamation in New Spain. This essay
was the first print source in the New World to discuss the details of the innovative chemical
nomenclature applied to this process. The King of Spain, Carlos III (1716–88), also supported
Xavier de Sarría’s project to create Spain’s first national lottery, which was a simplified and
more logical version of the ones carried out in Naples and England. The new lottery was created
as a new source of financial revenue for making institutional improvements. This system was
adopted by other European lotteries a year later.
III.266. In 1767, German mineralogist Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Toussaint von CHARPENTIER
(1728–1805) was a professor at the Freiberg Mining Academy and director of the mines of
Saxony. His publications, including his Mineralische Geographie der chursächsischen Lande
(Mineralogical geography of the electorate of Saxony, 1778), are mainly dedicated to the mineral
resources of Saxony. Charpentier introduced to Saxon metallurgy new ways of amalgamation
that were used in Hungary at the time.
III.266n. Educated at the University of Coimbra, mineralogist and mining expert Joaquim Pedro
FRAGOSO da Motta DE SIQUERIA (d. 1833) was the royal inspector-general of mines and metals in
Portugal. He traveled widely in Europe, including in Saxony, and, in addition to belonging to the
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Lisbon Royal Academy of Sciences, he was a corresponding member of the academies of
Leipzig and Madrid.
III.267. In 1586, the Peruvian miner CARLOS CORSO DE LECA discovered a mining process
known as el beneficio de hierro (the iron method). This process consisted of adding small pieces
of iron to the torta, the name for the metallic flour mixture to which Humboldt refers, in order to
save mercury via the reduction of the chloride present in silver. It is unclear whether this method
of extraction was actually effective, as it was not broadly employed in New Spain.
III.267n. In 1633, JUAN CARVAJAL Y SANDE (also Carbajal) was appointed president of the Real
Audiencia de la Plata (Royal Court of Silver), which also made him governor of the province
known as Charcas (today’s Bolivia). In the 1630s, viceroy Luis Jerónimo Fernández de Cabrera
y Bobadilla (1589–1647), the fourth Conde de Chichón, appointed Carvajal to visit the imperial
villa to formulate and implement a new charter for the mita—a form of legal servitude for the
indigenous population who were called mitayos (Indian workers). Carvajal was known for
making financial choices that benefited the mitayos while decreasing the finances of officers in
Charcas. For instance, he denied such workers to the owners of twenty-nine of the one hundred
mines in the Charcas area. He also decreed that travel allowances be paid to the mitayos, and he
eliminated the percentage of their income that had been traditionally given to the chief overseer
of the mines. In this way, Carvajal succeeded in alienating colonial administrators in Spain and
New Spain alike.
III.268. In 1676, miner and metallurgist JUAN DE CORRO SEGARRA (also Cegarra, fl. 1670s)
invented a technique known as beneficio de la pella de plata (silver lump method), which is a
modification of Pedro Fernández de Velasco’s silver extraction procedure. Corro Segarra’s
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process consisted of using amalgamated mercury, rather than pure mercury, to extract silver. He
believed that this method facilitated a quicker incorporation of the silver present in an amalgam
while at the same time limiting the amount of mercury that had to be used. Corro Segarra’s
method was widely celebrated for being easier and cheaper, but there were also doubters. In the
end, Corro’s theory proved to be an utter failure when put into practice.
III.268. Canary Islander LORENZO Felipe DE LA TORRE Barrio y Lima was a proprietor of the
mines of the district of San Juan de Lucanas in Peru. In 1738, he published a document titled
Arte, o cartilla del nuevo beneficio de la plata en todo genero de metals fríos y calientes, in
which he discussed a method of extracting silver from both warm or cold types of ore by using
white or yellow coppers known as colpa. In the process, he also criticized Juan de Corro
Segarra’s extraction method with the intent of boosting his own credibility as a metallurgist.
Spanish monk and scholar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (1676–1764) praised De la Torres’s work and
thanked him for offering his most significant invention to New Spain.
III.269. Bartolomé de MEDINA (c. 1503–85) was a wealthy Seville merchant and entrepreneur.
He claimed to have been acquainted with a German metallurgist who had taught him how to
extract gold and silver embedded within rocks. After hearing about the riches of New Spain, he
moved to Pachuca, Hidalgo, and quickly became one of New Spain’s most prominent
metallurgists and mining specialists. In 1555, he discovered and experimented with a silver
amalgamation process known as beneficio de patio (patio method), which used the natural
chemical properties of mercury to extract silver. Medina’s process required mixing pulverized
“impure” ore with water, salt, and mercury and spreading this mixture, known as torta (cake),
out on a patio to dry. The dried torta would then be washed and heated, so that the silver
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separated from the mercury and could be shaped into bars. The patio process replaced smelting
as the most common practice of silver amalgamation and extraction in New Spain. Pedro
Fernández de Velasco adapted Medina’s process with some slight modifications and introduced
it to Peru.
III.270. Among other things, Humboldt’s close friend Louis-Joseph GAY-LUSSAC (1778–1850),
a student of the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, was one of several well-known French
physicists and chemists who, after the 1783 ascent of the heated-air balloon “Montgolfière,”
became fascinated with scientific ballooning. In 1804, Gay-Lussac collaborated with Jean-
Baptiste Biot (1774–1862) to reach an altitude of 23,000 feet in order to make magnetic and
temperature observations. The following year, Humboldt and Gay-Lussac worked together on
studying the composition of the atmosphere.
Gay-Lussac’s British peer and competitor in the analysis of the then-curious new substances of
iodine and chlorine was the chemist Sir Humphry DAVY (1778–1829). Davy also experimented
with nitric oxide in his efforts to develop an anesthetic gas and also with trichloramine (a
compound later used in swimming pools). He was severely injured in both experiments.
III.270. A student of Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, French chemist Louis Jacques THÉNARD (1777–
1857) was renowned as a researcher and a teacher. In 1802, Thénard succeeded his mentor at the
Collège de France. Like Gay-Lussac, Thénard collaborated with Humboldt (among others) on
chemical experiments during Humboldt’s Parisian years (1804–27). One of Thénard’s best-
known discoveries was hydrogen peroxide (in 1818). He also discovered boron and almost beat
Humphry Davy in isolating the element chlorine. Thénard’s textbook, Traité de chimie
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élémentaire, théorique et pratique (An Essay on Chemical Analysis) was first published in 1813
and went through many editions.
III.274n. Mariano Eduardo de RIVERO y Ustariz (1798–1857) was a prominent Peruvian
geologist, mineralogist, chemist, archeologist, politician, and diplomat. In his own country, he is
typically known as the founder of archeology and anthropology, and he is considered a major
precursor of the Peruvian mining industry. Humboldt himself pushed Rivero to study at the
Royal School of Mining in France, where he undertook his first research on chemistry and
mining. Rivero’s publications—about his discovery of Humboldtine (an iron-oxalate), about
demonstrating the existence of organic minerals, about deposits of copper and sodium nitrate
near Tarapacá in the Atacama desert (today Chile), and about bird-guano and coal in Peru—
made him a pioneer of mining education in South America and the most notable Peruvian
scientist of the nineteenth century. His contributions to Peruvian archeology and geology were
also well known at the time: he analyzed the mineral water of the thermal sources of Yura and
provided vivid descriptions of gold idols, silver, and ceramics in the mines of Peru. In 1822, the
minister of Gran Colombia in Paris, Francisco Antonio Zea, asked Rivero, upon Humboldt’s
recommendation, to found and run a mining school in Bogotá. In 1828, Rivero established the
Lima Mining School, known today as the National University of Engineering. He also created
Lima’s first museum of natural history.
III.282. Educated in Paris and Moûtier, the French geologist and mineralogist Pierre BERTHIER
(1782–1861) became an engineer in 1805 and was promoted to chief engineer of the French
mining schools in 1816. His research on phosphates was important for the development of
modern agriculture. He also discovered bauxite, and the mineral Berthierite. In 1825, Berthier
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was elected member of the Paris Academy of Sciences and, in 1828, became Knight of the
Legion of Honor. Humboldt refers here to Berthier’s work on copper and silver alloys.
III.282n. In 1796, English mining and civil engineer John Taylor (1779–1863) invented a crusher
designed to process copper ore for the Wheal Friendship mine at Tavistock. He was also a
supervisor for the construction of the Tavistock Canal, which linked the mine to the Tamar
River, from 1803 to 1817. A fellow of the Geological Society since 1807, he served as its
treasurer from 1816 to 1844. After working as a chemical manufacturer in Stratford, Essex,
Taylor reopened an abandoned copper mine in Cornwall in 1819. This mine, known as the
Consolidated Mines at Gwennap, soon became the most productive copper mine in the country.
Years later, Taylor became one of the founders of University College in London.
III.290n. Charles-Étienne Cocquebert de MONTBRET (1755–1831) was a diplomat who also
headed the French empire’s statistical department, taught physical geography, and founded the
Journal des mines. He collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Omalius d’Halloy (1783–1875) on what
they called a “mineralogical-agricultural map” of France, which they presented to the Academy
of Sciences on February 19, 1821. The Ministry of the Interior had gathered the information for
this map in 1808–9.
III.294. ANTONIO DEL CAMPO MARÍN was an accountant who specialized in the financial
administration of quicksilver mines in New Spain. In 1783, he compiled an unpublished
comparative financial report on the mining of quicksilver as a lucrative economic venture, in
which he traced the prices and consumption of quicksilver from 1762–82. This report consisted
of a list of gold, silver, and quicksilver prices in conjunction with summaries and comparative
interpretations in yearly intervals. Campo Marín’s report demonstrated the financial viability of
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producing quicksilver, which was increasingly used as a catalyst for silver extraction and in
amalgamation processes.
III.310n. Gerolamo (also Girolamo or Geronimo) CARDANO (also Cardan or Cardanus, 1501–76)
was an Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer, and gambler. He wrote more
than 200 works on medicine, mathematics, physics, philosophy, religion, and music. His
gambling led him to formulate elementary rules in probability, making him one of the founders
of the field.
III.310n. Michele MERCATI (1541-1593), also known as Michael Mercatus and Mercator, was a physician and naturalist from Florence. He founded the Vatican‘s Botanical Garden and became famous for his naturalist collections of minerals, fossils and archeological artifacts.
III.310n. Educated at the universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, Ernst Florens Friedrich
CHLADNI (1754–1827) was a German-Hungarian-Slovak physicist and musician. In addition to
his foundational work in acoustics, Chladni also researched meteorites. At the time, his claim
that the meteorites found on Earth came from space and were evidence of earlier developments
of planets in our solar system was almost unanimously rejected by his peers, including
Humboldt.
III.312. Casimiro Ramón CHOVEL, perhaps the most distinguished alumnus of the School of
Mines established in New Spain to teach mineralogy and metallurgy, was general manager of the
Valenciana mine. Like most of his former fellow students, Chovel joined the troops of Miguel
Hidalgo (1753–1811) in Guanajuato to fight for Mexican independence in 1810. Like the
insurgent leader, he was executed.
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III.312n. José Antonio del MAZO (d. 1805), an immigrant from Santander in Cantabria, Spain,
was married to the widow of mine owner Pedro Luciano Otero of Guanajuato. By 1791, Del
Mazo had attained control over the vast mining fortune that Manuel Antonio de Otero had
inherited from his brother Pedro in 1788. In contrast to his brother-in-law, a profligate spender,
Mazo was a shrewd and careful businessman who steered clear of direct investments in mining.
Mazo left most of his fortune to his two wards.
III.319. PEDRO GARCÍA de la Vera was an educator and intellectual in the Cuenca region of New
Spain. Cuenca’s educational system was based almost entirely on the teaching of Latin and was
reserved for the richest of families. García was known for his charitable ventures, such as
importing and distributing Latin books for Jesuits colleges so that children could learn how to
read. These included texts written by polymath Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (1676–1764).
García de la Vera was also known for teaching subjects such as advanced arithmetic and
geometry. Humboldt considered his observations on the use of cinnabar as very useful.
III.320. The French astronomer Guillaume-Joseph-Hyacinthe-Jean-Baptiste LE GENTIL de la
Galaisière (1725–92) became the protagonist of one of the most peculiar accounts in historical
astronomy. An urgent astronomical matter of his time was to ascertain the distance between the
Earth and the sun by measuring the transit of Venus, which was calculated to occur in 1761. For
the transit to be measured accurately, hundreds of astronomers were to travel to different
locations around the globe to observe the event from diverse angles. In 1760, Le Gentil, under
royal orders, signed on with an astronomical expedition to the Indian Ocean; he was determined
to reach the French colony of Pondicherry on the southeast coast of India to make his
observations. Due to a British sea blockade, Le Gentil never reached Pondicherry. He saw the
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transit only from the sea and was forced to redirect his voyage, traveling instead to Île de France
(Mauritius). In 1768, he finally managed to sail to Pondicherry where he was granted permission
to install an astronomical observatory designed to observe Venus’s second transit a year later (its
last one in over a century). Yet, on the exact day of the transit and despite perfect weather
conditions in the weeks before, clouds obstructed Le Gentil’s view of the planet’s course, leaving
him, once again, without any results. In his Voyage dans le mer de l’Inde (Voyage to the Indian
Sea, 1782), he gives a vivid report of this and many other events during his decade-long travels
around the world, during which he undertook significant astronomical, cartographical, and
cultural studies in the Philippines, Madagascar, and India.
III.322. Fürchtegott Leberecht von NORDENFLYCHT (1752–1815) was a German mining engineer
descended from a line of Swedish aristocrats who had moved to Prussia during the second half of
the eighteenth century. After studying in Freiberg, Nordenflycht worked as director of mines in
Miedziana Góra (Poland). On behalf of the Spanish crown, he assembled a team of Saxon
mining experts and went to Lima, where they arrived in 1790. The task to increase the
productivity of the silver mines at Potosí and Cerro de Pasco failed due to difficulties with local
authorities. Nordenflycht, however, managed to install a laboratory in Lima, where
amalgamation techniques derived from von Born could be performed. Humboldt met
Nordenflycht in Lima in 1802.
III.322n. Educated at the Jesuit’s College in Lyon, Barthélemi FAUJAS DE SAINT-FOND (1741–
1819) was a French naturalist, geologist, and traveler known for his theory on the formation of
volcanoes. In addition to traveling in the Alps, he also visited Scotland, England, and the
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Hebrides. In 1793, he was appointed the first professor of geology at the Natural History
Museum (Jardin des Plantes) in Paris.
III.333n. Spanish miner and official mining accountant JUAN LUCAS DE LASSAGA (Humboldt’s
de la Sage) was heir to the Cedros plantation and the massive fortune of his uncle, Juan de Uroz.
Knowing that one day he would inherit Uroz’s fortune, Lassaga carefully studied the
management of the plantation, and he also developed hands-on experience in mining
administration and business negotiations. He coauthored a 1774 petition titled Representación
que, a nombre de la Minería de esta Nueva España hacen al Rey Nuestro Señor los Apoderados
de ella (loosely translated as “Presentation made to our lord, the King, regarding of the mining of
New Spain, by its owners”) with Joaquín Velázquez de León, a lawyer in the Royal Audiencia of
New Spain. This petition, which consists of seventy-eight paragraphs and additional notes,
discusses the state of mining in New Spain and details the reasons why the industry was not as
prominent as it should have been. In the document’s conclusion, Lassaga and Velázquez propose
that a fifty percent reduction in the price of the silver tithe and in the price of mercury would be
needed to help boost mining. The Crown ultimately consented to a twenty-five percent cut,
dropping the price of silver and mercury from eighty to sixty pesos per hundredweight. In 1767,
Lassaga and Velázquez authored Representación de precios de mercurio (Presentation on
mercury prices), a memorandum in which they sought official backing for their metallurgical
experiments.
III.352. RODRIGUEZ DE OCAÑO is credited with discovering the mines in the mountains of
Chupicayacu, located a few kilometers west of Hualgayoc. Historians disagree about the actual
date of his discovery, but estimates usually fall between 1767 and 1771. During the first years of
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the establishment of this mine, it was known for producing silver and gold. Now, miners extract
primarily copper, lead, and zinc from it.
III.355. Lieutenant and captain of the Galician Infantry, ANTONIO ÁLVAREZ Y JIMÉNEZ (d. c.
1813) was the governor of the Chiloé region of New Spain from 1800 to 1813. He arrived at
New Spain in 1784. Prior to his position as governor of Chiloé, he was governor of the Arequipa
region. He is best known for his report Relaciones de la vida del intendente de Arequipa don
Antonio Alvárez y Jiménez (Report of the intendant of Arequipa, Antonio Alvarez y Jiménez),
written between 1786 and 1792 but not published until 1941–52. In this report, Ávarez de
Jiménez described the physical aspects of the region and gave a detailed account of Arequipa’s
ten towns and three valleys. He also discussed Arequipa’s flora and fauna and commented on the
obvious lack of the animal and food production industry in the region.
III.358n. Initially worked by Peru’s indigenous peoples, the Ticapampa mine eventually became
the site of the Anglo-French Silver Mining Company (established in 1904 through
reorganization) and one of the oldest continuing operations in the history of modern mining in
Peru.
III.358n. JUAN BAUTISTA ARRIETA was one of the most important figures in silver mining in the
Cajatambo Province near Lima, Peru. In 1777, he was involved in labor disputes with indigenous
mine workers but stayed in the mining business at least until 1790.
III.360n. Humboldt refers here to the report presented to the House of Commons by the BULLION
committee in 1810. This important document discussed the necessity of stabilizing the paper
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currency by basing it strictly on the amount of disposable gold, as proposed by the British
economist David Ricardo (1772–1823). See also III.14n.
III.361n. Connecticut-born Joseph Thomas REDHEAD (1767–1847) was a Scottish physician
educated in Edinburgh and at Göttingen University in Germany where he shared classes with
Humboldt. In the early 1790s, the Scottish government commissioned Redhead to engage in the
study of nature in the New Continent, and he arrived in Buenos Aires around 1793. As a result of
his travels in the north of today’s Argentina, Redhead became a renowned naturalist interested in
everything from typhus and malaria to botany and geology. He was one of the first to measure
the elevation of the Andes. He also collected information about the mineral wealth of the
northern Argentine region, including the oldest data in the history of petroleum extraction in
South America. Redhead was not politically neutral but fought for Argentine Independence,
notably in the Battle of Salta (1813). In 1812, he had left Salta for Tucumán, where he served as
the personal physician of General Manuel Belgrano (1770–1820), a hero of the Argentine War of
Independence and creator of the Argentinean flag. Redhead died in Salta.
III.361n. Anton Zacharias HELMS (1751–1803) was a German mining expert dispatched by the
Spanish Crown to improve the production technology in the mines of Peru and Alto Peru. He had
formerly been director of the Cracow mines in Poland and was one of the fifteen members of the
mission to Potosí organized by the Baron Fürchtegott Nordenflycht, a wealthy student of the
Mining Academy of Freiberg. Helms was one of the first to record geological and mineralogical
observations in northwestern Argentina and southern Bolivia. During his journey from the
Eastern Cordillera to the Puna region, Helms described the tectonic patterns of the mountains
and conducted a comparative study with the mountains of Europe. His findings were
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disseminated almost one hundred years earlier than those of Alfred Stelzner (1852–1906), who is
generally considered the founder of Argentinean geology. During his quest to improve the
production technology of the Peruvian mines, Helms concluded that the Oruro mines held greater
riches than those of Potosí. Despite the projected potential of Oruro, however, its mines were
inefficient. Humboldt’s page numbers refer to the 1789 German edition of Helms’s Travels from
Buenos Ayres, by Potosi, to Lima (1807).
III.365n. Miguel LAMBERTO de SIERRA was treasurer of the Potosí bank. He was also a
representative of a legal court known as the Recaudación (collection), which was in charge of
prosecuting fugitives and confiscating their properties. Due to the irregularity of the prosecution
processes and its poor management, this court proved a complete failure. Sierra also oversaw the
financial management of the Potosí mines.
III.365n. From 1826 to 1827, Filiberto-Héctor VARAIGNE, the translator of Ignacio Nuñez’s
Noticias históricas, políticas, y estadísticas de las Provincias Unidas del Río de La Plata
(Historical, political, and statistical notes on the United provinces of Río de La Plata) was the
emissary to France of Argentina’s then-president Bernardino Rivadavia (1780–1845).
III.366n. Estienne DAMOREAU was a French merchant. His Traité des negociations de banque, et
des monnoyes étrangeres (1727) is an early eighteenth-century work on currency exchange and
the European banking systems of his day.
III.367. SEBASTIÁN SANDOVAL Y GUZMÁN was an attorney hired by the mining guilds of Potosí
in the early 1630s to argue their case before the Council of the Indies. Without financial
assistance from the Crown, the Potosí silver industry was facing the threat of collapse. Since
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none of the guilds’ petitions for support had the desired effect, they hired Sandoval y Guzmán to
plead their case. His arguments were published in Madrid in 1634 as Pretensiones de la Villa
Imperial de Potosí (Claims of the Imperial Town of Potosí). The document offered a number of
suggestions for improving the silver production at Potosí, and it also dealt with viniculture in
nearby valleys. A significant section addressed the economic aspects of mining and suggested
several innovations that would save the Potosí mines from shutting down. These innovations
highlighted the importance of the Potosí mining industry for the economic benefit of the Crown.
They included distributing mercury at cost and on credit to the mercury miners and the reduction
of the royal share of production from twenty to ten percent.
III.380. The son of Juan de Tejada (c. 1525), advisor for the Supreme Council of the Crown,
FRANCISCO TEJADA was an official advisor of the Indies. The Crown commissioned him to visit
and examine the mines of Spain, primarily because many believed that these mines produced a
meager amount of ores and silver when compared to the mines in New Spain. Tejada testified
that he had encountered over five hundred Spanish mines abundant in silver and suggested that
extraction of ore from these mines would prove economically beneficial to the Crown. He also
highlighted particular mines, focusing particularly on a mine in Almodóvar del Campo in which
1,360 ounces of silver were extracted daily, a significant amount for the times. Tejada’s
observations disproved claims later made by Charles-Louis de Secondat (better known as
Montesquieu, 1689–1755) that Spain lacked mines that produced copious amounts of silver and
gold.
II.380n.The physicist Edward NAIRNE (1726–1806) was one of the most prominent British
manufacturers of scientific equipment. Humboldt, who was known for using only the finest
401
instruments, worked with this and other thermometers made by Nicholas Paul (Geneva), Jesse
Ramsden (London, 1735–1800), Pierre Bernard Megnié (Madrid, 1751–1807) and Nicolas Fortin
(London). They were mainly used for determining air temperature.
III.386n. IGNACIO Sánchez de TEJADA (1764–1837) was the secretary of the Royal Treasury of
Santa Fé. As a child, he had studied at the Real Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, to which
he donated most of his library after his death. Tejada had initially been assigned a position as
representative of the Kingdom of Granada in order to advocate for the union of American
territories. He then became a secretary of the viceroyalty of Santa Fé and was famous for his
eloquence in the Congress of Bayona. Tejada was known to have worked briefly with Napoleon
Bonaparte (1769–1821) and became a member of the retinue of José I (1768–1844) when Lucien
Bonaparte (1775–1840), Napoleon’s younger brother, declared the latter king of Spain. Tejada
became a part of this entourage because José I promoted the most advanced program of
European liberalism. Since he had been born and raised in the Americas, Tejada was enthusiastic
about this trend among Spanish politicians. In 1824, he was offered a position as the vice
president of Santander. Tejada accepted this position and engaged passionately with the
Santander political scene until his death.
III.387. Jean-Baptiste Joseph Dieudonné BOUSSINGAULT (1802–87) was known for his work in
agricultural chemistry and for the development of the first chrome steels. In 1821, Simón Bolívar
(1783–1830), desirous to found an institute for training engineers in Colombia, engaged
Boussingault. Boussingault attempted to reach the peak of Chimborazo and described his feat in
“Ascension au Chimborazo exécutée le 16 décembre 1831” (Attempt to ascend Chimborazo on
December 16, 1831), which prompted Humboldt to publish a detailed account of his own climb.
402
Later on, Boussingault also published Viajes científicos á los Andes ecuatoriales; ó, Colección
de memorias sobre física, química é historia natural de la Nueva Granada, Ecuador y Venezuela
(Scientific travels to the equatorial Andes, or collection of reports on the physics, chemistry, and
natural history of New Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela, 1849).
III.389n. Coronel TOMÁS VALENCIA (1752–1819) was a miner and aristocrat of Popayán in
charge of exploring mines in the Quiebralomo, an area in Riosucio, Caldas (Colombia). He was
an associate of a Royal Mining Company of Quiebralomo, which was established around 1792.
Valencia is credited with identifying platinum deposits in the aquifer lands near Lloró. He was
the richest man of the Quiebralomo area during the early nineteenth century, until the mines were
purchased by English companies.
III.394n. William JACOB (c. 1762–1851) has was among few English merchants to be involved in
direct trade with South America. His trading interests made him a firm supporter of the liberation
of the Spanish American colonies and of the abolition of the slave trade slave. Starting in 1806,
he served as a Member of Parliament on several occasions. During the winter of 1809–10, Jacob
traveled in Spain and published his letters as Travels in the South of Spain in 1811. Through his
own travels in Europe, he became an expert on the European corn trade and on British
agricultural protection. In addition to his official reports, he published several books and
pamphlets on economic subjects; he also contributed to the Quarterly Review and the
Encyclopædia Britannica. From 1832 to 1838, he served as treasurer of the Royal Society of
Literature.
III.398n. Essayer of Commerce Pierre-Frédéric BONNEVILLE (b. 1768) was a French numismatic
expert. In 1806, he published an extensive book on coins of all nations, Traité des monnaies d'or
403
et d'argent qui circulent chez les différents peuples (Treatise on gold and silver currency that
circulate among different nations) under government sponsorship.
III.398n. German-born Nicolaus MAGENS (also Megens or Meggens, c. 1697–1764) gained early
experience as a merchant in Hamburg, Germany, and in Spain. In the early 1700s, he settled in
London, where, as a successful insurance trader and later director of the London Assurance
Company, he accumulated considerable wealth. The Universal Merchant (1852), his first
publication in English, established Magens’s reputation as an authority on monetary and
commercial matters. A second influential study was his Essay on Insurances (1755), an amended
and augmented translation of his Versuch über Assecuranzen (1753).
III.399. The German apothecary Johann Gottlieb (or Jean-Théophil) GEORGI (1738–1802)
traveled as a naturalist and geographer in Siberia in 1773 and 1774. Starting his journey from St.
Petersburg, he joined the botanist Johann Peter Falk (1732–1774), among others. In 1797, Georgi
published Geographisch-physikalische und naturhistorische Beschreibung des Russischen
Reichs (Geographical-physical and natural-historical description of the Russian Empire). He also
translated from the Swedish Pehr Osbeck’s Dagbok öfwer en ostindisk resa åren 1750. 1751.
1752 (1757) as Reise nach Ostindien und China (Travels to China and the East Indies, 1765).
III.402n. A major trader in the Levant, Cornelis van der OUDERMEULEN (1735–1794) was an
administrator of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He also served on the board of directors
of the West Indian colonies and was in charge of the Dutch colony of Surinam. Oudermeulen
made a fortune from the company’s trade in China tea. His published his Recherches sur le
commerce (Research on trade), to which Humboldt refers here, in 1778–79.
404
III.405. Economist and politician GERÓNIMO DE UZTÁRIZ y Hermiaga (1670–1732) was one of
the most studied and discussed Spanish mercantilists. At the age of sixteen, he moved to
Flanders and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Brussels, where he was educated in military arts.
He then served in the Spanish army for twelve years. Uztáritz was best known for his treatise on
the trade of Spanish monarchy, Théorie et pratique du commerce et de la marine (The theory and
practice of trade and maritime affairs) published in Madrid in 1724. Although based on concepts
of mercantilism, Uztáriz’s book imported ideas from other countries, such as the upgrading of
the navy and the establishment of royal manufacturers. In his view, the only way in which Spain
would be able to escape its state of economic decay and decadence would be through the
acquisition of utilitarian commercial practices. In order to promote the advancement of the
Spanish economy through such means, Uztáriz pushed for cutting-edge changes within Spanish
government and infrastructure, such as the reduction of monopolies, the elimination of swaps,
and tax reform. In 1730, he was named secretary of the Royal Board of Trading and Currency,
where he was able to put many of his ideas into practice.
III.405. Spanish economist SANCHO DE MONCADA (b. 1580) was one of the founding fathers of
arbitrismo, a generic name given to a current of political and economic thought that developed in
the Spanish monarchy during the second half of the sixteenth century. Even though many have
considered him to have close ties with the School of Salamanca, which focused on liberty and
natural law, he actually distanced himself from that group. In 1619, Moncada wrote a treatise
that would be reissued in 1746 as Restauración política de España (The political restoration of
Spain). In this book, he advanced a quantitative theory of the Spanish economy and presented a
complete model of Spanish mercantilism. He also highlighted the weaknesses of the Spanish
economy and depicted Spain as a kingdom whose trade was on the decline and that had become
405
financially indebted to enemy countries. His proposed solution to these problems was an extreme
protectionism.
III.405. PEDRO FERNÁNDEZ DE NAVARRETE (1564–1632) was a Spanish politician, humanist,
translator, and poet who was best known for his Conservación de monarquias (The conservation
of monarchies) from 1626. Written from a mercantilist perspective, this treatise argued for an
increase in exports and more controls on Spanish imports. He acknowledged that Spain had an
overabundance of currency but he warned that this excess would create a perilous situation if
Spain did not focus on producing goods for domestic consumption and for export. He pointed out
that industrialization might go far toward relieving the economic stagnation from which Spain
was suffering, and he placed more value on raw materials and agriculture rather than on the
accumulation of silver and gold.
III.405n. In the early 1740s, Eobald TOZE (1715–1789) studied history, economics, political
sciences, and law at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he was also appointed adjunct
professor. He earned his academic reputation through his own historical research and as
translator of historical works from the English and the Dutch. In 1761, Toze became professor of
history at the newly founded University of Bützow, where he remained until his death which
coincided with the closing of that institution. Humboldt’s page reference to Toze’s “Abhandlung
von der grossen Menge des Goldes und Silbers, das aus der Neuen Welt nach Spanien
gekommen ist” (Essay on the large amounts of gold and silver which came to Spain from the
New World, in Kleine Schriften, pp. 92–108) is in error.
III.405n. One of France’s leading economists, Paris-educated François Véron Duverger de
FORBONNAIS (1722–1800) contributed several articles to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedie. From his
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position as inspector-general of finance, Forbonnais advanced to personal advisor of King Louis
XV (1710–1774) in 1759 and, a year later, began to edit the Journal de l’agriculture, du
commerce et des finances. In the 1750s, several significant translations into French he authored
added to Forbonnais’s reputation: Gerónimo de Uztáriz’s Theorica, y practica de comercio, y
de marina (1724), Charles King’s (fl. 1713–1721) The British Merchant, or, Commerce
preserv'd (1721), and David Hume’s (1711–1776) A Treatise on Human Nature (1739–40).
III.405n. François GERBOUX was the author of Discussion sur les effets de la démonétisation de
l'or, relativement à la France (Discussion of the effects of the demonetization of gold, with
respect to France, 1803).
III.407. A native of Segovia, Spain, Pedro Arias DÁVILA (also Pedrarias Dávila, c. 1440–1531)
was a Spanish colonial administrator and soldier who fought in the wars against the Moors in
Granada in the 1490s and in North Africa in 1508. A colonel of the infantry, he had influential
friends who secured him the favor of Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos (1451–
1524), the head of the Council of the Indies. In 1514, Dávila was placed in command of the
largest Spanish expedition sent to the Americas at that time, and he reached Santa Marta,
Colombia, with nineteen ships. He was given lengthy instructions, in which the salvation of the
Indians and the dissemination of the Catholic faith were cited as the reasons for invading the
New World. Known for being strict and ruthless, Dávila not only kidnapped and enslaved
indigenous persons but also executed anyone who disagreed with him. In 1519, he founded the
city of Panama. He also laid the basis for the exploration of South America’s west coast and the
subsequent conquest of Peru.
407
III.410. French economist, writer, and politician Germain GARNIER (1754–1821) is probably best
recognized for his annotated and very laudatory 1802 translation of Adam Smith’s (1723–1790)
Wealth of Nations (1776), which he produced during his exile in England. Among Garnier’s
other translations is a 1796 French version of William Godwin’s (1756–1836) The Adventures of
Caleb Williams (1794). Though a self-declared physiocrat, Garnier was a staunch defender of
Smithian economic doctrine against earlier criticisms it had received from Thomas Malthus and
David Ricardo (1772–1823).
III.421. In 1502, Nicolás de OVANDO y Cáceres (1460–1511) sailed to the New World with a
fleet of thirty ships. His expedition also included Francisco Pizarro (c. 1470s–1541). As governor
of Hispaniola (1502–9), Ovando laid the foundations for colonial economics and the centralized
bureaucratic control of Spain’s colonies. He recommended a system of forced labor for the
indigenous populations, which the crown approved in 1503 (see encomienda and Bartolomé de
las Casas). The introduction of this system accelerated the native people’s almost complete
extinction in the Caribbean. When the Spanish had come to the island in 1492, the indigenous
population had been estimated at 400,000; by 1508, it was down to 60,000. Because the new
colonists needed more workers for the gold mines and farms, they brought in Indians from the
Lucayas (now the Bahamas) and African slaves from Spain (Ladinos, that is, of African origin
but born in Spain); those were the first African slaves brought to America. In 1509, Ovando was
recalled to Spain. He was succeeded by Diego Columbus (c. 1479–1526) but was permitted to
retain his property.
III.423n. Jesuit FATHER BLAS VALERA (1545–1597) was a Peruvian-Hispanic chronicler and one
of the leading figures to defend Inca civilization against defamation by Spanish authorities and
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thinkers. Valera was able to tap into his Inca mother’s cultural and linguistic roots to work with
indigenous Incas in Peru. His knowledge of Quechua allowed him to take part in missions that
the Jesuits had established in Huarochirí, a pre-Hispanic center of worship. During these
missions, he was able to engage in spiritual discussions with the Inca elites in Cuzco. These
deliberations were based primarily on the similarities between Inca religions and Christianity.
Within his writings, he condemned the Spanish conquest of the Incas (of which he was a
product) and praised Inca rule for being moral and legitimate. He also placed Quechua on par
with Latin in terms of its civilizing influence. He even claimed that the Inca religion possessed
an inherent knowledge in Christ. Valera placed himself in the middle of the controversial debates
over the legitimacy of Iberian rule and the manner in which the indigenous peoples should be
treated. Because of his radical views, he was quickly accused of heresy and was imprisoned for
fourteen years. He spent the rest of his life in exile.
III.425n. Noël-François-Mathieu Angot DES ROTOURS (1739–1821) had a special interest in
numismatics. After the French Revolution, he became part of the currency committee of the
National Constituent Assembly. He was a member of the Rouen Académie de Sciences, Belles-
lettres et Art.
III.425n. Miguel de MÚZQUIZ y Goyeneche (1719–1785) was minister of economy and finance
of Spain from 1766–85. During this time, he reinvigorated Spanish finances, trying to improve
the organization of the customs system, implement a new, more equal tax system, and promote
agriculture, industry, and trade. He encouraged the cultivation of silk and sought to increase the
production rates of factories. He also inspired the economically important laws of 1778, which
decreed freedom of trade between Spain and the Americas.
409
III.426n. George ANSON, the first baron Anson (1697–1762), was an admiral in the British Royal
Navy during the Seven Years’ War. He is mostly known for his circumnavigation of the globe,
which he began in 1740 with a rather ill-equipped fleet. When he returned to Britain four years
later, having failed to achieve his ambitious goal, his crew of 1,854 had dwindled to 188. Anson
became a member of Parliament shortly after his return and published his Voyage round the
World in London in 1749.
III.433. Jean Nicolas DÉMEUNIER’s (1751–1814) literary interests and aspirations earned him the
position of royal censor. A supporter of the French Revolution, he became a member of the
Constitutional Committee in 1789. During the Reign of Terror (1793–94), Démeunier fled to the
USA. He returned to France in 1796 and resumed his political career as a member of the
Tribunat, the national legal Assembly of which he soon became president. Démeunier’s
Encyclopédie méthodique, économie politique et diplomatique (Systematic encyclopedia of
political and diplomatic economy), corrected and discussed in correspondence with Thomas
Jefferson (1743–1826), was issued as a separate volume of Charles-Joseph Panckoucke’s (1739–
1798) Encyclopédie méthodique, a successor to Denis Diderot’s famous encyclopedia.
III.438. French cavalry officer Carloman Louis-François Félix Renouard, marquis DE SAINTE-
CROIX (also Renouard Sainte-Croix, 1773–1840) traveled in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Voyage commercial et politique aux Indes Orientales (Commercial and political voyage to the
East Indies) is the travelogue of his 1807 journey to China, Macao, and other regions in South
Asia. He was a member of the French Abolitionist Society who also wrote about Martinique—
Statistique de la Martinique (1822)—and Hindu culture.
410
III.441. A key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, Henry DUNDAS (1742–1811), also known as
the first Viscount Melville, was a British politician whose skillful control and knowledge of
Scottish politics earned him the nickname “King Harry the Ninth.” Educated at the University of
Edinburgh, he abandoned his private legal practice in favor of public affairs. He was especially
concerned with the abolition of slavery and the dealings of the East India Company. It is said that
his intimate familiarity with Indian affairs and his ability as a debater helped neutralize and
overcome most of the opposition that existed toward the East India Company. Because of his
success in eliminating this opposition, he was appointed the company’s treasurer and president of
the board from 1782 to 1800. In 1802, Dundas entered the British office as the First Lord of the
Admiralty, where he introduced many improvements. In 1806, however, he was impeached
because of mismanaging public funds.
III.442. Humboldt’s COUNT ROMANZOFF was Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev (also Rumiantsev,
Romancov, or Romantzof, 1754–1826), a Russian statesman and patron of the arts and of
exploration. From 1782 to 1795, he served as Russian consul in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Before Alexander I (1777–1825) appointed him minister of commerce (1802–11), foreign
minister (1807–14), and imperial chancellor, Rumyantsev held prominent positions in banking
and commerce. Having the ear of the Czar enabled the Count to find financial backing for
several Arctic expeditions: that of Captain Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770–1846), who had
proposed the first Russian circumnavigation of the world (1803–06) and, in 1815, a search for
the Northwest Passage led by the Baltic navigator Otto von Kotzebue (1787–1846) who had
traveled with Krusenstern as a lieutenant. During Rumyantsev’s tenure as foreign minister,
Russia established diplomatic relations with the USA. In the fall of 1812, the Count met John
Quincy Adams (1767–1848), who proved a kindred spirit. The year before, Rumyantsev had met
411
Humboldt and invited him to an expedition to Siberia, a voyage that did not take place until three
years after the Count’s death, in 1829. Rumyantsev retired in 1814 and turned to scholarly
pursuits. He had a keen interest in Russian history and amassed a huge library, together with a
collection of manuscripts, ethnographic items, and numismatic materials. His library, which was
given to the state after his death, served as the basis for the Lenin State Library of the USSR in
1925, and his collection is preserved in the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow. Rumyantsev also
produced the first printed publications of several old Russian chronicles.
III.443n. Educated at the Universities of Copenhagen, Kiel, and Göttingen, the Danish-German
Holger De Fine OLIVARIUS (1758–1838) was the publisher of Le Nord littéraire, physique,
politique, et moral (The North: literary, physical, political, and moral). In 1781, he became
professor of Danish law and language at the University of Kiel, Germany. But his travels
throughout Europe left him little time for lectures, and he requested to be freed from his
academic responsibilities in 1825. Olivarius lived out his life as an independent scholar and
teacher in Altona near Hamburg.
III.448. General Nicolai Alexsejevitch von SCHLENEW (also Shlenev) was chief mining officer in
Ekaterinburg in the Ural region, where gold was first extracted in 1814. Schlenew had a fine
collection of minerals from this and other regions in Russia.
III.448n. This reference is likely to the Venetian mathematician Michele Franzini (c. 1740–
1810).
III.449. After completing his studies in Göttingen, Marburg, and Clausthal in 1803, Wilhelm
Ludwig von ESCHWEGE (1777–1855) became a mining engineer for the Portuguese government,
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working independently under the Brazilian-born mining director José Bonifacio d'Andrada e
Silva (1763–1838), a friend of Humboldt’s. The Napoleonic invasion, which forced Dom João
VI of Portugal (1767–1826) into exile in Brazil in 1807, also disrupted Eschwege’s work. Three
years later, he, too, went to Brazil to reorganize the run-down system of gold mines and establish
a smelter industry. Rather than accepting a professorship in mineralogy, as had initially been
planned, Eschwege decided to explore the vast country, mainly in the region of Minas Gerais.
Eschwege returned to Portugal in 1821 but took a leave from his mining position. Upon his
return to Portugal in 1824, he was promoted to mining director-general, a position in which he
remained until 1830, when he once again returned to Germany because of the persistent political
upheavals in Portugal. Eschwege returned to Portugal again in 1835, after unsuccessful
negotiations with the Russians about entering their public service beyond being a corresponding
member of the St. Petersburg Academy. In 1839, Ferdinand II of Portugal (1816–1885) asked
Eschwege to transform the Pena estate near Lisbon into a summer residence. It took Eschwege
ten years to realize the fabled Pena National Palace. He also became known as the Baron de
Pena. He returned to Germany in 1850. It was on the basis of Eschwege’s work in Brazil that
Humboldt, who met Eschwege in Paris in 1821 and corresponded with him until the 1850s, was
able to predict that diamonds would also be found in the Ural region.
III.450n. Adrien BALBI (1782–1848) was a geographer and statistician from Venice who started
out teaching mathematics, physics, and geography. In 1819, he left Italy and spent about two
years in Portugal before moving to France for fourteen years. There, in 1822, he published the
Essai statistique sur le royaume de Portugal et d’Algarve (Statistical essay on the kingdom of
Portugal and the Algarve region). He also wrote about geography, for instance, in his Compendio
di geografia universale (1824–25).
413
III.451. Joseph LOWE (d. 1831) was a Scottish journalist and political economist who was mainly
known for The Present State of England in Regard to Agriculture, Trade and Finance, first
published in 1822. The book contains one of the most encompassing commentaries on the
variation of prices, the state of currency, finance, and population for its time. The most
influential chapter was the ninth, titled “Fluctuation in the Value of Money or in the Price of
Commodities,” in which Lowe discussed an original plan for giving a steady value to money
contracts. He also proposed that people should be appointed to collect information about the
prices placed on everyday household commodities. Although this plan was praised for its
theoretical depth, Lowe did not fully explore the practical aspects of his proposal, which was
riddled with many difficulties and challenges. He also authored the first clear treatment of the
concept of indexation (including indexed bonds and contracts), which is why he is generally
known as the father of index numbers.
III.451. Born near Edinburgh, JOHN ALLEN (1771–1843) was a prominent eighteenth-century
medical practitioner, historian, and writer. He became a doctor of medicine of the University of
Edinburgh in 1791, and since he could not find the resources to establish a practice in that city,
he resorted to offering lectures on medical topics. In 1801, he moved to Spain in order to become
the private physician and medical advisor of Henry Vassall-Fox, the third Baron Holland (1773–
1840). Although Allen left Spain in 1805 to stay at the Holland estate, he returned to the
peninsula once again, in 1808, to accompany Lord Holland on a tour across the country. During
this journey, Allen conducted a close study of the history and culture of the Spanish people. He
intended to convert these notes into a publishable volume but never finished it. He engaged in
countless other literary pursuits, contributing nearly forty articles on miscellaneous subjects,
such as French and Spanish history, to the Edinburgh Review. It was his time at the Holland
414
estate that allowed Allen to become immersed in the history and traditions of the eighteenth-
century Whig politics. His major publication was titled Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the
Royal Prerogative (1830). He was the custodian of Dulwich College from 1811–20 and served
as master of that institution until his death.
III.453. Russian mining engineer and metallurgist Vasily LUBARSKY (1795–1852) taught at the
mining cadet corps of St. Petersburg, from where he had graduated in 1816. From 1820 to 1827,
he worked in the department of mining and salt affairs. In 1823, Lubarsky first identified
platinum as a new metal and three years later, together with the engineer Pyotr Sobolevsky
(1781–1841), developed a method for refining crude platinum and converting it into a malleable
metal. In the 1830s, he was mining inspector in Yekaterinburg.
III.453n. Johann Friedrich ERDMANN (1778–1846) had initially studied theology at the
University of Wittenberg, Saxony, but changed to medicine a year later. He taught pathology and
therapy at Wittenberg until 1808, when the university was merged with the University of
Halle/Saale. After travels in Italy, Switzerland, and France, Erdmann accepted a professorship at
the University of Kazan in what is now Tartarstan, Russia, despite the fact that he did not speak
any Russian and thus had to lecture in Latin. From Kazan, he made countless excursions, of
which his Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Innern von Russland (Contributions to the knowledge of the
Russian interior, 1822–26) are one result. In 1817, he left Kazan for the University of Tartu in
Estonia, where, despite a heart condition, he taught and administered off and on until 1842.
During his lifetime, Erdmann published widely on such subjects as malaria, galvanism, and
mineral springs.
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III.453n. Born in Berlin and educated at the University of Halle, where he studied mathematics
and geography, German physicist and chemist Ludwig Wilhelm GILBERT (1769–1824) first
taught at his alma mater (in 1795) and at length at the University of Leipzig (from 1811 until his
death). He belonged to numerous learned societies, including the Russian Academy of Sciences
in Saint Petersburg (1809) and the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1812). From 1799 to 1824,
Gilbert edited and published Annalen der Physik, which he made into an internationally
renowned scientific journal. Johann Christian Poggendorf (1796–1877) took the journal over in
1824 and renamed it Annalen der Physik und Chemie. During his travels in Germany,
Switzerland, and France, Gilbert amassed a significant mineral collection. The Leipziger Zeitung
from March 8, 1824, includes a brief obituary.
III.454n. French pharmacist-chemist and mineralogist André LAUGIER (1770–1832) was a
student of Antoine Francois Fourcroy’s (1755–1809), a relative, and of Louis Nicolas
Vauquelin. Because of his frail health, Laugier did not accept a position as chief pharmacist to
the French army in Egypt but instead taught chemistry and pharmacy at the military schools in
Toulon and Lille. In 1803, he was appointed to the first chair of the Natural History of
Medications at the School of Pharmacy in Paris and, in the same year, became a founding
member of the Society of Pharmacy. Upon Fourcroy’s death in 1809, Laugier replaced his cousin
as professor of chemistry at the Museum of Natural History and, in 1829, succeeded Vauquelin
as director of the School of Pharmacy. That same year, Laugier published his four-volume Cours
de Chimie générale (Course in general chemistry). Deemed one of the most outstanding
chemical analysists of his day, Laugier wrote extensively on minerals and meteorites and devised
practical methods for separating cobalt from nickel, iron from titanium;, and osmium from
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platinum. Many of his findings saw print in the Annales du Muséum National d'Histoire
Naturelle. Laugier fell victim to a cholera epidemic in Paris in 1832.
III.454n. Likely of Swiss origin, although some claim he was Dutch, the naturalized British
traveler Peter SCHMIDTMEYER (1772–1829) journeyed extensively in the Southern Cone from
1820 to 1821. Crossing the Cordillera of the Andes, he went as far as Chile. In his travelogue, he
refers to Humboldt twenty-three times.
III.458n. Scottish economist and bullionist Robert MUSHET (1782–1828) was an official of the
Royal Mint, for which he began to work around 1804. Although he made innovations to the coin
casting process and also took out a patent for a special way of alloying copper for sheathing
ships, he is best known as an authority on currency questions. Mushet’s An Inquiry into the
Effects Produced on the National Currency and Rates of Exchange by the Bank Restriction Bill
Explaining the Cause of the High Price of Bullion (1811) drew attention from Thomas Malthus.
Mushet also compiled tables of the exchanges and prices of gold from 1760 to 1810. His Tables
from 1821 trace through history how the value of gold coin varies from that of paper money in
circulation. Mushet was one of the founding members of the Political Economy Club that same
year.
III.458n. Director of the British East India Company, CHARLES GRANT (1746–1823) was one of
the witnesses that the Bullion Committee of 1810 questioned. Grant’s fifty-year link with India
began in 1767, when he first sailed for Calcutta. Grant’s initial appointment in India had been as
secretary to the board of trade, which gave him access to people of influence. Supported by
Prime Minister William Pitt (1759–1806), among others, Grant was elected a director of the
company in 1794 and its deputy chairman in 1804. A steadfast defender of the company’s trade
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monopoly, Grant held the post of chairman three times during his career. In addition to being a
businessman, Grant was also a passionate evangelical missionary in India, two roles that did not
always prove compatible.
III.462. Geneva-born Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de SISMONDI (1773–1842) was a prolific
though neglected historian and political economist. His most significant contributions that this
advocate of Adam Smith’s (1723–90) theories made to economics may have been his discovery
of economic cycles and his ideas about aggregate demand. A keen observer of industrial
capitalism in England, Sismondi challenged the notion of economic laissez-faire, insisting
instead that the state regulate how wealth was produced. In his Nouveaux principes d’économie
politique (New principles of political economy), to which Humboldt refers here, Sismondi
criticized wealth accumulation as an end in itself and emphasized its harmful effect on the poor.
This critique attracted the attention of David Ricardo (1772–1823), John Stuart Mill (1806–
1873), and Karl Marx (1818–1883), among others. Sismondi’s Histoire des Français (History of
the French), begun in 1818, was published in twenty-nine volumes over a span of twenty-three
years.
III.463. After the coup d’état by Napoleon I Bonaparte (1769–1821), Martin-Michel-Charles
Gaudin, the first DUC DE GAËTE (1756–1841) agreed to become minister of finances in France.
He held this post, which he had refused twice before, until 1814. In this position, which put him
in charge of tax collection, Gaudin introduced significant reforms to finance administration and,
in 1800, founded the Bank of France, of which he became the head in 1820.
III.465n. Gregory KING (1648–1712) was an English engraver, herald, surveyor, and secretary to
the Commissioners for the Public Accounts. As an economic statistician, he was best known for
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his estimates of the wealth and the population of England. Material from his manuscripts—
notably Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of
England (1701) and Of the Naval Trade of England, 1688 and the National Profit then arising
thereby (1697)—appeared in the writings of political economist Charles Davenant (1656–1714).
It was also used by Adam Smith (1723–1790) in his Wealth of Nations (1776) and the statistician
Thomas Tooke in his High and Low Prices (1823). Humboldt’s reference here is most likely to
King’s Of the Naval Trade.
III.470. Sébastien-André TARBÉ DES SABLONS (1762–1838) was a French parliamentary counsel,
a printer-publisher, and a public administrator. He is the author of a Manuel pratique et
élémentaire des poids et mesures (Practical and elementary manual of weights and measures),
which was revised continuously during the course of fifty years and which contributed
significantly to the popularization of the metric system in France. Tarbé des Sablons was jailed
for having harbored the magistrate Adrien Duport (1759–1798), a leading constitutional
monarchist during the early stages of the French Revolution who had fled to Switzerland in
1797, the year of the military coup. Beginning in 1804, Tarbé des Sablons held different
positions within the finance administration. His wife was the popular novelist Michelle-
Catherine-Joséphine Guespereau (1777–1855).
Volume 4
IV.1. Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea, also known as the MARQUÉS DE LA ENSENADA
(1702–81), was a powerful politician and statesman. He entered the civil administration of the
Spanish navy as a clerk in 1720 and performed administrative duties in the occupation of Oran in
1731. In 1736, King Charles III of Spain conferred on Somodevilla the title of Marqués de la
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Ensenada. Although the Spanish elites had initially been upset about the fact that a self-made
man received a title, they were still delighted that the title was a pun on the Spanish phrase “en si
nada,” which translates into “in himself nothing.” At the age of forty-one, Somodevilla was
appointed minister of state, leading Spain to victory alongside France and Prussia in the War of
Austrian Succession (1740–48). His administration was notable for the robustness of his internal
reform policies and its support for military strength. Public works commenced; shipping to
outside countries, notably the American colonies, was encouraged; the trading industry was
revitalized; and many Spaniards were sent outside of the country to be educated. Somodevilla
also stimulated the development of the army and especially the navy, expanding the Atlantic and
Mediterranean fleets. Beginning in 1749, he encouraged the creation of the most important
census conducted in Europe of his time, known formally as the Catastro de Ensenada, as a way
of reforming tax policies that had been unsuccessful. He was eventually forced into exile in the
Spanish village Medina del Campos and consigned there to fifteen years of political inactivity.
IV.4. Miguel Gijón (or Jijón) y León, the first COUNT OF GIJÓN (1717–1794), was a well-
connected Spanish-American businessman from Ecuador. At mid-century, he traveled to Spain,
via Cape Horn, where, together with the Marquis de Maenza, he hatched a plan to colonize
Ecuador with European immigrants. The Spanish Crown rejected the project. Gijón was an
associate and close friend of writer-politician Pablo de Olavide y Jáuregui (1725–1803).
Olavide’s Madrid residence was a meeting place of the members of enlightened elites, including
Denis Diderot and future USA president John Adams (1735–1826), both of whom Gijón
befriended. Denounced to the Inquisition in Lima for being in possession of banned books, the
count died in Kingston, Jamaica, as he tried to flee to Spain.
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IV.4. Manuel de Ascásubi y Matheu, the MARQUIS DE MAENZA (1804–1876), was vice president
of Ecuador from 1847 to 1851 and president from 1849 to 1850. He was born into a family that
believed strongly in the independence of Ecuador, and even though he received little formal
education, he devoted himself to that cause. During his short period as president, Ascásubi
became known for establishing a progressive and Republican governmental system. He helped
found schools in the towns of Ecuador and promoted the study of medicine while also improving
the condition of hospitals.
IV.8. The son of Luís de Velasco I (1511–1564), the second viceroy of New Spain during the
Spanish colonization of the Americas, LUIS DE VELASCO II (c. 1534–1617), also known since
1609 as the marqués de Salinas del Río Pisuerga, was the eighth viceroy of New Spain. Between
1596 and 1604, he was also the viceroy of Peru, defending Lima against the ascension of the
Dutch pirate Oliverio van Noort (1558–1627). In 1591, Velasco II succeeded in “pacifying” the
Chichimecas who were in constant revolt and not under Spanish control. After signing a peace
treaty with the Chichimeca leaders, four hundred Tlaxcalteca families were sent to live with
Spanish families so that they might be introduced to the customs of the colony. In order to
further ease their integration into the colonies, Velasco II reduced the taxes imposed on the
indigenous population, and he even tried to find lawyers to represent them in the Real Hacienda.
The Marquis of Salinas returned to Spain in 1611 to assume the presidency of the Council of the
Indies, a position he held until his death.
IV.20. Spanish conquistador Diego de ORDAZ (1480–1632) accompanied Hernán Cortés on his
expedition to conquer the Mexican mainland. In 1519, after having seized the ancient capital of
Mexico, Cortés is said to have sent two expeditions to the then-smoking volcano in order to
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explore it as a possible source of sulfur, which could be used to make gunpowder. Ordaz
commanded the first contingent and presumably succeeded in reaching the top of the crater and
ascertain that sulfur was found inside the volcano. Francisco MONTAÑO (b. 1499) led a second,
much smaller expedition that was to try to enter to crater. History has it that Montaño not only
made it to the top of the mountain but also survived seven sorties into the cauldron and brought
back a load of sulfur each time. The story of the Dominican monk BLAS DE IÑENA venturing into
the cauldron of the Masaya volcano to find gold believed to be hidden in its interior can be traced
back to López de Gómara.
IV.22. Francisco Fernandez de Córdoba Zayas, also known as the MARQUÉS DE SAN ROMÁN
(1756–1818), was the superintendent of Mexico City’s prestigious mint.
IV.47. Captain JUAN DE LA REINAGA (b. 1509) was the ruler of the Osorno region of Chile, and
his politics regarding Chilean indigenous populations were viewed as emancipatory and
exemplary. Many of the locals considered him a man of justice. Reinaga not only ensured that
part of the gold extracted in Chile was invested in sheep that would provide indigenous peoples
with food and clothing; he also tried to assign them to public positions. He may be best known
for his attempt to introduce camels in Peru. The act was approached with jealousy by the
encomenderos (lords or proprietors of the indigenous villages) who kept Peruvian natives as
slaves and distributed them as beasts of burden in charge of transporting heavy loads across vast
distances. The encomenderos prevented the introduction of the camel, which deprived Peru of a
useful creature that would have facilitated inland communication.
IV.50. Spanish navigator ANDRÉS NIÑO (1475–c. 1530) belonged to the famous Niño family, a
group of distinguished seafarers from Moguer. He first sailed to the East Indies in 1511, where
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he developed his skills as a navigator. Named the Royal Pilot of the South Sea in 1514, he
participated in several expeditions along the coasts of Central America. That same year, Niño
was dispatched in the caravel Santa María de la Consolación to follow the fleet commanded by
Pedro Arias Dávila in order to reinforce and revitalize Spain’s new colonies. This voyage gave
Niño the knowledge and the means that later led him to explore the South Sea, known today as
the Pacific Ocean. In 1522, he traveled south from the Bay of San Vicente, exploring the coast of
Cape Blanco, the Bay of Papagayos, Lake Nicaragua, and the volcano of Masaya.
IV.52. Spanish sailor and explorer of the order of St. John, Father García Jofré de Loaísa, also
known as García Jofré de LOAYZA (1490–1526), commanded an armada of seven ships and 450
men with the objective of retracing the route of Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) to reach the
spice islands of Indonesia known as the Moluccas. Loayza was appointed the governor of these
islands. This expedition was to find a sea route to the Orient so Spain could gain access to the
profitable spice trade and establish a permanent settlement in the East Indies. This journey
proved one of Spain’s great fiascos, for only the flagship reached the Moluccas and no spices
were found. Of the remaining ships, the Pinnacle reached Mexico, almost without food, the
Santa Maria del Parral was shipwrecked in the Philippines, and the caravel San Lesmes became
one of Europe’s first ships to be lost in the Pacific. Loayza died of scurvy while crossing the
Pacific Ocean.
IV.52. Oaxaca-born Father FRANCISCO BURGOA (c. 1600–1681) was a historian and Catholic
philologist who had joined the Dominican order in 1629. He was a custodian of several Indian
parishes and known to be proficient in some indigenous languages, particularly those of the
Zapotec and the Mixteca. Burgoa became head of San Hipólito province in 1649 and of Oaxaca
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in 1662. He remains known for his Palestra historial (Historical forum, 1670) and its
continuation, Geográfica descripción de la parte septentrional, del polo ártico de la América, y
nueva iglesia de las Indias Occidentales (Geographical description of the northern part, of the
arctic pole of America, and the new church of the West Indies, 1674).
IV.53. In 1774, on orders of Antonio María de Bucareli, the Viceroy of New Spain, Agustín
CRAMER (d. 1780) surveyed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec for the possibility of an interoceanic
waterway. Cramer was an engineer in command of the Fort of San Juan de Ulúa in Veracruz. His
report is preserved in the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Spain. It is not clear whether Agustín
Cramer is the Agustín Cramer Mañecas of Navarre who came to Cuba in 1763 as a brigadier of
the army engineering corps to repair the damages done to Havana’s forts by the British. This
appears possible, considering that Bucareli, before being appointed viceroy, had been governor
of Cuba since 1766. He might well have called upon his Cuban contacts when he pondered the
option of an interoceanic waterway. Cramer Mañecas helped construct a warehouse for the
Cuban Royal Tobacco Trading Post in 1770. In 1777, he wrote a study on commerce and
navigation in Guiana. He also published an important treatise on Cuba’s commercial activity.
MIGUEL DEL CORRAL was Cramer’s assistant.
IV.73t. GRAND AIGLE is a French paper size: 75 × 106 cm.
IV. 99. A citizen of Cáceres, DIEGO DE OCAMPO was the first Spaniard to navigate from
Tehuantepec to Lima, a voyage considered more difficult than a journey from Spain to the
Philippines. Ocampo was said to be under the command of Francisco de Garay (d. 1523), a
Basque conquistador and a sailor on the second voyage to the New World in 1493. The
expedition took place in 1542, and it consisted of ships striking south across the trades winds to
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30° south and then northeast to pick up the southerly winds or the currents off the Peruvian
coast. Ocampo, along with Hernán Cortés, presumably discovered this route. Few, however,
traveled it because it took approximately three to four months to complete.
IV.105. In addition to being an outstanding geographer, Francisco Antonio MAURELLI (or
Mourelle) de la Rua (1750–1820), a navigator in the service of the Spanish Crown, was also
interested in natural history and ethnology. Although he had initially planned on enrolling in the
Real Compañía de Guardamarinas (Royal Company of Midshipmen), he ultimately chose the
Academy of Ferrol pilots in 1763 and became a pilot three years later. In 1775, Maurelli was
named first pilot of the San Blas port in Mexico and later that year explored the coast of
California. He became captain of La Princesa in 1780 and was ordered to deliver vital
documents from the Philippines to the viceroy of Mexico. During this journey, he sailed the
Pacific Ocean, sighting such islands as the Ermitaño Islands, Mabua, and Tabar, among others.
His most important discovery was the Vavao in the archipelago of Tonga. Maurelli returned to
Spain in 1793 and was promoted to frigate captain in 1799, a position he held until his death.
IV.106n. Brittany-born explorer Jean François Marie de SURVILLE (1717–1770) began work for
the French Indian Company when he was only ten years old, sailing mainly the Indian Ocean and
the China Sea. In 1766, he became involved in the trade between France, India, and China and
received financial backing for a voyage to the South Pacific on the basis of rumors that the
Cornish navigator Samuel Wallis had discovered Tahiti. Surville’s ship, the Saint Jean Baptiste,
set sail for India in 1769. A few months into the voyage, the crew already showed grave signs of
scurvy. Surville first made landfall on Choiseul Island (in the Solomons), then had to proceed to
New Zealand to obtain supplies, following the charts of Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman (1603–
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1659). During this journey, Surville passed James Cook’s Endeavor, which was sailing the New
Zealand waters at the same time. Bad weather prevented them from sighting each other. The
Saint Jean Baptiste anchored in Doubtless Bay for two weeks while the crew recovered.
Although the local Maori were hospitable, Surville ran afoul of them—the result of a
misunderstanding—and abducted one of their chiefs. He continued east across the Pacific,
making no more new discoveries. In 1770, he sought help for his crew, which was dying from
scurvy, in Chilca, Peru, and drowned while attempting to go ashore in heavy seas.
IV.107. The grandfather of the acclaimed poet Lord Byron (1788–1824), British naval officer
John BYRON (1723–1786) entered the navy as a midshipman and joined the Wager, one of the
six ships that sailed for the Pacific in 1740. The Wager was shipwrecked off the coast of Chile.
This incident, in addition to other hardships Byron encountered during his voyages, earned him
the nickname of “Foul-Weather Jack.” In 1760, he was sent with a fleet to demolish the
fortifications of Louisburg, Nova Scotia, which had been taken from the French. He became the
governor of Newfoundland in 1769. Byron’s term was not noted for any particular reforms,
except that he prohibited fishing at the Magdalena Islands without a license due to previous
difficulties with New England crews. He became vice-admiral in 1776 when he was placed in the
command of the West India squadron.
IV.109. Samuel WALLIS (1728–1795) was a Cornish naval captain who circumnavigated the
world twice. In 1757, he was sent to North America, a year later to Canada. The British
admiralty gave him command of the HMS Dolphin in 1766 in hopes that he would find the
mythical Great South Land, the “Terra Australis Incognita.” Wallis was accompanied by Philip
Carteret (d. 1796), who had sailed with John Byron in 1764–66, as far as the Strait of Magellan.
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Unable to find the fabled continent, Wallis charted other locations, including the island of Tahiti
(originally known as Otaheite) in 1767, which he named “King George the Third’s Island.”
Wallis also discovered a fifteen small islands throughout the Pacific, laying the groundwork for
James Cook’s Endeavour voyage. Although Wallis had difficulty finding employment when he
returned to England, he was eventually appointed extra-commissioner of the navy (from 1782 to
1783, and from 1787 until his death). The Polynesian archipelago of Wallis and Futuna is named
in his honor.
IV.110. In 1585, JUAN JAYME (also Jaime) set sail from Manila to Acapulco in the company of
Spanish sailor FRANCISCO GALI (1539–1591) for the sole purpose of testing a declination
instrument presumably invented by the Seville mathematician, apothecary, and naturalist Felipe
Guillén (b. 1492). Sometime prior to 1525, Guillén had constructed an astrolabe of sorts during
the voyages to the Americas in which he had participated at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Among other places, he had also visited New Spain. Falsely presenting himself as a
renowned Castilian mathematician and astronomer, Guillén offered his invention to the
Portuguese king Joao III (1502–57), claiming that his invention would enable Portuguese
mariners to sail day and night without fail and that it would also provide the coordinates of gold
mines and other earthly paradises in what is now Brazil. The king placed Guillén in his employ
with a lavish salary and pension. When Guillén’s deceit was discovered, he was imprisoned for
life.
IV.111n. GARCIA HURTADO DE MENDOZA y Manrique (1535–1609) was a Spanish officer, the
fourth Marquis of Cañete (from 1589–1596), and the eighth viceroy of Peru. In 1561, he sent an
expedition to the Peruvian Andes in order to establish a colony focused on the civilization of the
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Huarpes people who lived around the area. This town, eventually named Mendoza, became a
significant center during the Spanish rule in Chile. Hurtado, who also had administered the
Huancavelica mines, was known for his difficult relationship with the indigenous peoples. At
first benevolent, he changed his attitude after hearing about their plan to attack the Spanish
colony at Andalicán and ordered the fort of San Luis de Toledo to be built in Araucana. Hurtado
was perhaps best known for the rebellion that he ignited when he tried to enforce the collection
of a sales tax, which he finally imposed in 1592. The opposition to this tax was unanimous, and
in many cities, people refused to pay it. Quito had a particularly violent protest.
IV.111n. CRISTÓBAL SUÁREZ DE FIGUEROA (c. 1571–c. 1644) was a Spanish writer and jurist. He
obtained his doctorate training in civil law in Italy and was named governor of Milan and
inspector of the Spanish troops in Piamonte. After sixteen years of service he returned to Spain,
where he devoted himself to the art of writing.
IV.111n. Spanish sailor and traveler ISABEL DE BARRETO (c. 1567–1612) is considered one of the
first women to hold the position of admiral. It seems that she was Galician by birth, although
many scholars point out that she was most likely Portuguese. She was the wife and later widow
of ALVARO DE MENDAÑA de Neyra (1542–95), a Spanish navigator and patron of several
expeditions to the Pacific Ocean and the Marquesas Islands. Barreto is known for taking over for
her husband during his last expedition from Peru to the Pacific in 1595. Initially, three ships had
departed from Peru. After failing to find one of the expedition’s lost ships, the Santa Isabel, and
her severely reduced crew, Barreto decided to lead the expedition’s few remaining survivors to
the Philippines. Historical accounts of Barreto variously depict her as merciless and selfish, but it
is also important to bear in mind that many crew members disrespected a woman in command.
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Barreto even considered suicide because of such maltreatment during the expedition. She was
eventually honored for her service in Manila.
IV.112n. Born near Plymouth, England, commander John SHORTLAND (1736–1804) had a
reputation for being a capable seaman and an experienced officer. He had joined the Royal Navy
as a midshipman at the age of fifteen, and, after being promoted to lieutenant in 1763, was
assigned to work in transport service between England and the Americas. In 1786, he was
appointed as the naval agent to the transports of the First Fleet, a role of notable importance
because he was in charge of overseeing and fulfilling all of the contracts necessary for transport.
After his journey to the Botany Bay, Australia, Shortland was placed in command of a convoy of
traders en route to China. During his extensive travels, he discovered and charted many islands
and reefs, including Gatutaki, the Shortland Islands, the Shortland Strait, and the Russell Islands
in the Solomons. He is sometimes confused with his oldest son, John Shortland (1769–1810),
who was also a naval officer and traveled with his father to the West Indies and to New South
Wales.
IV.112n. Spanish pilot Hernando GALLEGO (fl. sixteenth century) had previously sailed with
Juan de Ladrillero (c. 1495–1582) and Álvaro de Mendana de Neira (1541–1596). Inspired by
the discovery of the Solomon Islands in 1568 and intent on finding a new route to New Guinea,
Gallego commissioned the construction of a large brigantine that he took on three exploratory
voyages. During those voyages, he discovered Guadalcanal, Malaita, and the San Jorge Islands.
He returned to Callao in 1569.
IV.112n. Spanish explorer and navigator JUAN FERNÁNDEZ (1536–1604) discovered what is now
known as the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile in 1563 while on an expedition to
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find a route to the “Great South Land,” which many deem to have been Africa. Because of his
knowledge of the trade winds near the American west coast, he was able drastically to shorten
the time it took to travel between the South America ports. For instance, he was known to sail
from Lima to the coast of Chile in under thirty days, a feat unheard of at the time. Because of his
exploits, he was often called el brujo, meaning warlock or wizard, and he narrowly escaped
being indicted as a sorcerer. He also discovered the Pacific Islands of San Felix and San
Ambrosia in 1574 and is credited with finding either Australia or New Zealand. Due to the lack
of detail and clarity in his written reports it is unclear which one.
IV.112n. LUIS VAEZ (or Vaz) DE TORRES (b. c. 1565) was an experienced navigator who, in
1605, was given command of the vessel San Pedrico, the second largest of three ships that set
sail from Callao, Peru, in search of the fabled Southern continent. He was in charge of
commanding the fleet with the leader of the expedition, Fernandez de Quirós, when they were
lost in a storm. Rather than abandon the voyage, Torres decided that he would return to Callao
after some exploring. The rest of the crew did not receive this decision well. For a period of
about two months, Torres charted the course of a strait that divides the continent of Australia
from the island of New Guinea; it is through this navigation that he determined that New Guinea
was not the northern peninsula of a southern continent. The strait is known today as the Torres
Strait in his honor. Until the British occupied Manila in 1762, Torres’s discovery had been
overlooked among historians.
IV.112n. Spanish navigator and explorer Álvaro de SAAVEDRA CERÓN (d. 1529) was the first
European to sail across the Pacific from the Viceroyalty in Mexico to the East Indies. His cousin,
Hernando Cortés, led an expedition that began in 1527 with their departure from Zihuatanejo on
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the western coast of New Spain with a crew of 110 men. Three ships were sent out on this
voyage to investigate what had happened with two earlier expeditions to the East Indies and to
rescue any possible survivors. Only one of these ships reached Surigao in Northeastern
Mindanao but failed to colonize the place. The expedition later sailed past Guam and reached the
Philippines in early 1528. Sailing along the coast of New Guinea a month later, they discovered
the Marshall, Caroline, and Admiralty Islands. Saavedra attempted to return to Spain three times,
but the strong winds drove him back. He became ill and died on the third attempt.
IV.113. KAMEHAMEHA I (c. 1758–1819), also known as Kamehameha the Great, was the first
king to unite and rule all of the Hawaiian Islands, previously known as the Owyhee islands.
Kamehameha was known for upholding the value of religion and spirituality despite the invading
presence of outside cultural influences. Although he engaged in trade with Europeans, he firmly
controlled business and political contacts with Hawaiians. An adept battle strategist and an
aficionado of European weaponry, Kamehameha used guns and cannons to defeat his enemies in
battle in his effort to consolidate the power of the islands. In the events leading up to the battle of
Nu’uanu, a key clash in the final days of Kamehameha’s efforts to unify the Hawaiian Islands, he
requested military assistance from Captain George Vancouver. In exchange for this assistance,
Kamehameha, in 1794, temporarily ceded the island of Great Hawaii to Great Britain. A year
later, he had most of Hawaii under his control, except for two islands. Once these two islands
were ceded to him, he cemented his position in history as the first monarch to govern all of
Hawai’i.
IV.118n. British traveler, cleric, and historian William COXE (1774–1828) was an early authority
on the Russian explorations in the Pacific. Educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge,
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Coxe traveled widely throughout Europe. In 1778 and from 1785 to 1786, he visited Russia.
These voyages, during which Coxe checked the reliability of his Russian sources, many of which
he had consulted in German translation, and also secured some unpublished material, led to his
Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America (1780) and his five-volume
Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1784–90). The latter went through four
revised and updated editions, the last of which included accounts of the expeditions of Bering
and Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov.
IV.119. CAPTAIN James HANNA (d. 1787) was the first European to sail to the Pacific Northwest
to engage in the trade of furs, a business that contributed to the westward expansion of the USA
and Canada. In 1785, he sailed from Macao, China, to Nootka Sound, British Colombia, which
James Cook had identified as a place likely to be rich in sea otter pelts. Upon their arrival,
Hanna and his crew were attacked by Nootka Indians, which led to a struggle in which several
chiefs were killed. Despite this tension, peace was established between Hanna and the Nootka
Indians, and in due course, Hanna acquired around 560 sea otter pelts that he was able to sell at
sixty dollars apiece—one of the most lucrative trading engagements of his time. Because of the
profitability of his first voyage, Hanna’s sponsors funded a second voyage in 1786, during which
he charted and named several inlets and islands around the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Although his visits to the northwest coast of the USA and Canada were brief, the observations in
his journal proved useful to those conducting geographical and historical studies on the
northwest coast and the fur trade.
IV.120n. Starting in 1775, Russian seafarer Grigory Ivanovich SHELIKHOV (also Shelekhov,
1747–1795) organized commercial trips to the Kuril and Aleutian Islands. Under the auspices of
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the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, which, in 1799, would form the basis for the Russian-
American Company, Shelikhov led an expedition to the shores of Russian America from 1783 to
1786. The expedition arrived at Kodiak Island in 1784. The local Koniaga, an Alutiiq nation,
fiercely resisted their attempt to create a settlement. They defended themselves valiantly against
the Russians, and Shelikhov slaughtered hundreds, possibly thousands, in what became known as
the Awa’uq Massacre. Having thus established his authority, Shelikhov founded the first
permanent Russian settlement in Alaska on the island’s Three Saints Bay.
IV.120n. Born in the St. Petersburg Governorate of the Russian Empire, Alexander Andreyevich
BARANOV (also Baranoff, 1746–1819) left home at the age of fifteen and eventually became a
successful trader in Irkutsk, Siberia. Before long, however, the booming fur trade and an
employment offer from Shelikhov lured him to Russian America. In 1790, Baranov sailed for
Kodiac Island, from where he established and managed trading posts throughout the region. In
1799, through the intervention of the Russian statesman Nikolai Petrovitch Resanov (1764–
1807), Baranov was appointed general manager of the Russian-American Company, which had
been founded earlier that year. His responsibilities then included the Aleutian and Kuril Islands.
The flourishing trade in sea otter and seal pelts inevitably brought tensions with the local
population, and in 1804, Tlingit warriors burned down Fort St. Michael on Sitka Island.
Governor Baranov, who was married to an Inuit woman, is credited with unusually humane
treatment of Alaska’s indigenous peoples. Among other things, he created schools for their
children. In 1818, Baranov left Alaska for Russia on a route around the Cape of Good Hope.
During an extended stopover in the Dutch settlement of Batavia on the island of Java, then part
of the colonial Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia), Baranov fell ill and died soon after the ship
resumed its journey. Baranof Island in Alaska is named after him.
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IV.120n. Descended from Polish nobility that had settled in south Russia and received Russian
citizenship in the seventeenth century, Akhilles Pavlovich SHABELSKY (also Achille Schabelski,
1802–1856) was a Russian civil servant who worked as an interpreter and translator in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He volunteered to serve aboard the Apollon in that capacity.
Humboldt refers here to Shabelsky’s 1826 travel narrative Voyage aux Colonies Russes de
l'Amérique (Voyage to the Russian colonies in America).
IV.122n. Born in Mallorca, Spain, Cristóbal CLADERA (1760–1816) was a prolific writer and
translator. A doctor of theology and a lawyer, he was educated in Murcia, Orihuela, and
Valencia. His encyclopedic work Espíritu de los mejores diarios literarios que se publican en
Europa (The spirit of the best literary journals published in Europe) published between 1787 and
1791, was a popular and financial success.
IV.124n. Appointed treasurer of Veracruz in 1795, José DONATO DE AUSTRIA y Achútegui (d.
1806) applied his progressive economic views to solve the problems of the port of Veracruz.
Among other measures, he supported the port’s wartime trade with neutral ports and engaged in
neutral shipping in order to maintain stable flour imports, stable prices, and to prevent
smuggling. Because of the backlash he received from more traditional merchants who did not
believe in political neutrality, Austria sought reassignment. Not only was his request ignored; in
1804, he also received a hefty salary increase. He served as secretary of the Veracruz city council
until his death.
IV.162n. Magistrate DANIEL GOOKIN (1612–1687) was a settler in Virginia and Massachusetts
and one of the most prominent writers on the subject of so-called American Indians at the time.
In 1621, he sailed with his father from Ireland to Virginia, where they eventually settled in the
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area now known as Newport News. Because of his doctrinal sympathies with the Puritans,
Gookin moved from Virginia to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was appointed as captain
of the militia and as a member of the house of deputies. In 1656, he was assigned the position of
superintendent of all of the Native Americans who recognized the government of Massachusetts.
Gookin was unpopular in this position, mainly due to the protections and the rights he granted
the indigenous peoples, but also because of his interest in their spiritual development and
instruction. In conjunction with Reverend John Eliot (1604–90), he protested and argued against
King Philip’s War (1675–78) against the Natick and other local populations who had submitted
to the English colony. Because of this protest, Gookin not only received the scorn of his fellow
magistrates but also faced public humiliation. In 1662, Gookin and the Reverend Jonathan
Mitchell (bapt. 1624–68) were appointed as the first licensers of a printing press at Cambridge.
This gave Gookin a way of circulating his writings among the citizens of Massachusetts.
Gookin’s Historical Collections of the Indians of New England was published posthumously in
1792.
IV.163. Jacob MACKITTRICH practiced medicine in the West Indies and wrote about yellow fever
in his degree thesis entitled De Febre India: Occidentalis Maligna Flava (Of the fever in the
Indies, 1766).
IV.163. In addition to being one of the founding fathers of the USA, Pennsylvania physician
BENJAMIN RUSH (1746–1813) was also a professor of chemistry, medical theory, and clinical
practice at the University of Pennsylvania from 1769 until his death. Humboldt met Rush when
he toured the College of Physicians in Philadeplia in 1804. Educated first at the College of New
Jersey (now Princeton) and at the University of Edinburgh, Rush developed an interest in the
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medical relationship between mind and body, which led to therapeutic theories he put to the test
during the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Rush himself contracted the fever twice
and recovered both times. His interest resulted in the 1812 publication of Medical Inquiries and
Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, which secured his position as the father of
American psychiatry. Humboldt refers here to Rush’s work on nosology, that is, the
classification of diseases, and later on to Rush’s report on the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic
of 1793, which was translated and annotated by Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga in 1804.
IV.163. A German naturalist, Michael Bernhard VALENTINI (1657–1729) was educated in the
city of Giessen, where he was appointed professor of physics in 1686, after having spent several
years on scientific travels in France, Holland, and England, among other places. Ten years later,
when he had become one of the most respected and prolific members of the faculty, he
exchanged his initial professorship for one in medicine. Also a royal physician of Hesse and the
author of a book about herbs, Viridarium reformatum, seu regnum vegetabilis (1719), Valentini
was one of the first German medical doctors to make therapeutic use of cinchona bark. He also
worked in the areas of physics, meteorology, and mineralogy. It is also possible that Humboldt’s
reference here is to French army-doctor Louis Valentin.
IV.163. The Spanish physician and polyglot Ignacio María Ruiz de LUZURIAGA (1763–1822)
was educated at the Royal Patriotic Seminary of Vergara, Spain, and studied in Paris with the
chemist Antoine Fourcroy (1755–1809) and the naturalist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–
1836), among other scientific celebrities. Before returning to Spain, Ruiz de Luzuriaga spent two
years in England and Scotland, where he became interested in the so-called “sanitary
movement.” In the following years until his death, he devoted significant efforts to introducing a
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similar system to Spain. A member and president of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid,
he played a notable role in bringing smallpox vaccination to Spain.
IV.165. Posthumously known as the English Hippocrates, Oxford- and Cambridge-educated
Thomas SYDENHAM (1624–1689) was a prolific English physician who developed a reputation as
a clinician for his treatment of smallpox, for using the first form of a tincture of opium, and for
his advocacy of the use of cinchona bark to alleviate malaria. Throughout his work, Sydenham
emphasized the importance of precise observation and the development of new methods of
treatment. Humboldt is likely referring to Sydenham’s first book, Methodus curandi febres (The
method of curing fevers) from 1666. Sydenham, who also wrote about smallpox and gout (of
which he himself was a victim), is credited with the first diagnosis of scarlet fever and the
discovery of the neurological disorder of chorea. In the nineteenth century, a Sydenham Society
continued to make his and like-minded works available in up-to-date editions.
IV.165. In his 1694 Tratado unico da constituiçam pestilencial de Pernambuco (One and only
treatise on the pestilential condition in Pernambuco), the first book to describe yellow fever in
detail, the physician JOAO FERREIRA DE ROSA (fl. 1680–1695) wrote about the first appearance of
yellow fever in Brazil in 1686, where it caused thousands of deaths over the course of eight
years. Rosa believed that the epidemic had been imported by a ship from St. Thomas, likely a
slaver. A recent graduate in medicine from Coimbra, Portugal, Rosa had traveled to Recife in
1687 at the request of the governor. He closely studied the fever as he treated patients for five
years before returning to Portugal.
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IV.166. A resident of Cartagena de Indias, JUAN JOSÉ DE GASTELBONDO worked at the hospital
of San Sebastián in that city. His published work from 1753 focuses on the spread of yellow
fever in the port cities of Colombia.
IV.166. Physician George CLEGHORN (1716–1789) was one of the leading figures of eighteenth-
century Irish medicine. He was sent to Edinburgh at the age of fifteen to begin the study of
physiology and surgery. Cleghorn also attended many seminars and lectures on subjects other
than medicine, including botany, chemistry, and material medica. In 1736, he was appointed
surgeon to the twenty-second regiment of foot, then stationed on the Mediterranean island of
Minorca. During his thirteen years there, Cleghorn spent most of his time studying epidemic
diseases and anatomy. His groundbreaking Observations on the Epidemical Diseases in
Minorca, 1744–1749 (1751) includes not only an account of Minorca’s inhabitants and its
natural history but also the first written description of diseases such as infectious hepatitis.
Observations was very successful and went through four English editions during Cleghorn’s
lifetime and one German translation. In 1751, he settled in Dublin, where he also delivered a
series of anatomical lectures. He is considered the first to establish an anatomical school in
Ireland.
IV.166. Born in Scotland, John PRINGLE (1707–1782) was educated at the universities of St.
Andrews and Edinburgh. He switched from business to medicine after meeting the famous Dutch
botanist and physician Herman Boerhaave in Amsterdam, and he subsequently received his
medical degree from the University of Leiden in 1730. During the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740–48), Pringle served as physician-general of the British army. He recorded his
experiences—among them, the lack of ventilation of barracks and field hospitals, unsanitary
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camps in which disease could spread rapidly, and the failure even to issue blankets to common
soldiers—in Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752). Although this book was reprinted
many times, the army high command ignored the practical changes Pringle proposed to improve
the deplorable conditions he encountered and to isolate the sick for decades.
IV.166. Edinburgh-born and educated James LIND (1716–1794) was a pioneer of naval hygiene
and an expert on scurvy and typhus. In 1739, he became a surgeon’s mate, sailing in the
Mediterranean, Guinea, and the West Indies. While serving as surgeon on HMS Salisbury in
1747, he conducted experiments to discover the cause of scurvy. A year later, he retired from the
navy to attend Edinburgh University. He is the author of A Treatise of the Scurvy (1753), An
Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy
(1757), and An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates (1768). In the latter,
to which Humboldt refers here, Lind took stock of the diseases prevalent in each colony. Lind
was in a position similar to Pringle’s. While many recognized the importance of his findings on
scurvy at the time, an official admiralty order about the supply of lemon juice on ships was not
implemented until more than forty years later.
IV.166n. Born into an Italian family of physicians, Giacomo TOMMASINI (1769–1846) studied
medicine at the Unviersity of Parma. After graduting from Parma in 1789, he supplemented his
medical education by spending time at the universities of Padua, Bologna, Pisa, and Turin.
Although he was also awarded merti scholarships to continue his studies at Vienna, Paris,
London, and Edingburgh, the political events surrounding the French Revolution forced him to
cancel his travel plans and return to Parma instead, where, in 1794, he was awarded a
professorship in physiology and pathology and wrote what may be his most important medical
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treatise, the three-volume Lezioni critiche de fisologia e patologia (Critical lesson in physiology
and pathology, 1803–04). Tommasini was one of the founders of the Società medica-chirugica di
Parma (1804) and edited the society’s Giornale from 1806 to 1815. Although he had
steadfastedly refused to leave Parma even in the face of many other academic opportunities, in
1815, with Napoleon’s regime at its end, Tommasini finally agreed to relocate to the University
of Bologna. In Bologna, he conceptualized and put into clinical practice a new medical school:
the “Nuova Dottrina Medica Italiana,” whose popularity culminated in the founding of an
eponymous journal by the Bologna medical faculty in 1819. The journal was closed in 1828
because of its vocal criticisms of an Italian governed by the Catholic Church, which subjected
Tommasini and his followers to a political investigation. Tommasini himself resigned from
Bologna a year later. He returned to his native Parma, where, as vice president of the university,
he reformed the medical curriculum and, as professor of clinical medicine, focused on improving
smallpox vaccination and preventing cholera epidemics.
IV.166n. A botanist, ethnographer, and engineer, the Dominican priest Jean-Baptiste LABAT
(1664–1738) became part of the Order of Preachers of Paris at the age of twenty. After being
ordained in 1685, he temporarily taught philosophy at the diocese of Nancy but abandoned this
work and became a missionary who preached in churches around France. In 1693, Labat
obtained permission to go to the Americas. After working as a parish priest in Martinique, he
was able to travel to the French, Dutch, and English Antilles because of his knowledge in
engineering. Inspired by his voyages, Labat, while in Rome and Paris, wrote Nouveau Voyage
aux isles de l'Amérique (A New Voyage to the Isles of America, 1722), which became a veritable
bestseller during the eighteenth century. His amalgam of fact and fiction of his life in the
Caribbean included ethnological, sociological, and geographical information, along with
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observations about soil, flora, and suggestions for the islands’ commercial development. Inspired
by his success, Labat used other missionaries’ diaries to write accounts of several African
countries.
IV.166n. An experienced writer and scientist, Colin CHISHOLM (c. 1747–1825) of Inverness
made valuable contributions to the knowledge of tropical diseases especially in the West Indies.
After graduating from Aberdeen University in 1792, he worked as a medical practitioner in
Grenada. The author of An Essay on the Malignant Pestilential Fever (1801), Chisholm was one
of the first to recognize that yellow fever, a disease introduced to the Caribbean as a result of the
transatlantic slave trade, was highly infectious. He is also known for donating a significant
amount of money toward the establishment of the Northern Infirmary of Inverness, which
opened in 1803.
IV. 167n. Educated at the School of Medicine in Montpellier, Jean François Xavier PUGNET
(1765–1846) was a French military surgeon and epidemiologist. He worked as general surgeon
for the French army in Egypt, a post to which he was appointed in 1797. As a chief surgeon in
the French Antilles, he had the opportunity to compare the plague, which he had encountered in
Egypt, with the yellow fever in the Caribbean. The first version of his epidemiological history
was titled Mémoires sur les fièvres pestilentielles et insidieuses du Levant avec un aperçu
physique et médical du pays (Descriptions of the insidious pestilential fevers of the Levant, with
a physical and medical overview of the country, 1802). In 1804, Pugnet added a supplement of
142 pages to include the West Indies. He was elected to the newly established Legion of Honor
and became a member of the societies of medicine of Montpellier and Lyon and a corresponding
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member of the Société de Médecine de Paris. Afflicted with blindness as a belated result of his
Egyptian travels, he retired in 1821 to Switzerland, the home of his wife.
IV.168. Italian physician, epidemiologist, and anatomist Giovanni Maria LANCISI (1654–1720)
was the first to connect malaria with mosquitoes. Attributing the prevalence of malaria in Rome
to mosquitoes, he suggested draining the surrounding marshes, but without success. Lancisi
studied medicine at University of Rome, where he earned his doctoral degree at the age of
eighteen. In addition to being a doctor and professor of anatomy at La Sapienza (1684–1697), he
also served as personal physician to several popes (Innocence XI, Innocence XII, and Clement
XI). In his work De noxiis paludum effluvis (1717), he pointed to mosquitoes as carriers of
contagion, including malaria and rinderpest, an opinion that went contrary to the idea, popular at
the time, that epidemic diseases were caused by so-called bad air. He also published, in
collaboration with Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (also Marsili, 1658–1730), an important treatise on
fungi, Dissertatio de Generatione Fungorum (1714), in which the authors contradict the old
assumption that fungi are created by rot. In 1706, Lancisi became a fellow at the London Royal
Society, and a year later, he was elected member of the Leopoldina, the German Academy of
Sciences.
IV.168. Francesco TORTI (1658–1741) was an Italian physician who earned his medical degree at
the Unviersity of Bologna in 1678. At the age of twenty-three, he was appointed to a
professorship in his native Modena and soon after became one of the personal physicians of
Duke Francesco II (1660–1694). The duke’s successor retained Torti and, in 1798, made him
official demonstrator of the newly founded anatomical amphitheatre. After publishing his
research on the barometer, Troti turned to his most famous work, Therapeutice Specialis ad
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Febres (Special therapies for fever, 1712), which established his reputation as a brilliant practical
physician. As a result, Torti was elected corresponding member of the Royal Society of London
and the Academy of Sciences of Valencia, Spain. Although he was offered professorships in
Turin and Padua, he preferred to stay in Modena.
IV.168. The Heidelberg-educated German physician Johann Peter FRANK (1745–1821) is
considered the founder of public hygiene and social health care. After having completed his
studies of medicine in 1766 and a quick stint as a country doctor, Frank was employed as the
personal physician of the Margrave of Baden (1769–72) and the Bishop of Speyer (1772–84).
The patriarchal philanthropy of enlightened absolutism that surrounded Frank motivated him to
begin work on the six volumes of his influential treatise, System einer vollständigen
medicinischen Polizey (System of complete medical policy, 1772–1819), in which he brought
together all the different parts of health care into a unified system. Hygiene thus became a
legitimate science that could be taught at the universities. In addition to being a theoretician,
Frank never lost sight of the importance of practical applications. This included modernizing
hospital environments and instruction alike, which he did in Göttingen (1784–85), Pavia,
Lombardy (1785–95), Vienna (1795–1804), Vilnius (1804–05) and, finally, St. Petersburg
(1805–08). In addition to being a successful teacher, Frank published De curandis hominum
morbis Epitome (Treatise on practical medicine, 1792–94 and 1811–21), which quickly became a
leading medical textbook. From 1807 to 1808, Frank served as personal physician of Czar
Alexander I (1777–1825). He returned to Vienna in 1809 to complete his major work. Frank died
there of a stroke. The Johann-Peter-Frank Medal was established in 1972; it is the highest honor
that the German Medical Association confers annually for special accomplishments in the field
of public health.
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IV.168n. French physician Jean-Nicolas BERTHE (1761–1819), who earned his doctorate in
1782, was the first professor of therapeutical medicine at the University of Montpellier. In 1800,
he was part of a commission charged with studying yellow fever in Andalusia, on which he
reported in his 1802 Précis historique de la maladie qui a regné dans l'Andalousie en 1800
(Historical account of the disease that ravaged Andalusia in 1800). Berthe, a contagionist, was a
corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Cataluña.
IV.168n. Born into a family of physicians, PHILIPPE PINEL (1745–1826) studied medicine at the
universities of Toulouse and Montpellier. He is best known as the founder of modern psychiatry.
Through his Nosographie philosophique (Philosophical treatise on the classification of diseases,
1807), he contributed to the classification of mental illnesses. Pinel first introduced a more
humane approach to the treatment of psychiatric patients in 1793, when he worked as
superintendent at the Asylum de Bicêtre, a Paris hospital also mentioned in Michel Foucault’s
(1926–84) Madness and Civilization. Pinel continued his efforts to improve asylum conditions
along with clinical teaching when, in 1795, he was appointed chief physician of the large
Hospice de la Salpêtrière and, at the same time, professor of medical pathology. He retained both
positions nearly for the rest of his life. Pinel was elected a member of the Paris Academy of
Sciences in 1804 and of the Academy of Medicine in 1820, the year of its founding.
IV.170. Born in Havana, JOSÉ BARREIRO Quijano (1746–1809) was commander of the San
Diego fort and governor of Acapulco. In 1799, he ordered the creation of a passage in the
mountains that would allow air to flow into the fort and cool the area. This passage was known
as the San Nicolás Opening, since it was located near the temple of San Nicolás Tolentino.
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Although the opening was inaugurated in 1800, it remained unfinished due to economic
circumstances.
IV.171. George SHAW (1751–1813) was an English medical practitioner who later became a
zoologist and botanist. Although he was ordained as a deacon in 1774, he abandoned the church
as a profession due to his love for the sciences and natural history. Shaw studied medicine in
Edinburgh for three years before moving to Oxford as a lecturer in botany. In 1791, he was
appointed to the natural history unit of the British Museum and later on became the keeper of
this unit. Colonists of eastern Australia were very interested in the flora and fauna that they
found within this territory. Many samples and specimens were sent off to England, and Shaw
published the first descriptions and names of many popular Australian animals, including but not
limited to the wombat, the echidna, and the platypus—the latter was known to have greatly
perplexed Shaw because the creature was so unusual. He was the writer of Zoology of New
Holland (1794), the first book to use the unqualified term Australia within its pages.
IV.171. One of the most visible figures of the literary and scientific life during the first quarter of
of the existence of the USA, Samuel Latham MITCHILL (1764–1831) is often regarded as the
father of American geology. He was a man well versed in many areas, including medicine,
science, letters, politics, and the social sciences. Before Mitchill studied medicine at the
University of Edinburgh, his maternal uncle had helped him receive an education in the classics.
Mitchill was the first professor of natural history, chemistry, and agriculture at Columbia
College, and he was one of the founders of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture. At
Columbia, he was particularly known for his expertise in ichthyology, and many fisherman and
fishmongers brought specimens to his office. Mitchill was one of the founders of Medical
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Repository, the first medical journal in the USA. He was also a US representative and senator
from New York. Mitchill was greatly admired for his encyclopedic knowledge and not so much
for his originality of thought. He owned one of the first mineral collections in the USA.
IV.171n. The French diplomat and historian Abbot Jean-Louis Giraud-SOULAVIE (1751–1813)
was also a geographer, geologist, and volcanologist, educated at the Collège Saint-Nicolas in
Avignon. After being ordained in 1776, he became vicar in his native Antraigues. His major
work, the Histoire naturelle de la France méridionale (Natural history of southern France, 1780–
84), was largely based on his own observations in the Département Ardèche (the Vivarais). It
remained unfinished. Two of Soulavie’s main ideas—the extinction of species and the
importance of volcanic activity—led to considerable controversy in the scientific community of
his day. This debate also extended to the Catholic Church, notably to the Abbot Augustin Barruel
(1741–1820) who attacked Soulavie on the grounds that the latter’s theories ran afoul of the
Church’s teachings. In the mid-1780, Soulavie’s interest in natural history began to give way to
his concern for contemporary history, and his publications became mostly memoirs, at times
imaginatively enriched. After 1789, when he became a Jacobin, he also wrote political essays.
Three years later, he renounced his priesthood and married. He became the French Ambassador
in Geneva (1793–94), where he supported local revolutionaries who demanded that their country
become part of France. This caused an international incident, as a result of which Soulavie was
decommissioned. His later attempts to return to the diplomatic service were unsuccessful. He
was a member of Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris and of the St.
Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
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IV.176n. Jean-Baptiste LEBLOND (1747–1815) sailed to the West Indies at the age of nineteen.
He supported himself there by practicing medicine, based on knowledge he had acquired from a
French and a British physician in Martinique and St. Vincent, respectively. Having traveled as
far as Peru, Leblond returned to France in 1785. Some of the work on geography, natural history,
anthropology, and tropical medicine that he had presented to the learned societies of Paris upon
his return was published, and Leblond was elected a corresponding member of the French
Academy of Science. In 1786, he again sailed for South America, having been commissioned by
Louis XVI of France (1754–93) to study the natural history of French Guiana. Leblond’s
Description de la Guyane Française (1813) resulted from this voyage. After returning to France
for good in 1802, he wrote Observations sur la fièvre jaune (1805), the book on yellow fever and
other tropical diseases to which Humboldt refers here.
IV.177. In 1792, Basque administrator and sailor VICENTE EMPARÁN y Orbe (1747–1820) was
appointed captain-general and governor of Cumaná, Venezuela. Although he revered French
science, literature, and politics, a predisposition that many residents of Venezuela considered
unattractive, Emparán was still admired because of his excellent administrative skills. His
government was known for being progressive and generous to native Venezuelans. He
encouraged free trade with the ships from neutral countries, lowered import taxes for machinery
and agricultural tools, and promoted weaponry and armor purchases.
IV.179. A physician and naval surgeon, FLORENCIO PÉREZ Y COMOTO was a friend and disciple
of famous Cádiz chemist and physician Juan Manuel de Aréjula. Pérez y Comoto was the main
physician of the General Hospital of San Sebastián in Veracruz. His personal library included the
most recent medical and scientific literature from the USA and Europe. In his research, he
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documented the growing professionalization of doctors in Mexico and the modernization of
Mexican hospitals. When Humboldt visited Veracruz in 1804, Pérez y Comoto presented to him
a muleteer who had contracted yellow fever in the plains between Antigua and Veracruz.
IV.181n. Richard V. W. THORNE was a surgeon on an American armed ship.
IV.184n. French meteorologist Louis COTTE, better known as Father Cotte (1740–1815),
belonged to the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri and was vicar of the parish of
Montmorency, France. Although he published widely on meteorology, he is probably best
known as the discoverer of the benefits of the sulfuric mineral waters in Enghien-les-Bains in the
northern suburbs of Paris. Cotte was a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences
in Paris and a member of the Royal Society of Agriculture in Laon.
IV.187. A native of Seville, José María CHACÓN (1747–1833) was a rear admiral of the Spanish
Royal Navy, a knight of the order of Calatrava, and the last Spanish governor of Trinidad, from
1784 to 1797. In order to increase the population of the island, Chacón successfully incentivized
immigration. The population decree of 1783 brought French colonists, free Blacks, and African
slaves to Trinidad in significant numbers and effectively inaugurated the island’s plantation
economy. During his tenure, Chacón also initiated important public works, such as the deviation
of the St. Ann’s River. He fled to Spain after the British army invaded Trinidad in 1797. In 1801,
a military tribunal in Cádiz absolved him of the charge of handing the island over to the British
without much resistance. Carlos IV of Spain (1748–1819), however, refused to accept this
judgment and forced Chacón into exile, where he died, stripped of his possessions. The
meteorological observations to which Humboldt refers here come from Juan Manuel de
Aréjula’s Breve descripción de la fiebre amarilla (Brief description of yellow fever), p. 138.
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IV.187. Spanish physician, chemist, and epidemiologist Juan Manuel de ARÉJULA (1755–1830)
enrolled in the Surgery College of Cádiz at the age of seventeen and worked as a military
surgeon from 1776 to 1784. During this period, he visited many American colonies, where he
also had his first encounters with the yellow fever. In 1784, he went to Paris to study chemistry,
working initially on translating chemical nomenclature to Spanish. In 1791, he returned to Spain,
where he became a professor of chemistry, medicine, and botany at the University of Cadiz.
During the first few years of the nineteenth century, he dedicated himself to researching the
yellow fever epidemic in Andalucía. His Breve descripción de la fiebre amarilla was published
in 1806.
IV.189. A Philadelphia-based publisher of Irish extraction, Mathew CAREY (1760–1839) sailed
for the USA in 1784 to avoid prosecution for criticizing the Irish penal system and parliament,
among other matters. Carey continued to write on social topics throughout his life. A Short
Account of the Malignant Fever (1793) was a widely distributed pamphlet in which he
disparaged the actions of African Americans during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in
Philadelphia, accusing the members of the Free African Society, who had risked their lives to
nurse the sick and dying, of having caused the epidemic. In 1815, Carey was elected a member
of the American Antiquarian Society, and most of his papers still reside there.
IV.190. James WALKER was a physician in Kingston, Jamaica.
IV.190. A doctor from the University of Nancy, Louis VALENTIN (1758–1829) was physician-in-
chief of the armies of Saint-Domingue and of the French Hospitals in Virginia. Valentin
believed that yellow fever was a disease of rotting matter and that improved sanitation, not
quarantine, was the best means of preventing it.
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IV.190. Edward MILLER (1760–1812) was a professor of medicine at the University of New
York and the resident physician for the city. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to a seminary in
Newark, where he devoted four years to the study of Greek and Latin. He began the study of
medicine in 1778. Two years later, he joined his country’s army as a surgeon’s mate, and, in
1781, he accepted the position of surgeon on board of a ship bound for France, where he learned
how to speak the language and amassed a large collection of French medical books. After his
one-year stint in France, he returned to the USA, enrolling in a series of medical lectures at the
University of Pennsylvania. He received his medical degree in 1789 and established a practice in
his native town of Dover. In 1796, he moved his practice to New York, where he found
considerable success as a medical practitioner for the city’s elite. A year later, he founded a
medical magazine, the Medical Repository. Miller had been interested in the study of yellow
fever ever since its emergence in 1793. His Report on the Malignant Disease of Yellow Fever
which Prevailed in the City of New-York, in the autumn of 1805 was first published in 1806.
IV.190n. Physician STUBBINS FFIRTH (1784–1820) joined the University of Pennsylvania in the
1790s, a few years after the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, the largest in American history, had
ravaged about 5,000 people in Philadelphia. Ffirth conducted rather unusual investigations into
the causes of yellow fever, including experiments on himself, to prove that the disease was not
contagious. He was so convinced of his theory that he brought himself into repeated direct
contact with bodily fluids of infected patients. The fact that he somehow never became infected
served him as proof of his hypothesis. While Ffirth was correct in noting that yellow fever was
much more prevalent in summer, his explanation that the disease was therefore attributable to
heat and related stresses on the human body proved false. It was not until 1886 that the Cuban
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epidemiologist Carlos Juan Finlay (1833–1915) linked mosquitoes to the transmission of yellow
fever, something that Giovanni Maria Lancisi had done much earlier.
IV.191n. French surgeon Francois-Victor BALLY (also Bailly, 1775–1866) was chief physician
of the French military and the civilian population on Saint-Domingue during the opening years
of the nineteenth century. Bally, who was also on the faculty of the School of Medicine in Paris,
had written his doctoral dissertation on gangrene at the University of Montpellier in 1797. He
also worked on cholera. In 1814, he published another significant work on yellow fever, which
he called “typhus d’Amérique” (American typhus), based on his observations in the Caribbean.
Unlike others, among them Stubbins Ffirth, Bally was a contagionist. The 1806 commission on
which Bally served was dispatched to Spain by the French Department of Agriculture.
IV.191n. Belgian-French physiologist and pediatrician Pierre-Hubert NYSTEN (1771–1818) was
one of the pioneering scientists in the field of muscular anatomy and cardiology. He obtained his
medical degree in Paris in 1802, the same year he published the results of experiments that made
use of the process of galvanization. Together with Bally and Duméril, Nysten participated in the
1806 commission charged with studying the causes and effects of the yellow fever in Spain.
Soon after, Nysten became a professor at the School of Medicine in Paris. He conducted
experiments in cardiology early in his career and from 1805 to 1812 studied silkworm diseases in
southern France. In 1811, he provided one of the earliest scientific descriptions of rigor mortis,
known as Nysten’s Law, considered his major contribution to medicine.
IV.191n. José PABLO VALIENTE y Bravo (1740–1818) was the intendant of Havana in the 1790s.
He began his public work as a professor at the University of Seville and as a judge in the Royal
Court of Mexico. He transferred to Cuba in 1791 and, a year later, was appointed intendant of the
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Cuban treasury. His accomplishments in this position were so distinguished that he was selected
as Counselor of the Indies in 1799.
IV.191n. Barcelona-born Carlos Francisco AMELLER y Clot (1753–1836) studied medicine at the
Royal College in Cádiz until 1772, when he entered the Spanish Royal Armanda. After nine
years of service, Ameller settled in Cádiz where he became professor of experimental physics at
the School of Medicine and Surgery. In 1805, he was appointed head of the school, a position he
occupied for thirty years. Ameller had a distinguished medical and administrative career and was
a member of the Academies of Medicine of Barcelona, Seville, and Murcia.
IV.191n. Pedro María GONZÁLEZ Gutiérrez (1764–1838) was a naturalist, taxidermist, and
physician for the Spanish Royal Armada. In 1781, he enrolled in the Royal Armada’s College of
Surgery (located in the Royal Hospital of Cádiz), an institution at which he would later teach and
of which he would become vice-rector in 1799. Thanks to his outstanding academic
achievements, he was named First Surgeon in 1786. While assigned to the San Sebastián, he
conducted a series of experiments on the desalinization of seawater and the use of ventilators in
iron heaters. A well-known biologist and naturalist, González collected various zoological and
botanical specimens, some of which are still at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. In the
port of Cadiz, he focused on diseases that sailors developed while at sea, particularly scurvy. In
1797, he traveled on the frigate Esperanza with the purpose of examining medicinal drugs that
might have commercial use. He also continued his research on sea illnesses, experimenting with
citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons to prevent scurvy. He wrote some of the most complete
descriptions of the disease, for instance in his Tratado de las enfermedades de la gente de mar
(Treatise on the diseases of sailors) from 1805, the year when he was named professor of
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physiology and hygiene at the Royal Armada’s college. He held this position for over thirty
years.
IV.191n. Because of the alleged helpfulness of oil frictions as a remedy for plagues during
ancient times, they were used extensively during the yellow fever epidemic in Spain in 1804.
Physicians such as Doctor DELON of Cádiz explored the internal use of olive oil to prevent
yellow fever. Such effort were in vain.
IV.192. Physician Caspar WISTAR (1761–1818) was a president of the American Philosophical
Society and president of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Humboldt met him during his
visit to Philadelphia in 1804. After volunteering as a nurse at the Battle of Germantown, Wistar
was inspired to study medicine and enrolled in the medical department of the University of the
State of Pennsylvania. He ultimately received his medical degree from the University of
Edinburgh in 1786. He returned to Philadelphia a year later and established a private practice
there. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Wistar joined other doctors, notably Benjamin
Rush, in their efforts to treat the disease, but he was critical of the use and abuse of bleeding and
purging as a remedy. From 1789 to 1792, he was a professor of chemistry and physiology at the
College of Philadelphia, for which he was later a trustee. In 1808, Wistar became a full professor
at the recently formed University of Pennsylvania, where he taught anatomy, midwifery, and
surgery. Penn’s Wistar Institute was founded in 1892 by Wistar’s great-nephew, Isaac Jones
Wistar (1827–1905), from Wistar’s collection of anatomical specimens.
IV.192. Scottish physician and naval surgeon Sir Gilbert BLANE (1749–1834) was a fellow of the
Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Göttingen, and of the Royal Academy of Sciences of
Paris. He attended Edinburgh University at the age of fourteen but graduated from the University
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of Glasgow in 1781. As a physician in the West Indies fleet during the American War, he
accidentally discovered that lemon and lime juice could be used to prevent scurvy. Blane’s
reforms increased the efficiency of fleets, while also inaugurating a new standard for the sanitary
conditions of the British Royal Navy. He also offered advice for preventing contagious fevers in
prisons, advocated compulsory vaccination, and pushed for regulations of medical services in
India.
IV.192. Physician Isaac CATHRALL (also Cathral, d. 1819) was a native of Philadelphia and a
member of the American Philosophical Society. He was known for being a judicious physician, a
skillful anatomist, and a man of rigid principles. After studying in London, Edinburgh, and Paris,
he returned to his hometown in 1793. During the epidemic of 1793, he decided to remain in
Philadelphia and promptly contracted yellow fever. Before and after his recovery, he devoted
most of his time to investigating the causes, characteristics, and remedies for the disease. During
the peak of the epidemic, he dissected the bodies of fever victims to study the effects the disease,
focusing on the dark-colored “vomit” produced in the victims’ stomachs. He published his
findings as A Medical Sketch of the Synochus maligna in 1797.
IV.200n. Friedrich SCHNURRER (1784–1833) studied medicine in his native city of Tübingen and
completed his doctoral degree in 1805, after which point he traveled extensively in Germany. He
also went to Paris to do research at the zoological museum of the Jardin des Plantes. In 1810,
Schnurrer published his famous Materialien zu einer Naturlehre der Epidemien und Contagien
(Materials toward a naturalistic approach to epidemics and contagions) in which he articulated
his efforts to understand the study of diseases as an integral part of the work of a naturalist. As an
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administrator in the southern part of Germany from 1811 to 1814, Schnurrer had repeated
occasions to witness epidemics. These observations became the material for his later writings. In
1830, Schnurrer was appointed personal physician to the Duke of Nassau in Biberach, where he
became privy counselor two years later. Schnurrer was also a staff member of the Allgemeine
Litteraturzeitung (Jena) and contributed to the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und
Künste (Universal Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts), which Johann Samuel Ersch (1766–1828)
and Johann Gottfried Gruber (1744–1851) began in 1813.
IV.206. Alexander RUSSELL (1715–1768) was a Scottish physician and naturalist who studied
medicine in his native city of Edinburgh. He traveled to London in 1734, shortly after obtaining
his degree in medicine. In 1740, he was appointed a physician in an English factory in Aleppo,
where he eventually became a principal practitioner. Part of Russell’s success in Aleppo can be
attributed to his efforts to study languages, which allowed him to communicate with people of all
ranks and professions from various cultural backgrounds, including Franks, Turks, Armenians,
and Greeks. Russell returned to England in 1754 and, two years later, published his Natural
History of Aleppo (1756), in which he described the ravages of the 1742–43 plague. In 1759, he
was elected physician for the St. Thomas Hospital in London, an office he kept until his death.
IV.208. The most famous teacher at the LEYDEN school of medicine was the physician Hermann
Boerhaave (1668–1738), who was also a botanist and a chemist. He came to the University of
Leyden in 1701 and attracted students from all across Europe. His students, renowned in their
own right, were instrumental in the founding of medical schools in Vienna and Edinburgh.
IV.208. Born in Swabia, the physician Maximilian STOLL (1742–1787) entered the Jesuit order
in 1761, against the will of his father, an impoverished surgeon who had begun to apprentice his
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son at the tender age of nine. After being ordained, Stoll moved to Ingolstadt and then to Tyrol,
where his more enlightened ideas aroused suspicions in his superiors. A transfer to Eichstädt in
Brandenburg intensified the conflict, and, in 1767, Stoll left the order and went to Strasbourg and
Vienna to study medicine. Having completed his doctoral studies in 1772, he gained employment
as a doctor in Hont County in the Kingdom of Hungary. In this position, he had ample
opportunity to treat patients who suffered from different fevers, and he himself contracted
malaria. He returned to Vienna in 1774, where he found a large number of patients among the
Greek population. Stoll had already apprenticed medical students even prior to being officially
appointed as a clinical teacher in 1776. He was also a fervent advocate of small pox vaccination.
Stoll’s writings are especially noteworthy because he so carefully documented his observations
of the victims of epidemic diseases.
IV.209n. James WOODHOUSE (1770–1809) was an American chemist and surgeon from
Philadelphia, who received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1787 and an MD from
Penn’s medical school in 1792. Humboldt met him during his visit to Philadelphia in 184. While
attending medical school, Woodhouse focused on the study of chemistry, with a specialization in
the chemical and medical properties of tree barks and astringent vegetables. It is said that he was
the first person to demonstrate the superiority of the Lehigh anthracite coals of Northampton
County (PA) over the bituminous coals of Virginia. He founded the Chemical Society of
Philadelphia in 1792 and became the chair of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in
1795. During his time as chair, Woodhouse conducted research on the production of metallic
potassium by carbon reduction, the reaction of metals with nitric acid, starches, and the
properties of bread-baking. Woodhouse was known for establishing chemistry as a theoretical
and a practical area of study, and he instructed a generation of students in the academic and
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industrial domains of the science. He translated Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal’s Elements of
Chemistry in 1807.
IV.209n. New York surgeon Valentine SEAMAN (1770–1817) began his studies in medicine
under the guidance of Dr. Nicholas Romayne (1756–1817), one of the founders of Columbia
University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Seaman transferred to the University of
Pennsylvania in 1791, where he studied under Benjamin Rush, among others, and obtained his
medical degree a year later. He is credited with introducing smallpox inoculation to New York
after successfully using a serum—developed by Edward Jenner (1749–1823) from cowpox
lesions—on his son. Seaman is also known for improving the practice of midwifery and was an
active member of the Society of Friends and the New York Manumission Society, which were
focused on the liberation of slaves.
IV.210. Born in the Danish West Indies, physician Johan Mathias Frederik Keutsch (1775–1815)
wrote the first medical report from the plantations of the Danish colony St. Croix. Humboldt met
and corresponded with him and his brother, Johann Christian Keutsch, also a doctor.
IV.210n. Educated at the University of Salamanca and in Paris, where he obtained a master’s
degree in anatomy, LUIS LOBERA DE AVILA (c. 1480–1551) was a Spanish medical doctor best
known as the author of Vergel de Sanidad (The health orchard) from 1542. This book contained
three independent treatises on different subjects, such as personal hygiene, nutrition, and
guidelines for travel on land and on sea. Lobera’s chapter on nutrition had originally been
published as Vanquete de nobles cavalleros (The banquet of noble gentlemen) in 1530. He later
became the official physician of Carlos I (1500–58), as a result of which he had to travel
frequently.
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IV.210n. Spanish physician, pharmacologist, humanist, and botanist ANDRÉS LAGUNA (c. 1499–
1559) was a pioneer in the study of anatomy, urology, and medicine. He obtained a bachelor of
arts from the University of Salamanca and then moved to Paris, where he studied Greek
language, medicine, and botany. A professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, he later
taught at the University of Bologna. Laguna is often deemed one of Spain’s greatest philologists.
In more than thirty books, he wrote on topics such as philosophical history, cures for plagues,
and methods of anatomy. He also translated the major works of Aristotle and Hippocrates, to
which he added popular tales, folk wisdom, and academic inquiries.
IV.210n. A physician from Játiva, Spain, FRANCISCO FRANCO (c. 1515–after 1569) studied
medicine at Alcalá de Henares near Madrid. He was professor of medicine at the University of
Coimbra, Portugal, from 1549 to 1555 and taught at the University of Seville in the same
capacity from 1560 to 1569. For a time, he was also the personal physician of King João III
(1502–57). Franco was best known for writing Libro de enfermedades contagiosas y la de la
preservación dellas (Book on contagious diseases and about protection against them, 1569).
IV.217n. Faculty at the Collège de France in Paris, where he held the chair in medicine from
1831 to 1855, French physiologist François MAGENDIE (1783–1855) was a pioneer in the fields
of experimental physiology, pharmacology, and pathology. He was elected a member of the Paris
Academy of Sciences in 1821 and became its president in 1837. Magendie was known for being
rude, and his indecorous demeanor led to conflicts with colleagues, among them the famous
Guillaume Dupuytren, who came to regard Magendie as a dangerous rival. In 1821, Magendie
published the inaugural issues of the Journal de Physiologie expérimentale (later Journal de
Physiologie et pathologique expérimentale), the first publication of its kind in France. When he
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visited the chemist-physicist William Hyde Wollaston (1766–1828) in London in 1824,
Magendie publicly experimented on living dogs’ brains, which prompted protests against
vivisection, as it already had in France. Like Stubbins Ffirth, Magendie believed that neither
yellow fever nor cholera were contagious. Although he developed measures for symptomatic
treatment, Magendie deemed quarantine unnecessary. His most significant contribution to
science was also his most controversial: his experiments on the nervous system, in particular the
attempt to verify the differentiation between sensory and motor nerves in the spinal cord, which
eventually became known as the Bell-Magendie law due to the fact that the Scottish surgeon
Charles Bell (1774–1842) performed similar experiments around the same time. The British
claimed that Bell published his discoveries first and that Magendie had stolen Bell’s
experiments.
IV.217n. Chancellor of the University of Tübingen in 1819, the physician Johann Heinrich
Ferdinand von AUTENRIETH (1772–1835) was known for his unusual scientific versatility: he
was knowledgeable in all fields of medicine. After attending the High Karlsschule in Stuttgart in
1785 and the University of Pavia, Lombardy (where he studied with Johann Peter Frank) in
1792, Autenrieth traveled to Pennsylvania with his father in the hope of establishing a medical
practice in Lancaster. Although he failed to do so, Autenrieth was able to study yellow fever in
detail during his stay in America. After his return, in 1797, he was appointed professor of
anatomy and surgery at Tübingen, where, in 1805, he opened the first in-patient clinic. The
observations he made there Autenrieth published in Versuche für die praktische Heilkunde aus
der klinischen Anstalt zu Tübingen (Essays on practical healing from the clinical institute at
Tübingen, 1807–08), a journal he edited. He quickly advanced to a leading member of the
Tübingen medical faculty and became one of the best-known doctors of his time. Autenrieth’s
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most comprehensive work was his Handbuch der empirischen menschlichen Physiologie
(Handbook of empirical human physiology) from 1801, in which he defended empiricism and
scientific research based on experimentation against the then-dominant speculative natural
philosophy.
IV.217n. Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume de GRIMAUD (1750–1789) abandoned his early
classical studies to pursue medicine at the University of Montpellier, where he earned his
doctoral degree in 1776 and then worked for many years. A student of French physiologist Paul
Joseph Barthez’s (1734–1806), an advocate of the theory of vitalism, Grimaud developed a
different view of pathology. The early vitalists’ focus was squarely on the human organism,
whereas Grimaud explored digestion, growth, and other physiological processes that humans
have in common with other life forms. Shunning modern research methods, Grimaud promoted a
doctrine of the “two lives,” a medically grounded metaphysics of sorts, in which he classified
some vital phenomena as “higher” and others as “lower.” Grimaud’s claim was that the human
species was distinctive because of the predominance in it of the former. At Montpellier, he
lectured on physiology and on fevers to large crowds of students. His 1789 paper on nutrition,
which Humboldt mentions here, was written in response to a question from the St. Petersburg
Academy of Sciences.
IV.219. Born into a poor solicitor’s family near Limoges, France, anatomist Baron Guillaume
DUPUYTREN (1777–1835) studied medicine at the École de Santé in France. In 1803, he was
appointed assistant of surgery at the Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris. During this time,
Dupuytren and Louis Jacques Thénard performed the experiments on dogs that Humboldt
mentions here. In 1812, Dupuytren advanced to chair of operative surgery and became chief of
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surgery in 1814. A brilliant surgeon and a tireless worker, he was also intolerant of rivals and
dissenting views. Known as “the Napoleon of Surgery,” he reigned with an iron hand. The
Musée Dupuytren in Paris, a collection of wax anatomical items, was established in 1835 with a
bequest from him.
IV.233t. To raise revenue, the Spanish Crown introduced many terms and levels of taxation to its
American colonies. There were excise taxes, tributes, and payments to avoid military service to
the king. Dating back to the late sixteenth century, the ALCABALA (an excise tax) was initially 2
percent; it was later raised to as much as 6 percent. The members of the clergy and many towns
were exempt from this tax, and nobles sometimes collected the tax for themselves instead of
passing it on to the Crown. In order to increase American revenue, the viceroy of New Granada
gave instructions to remove the alcabala and the brandy monopoly. Unsurprisingly, the alcabala
was a steady source of friction between Spain and its colonies. In 1765, it became a trigger for
the Quito Revolt.
IV.233t. The ALMOJARIFAZGO was a tariff that had to be paid on all merchandize that entered or
departed the Spanish Empire, including goods in transit that were shipped through the various
peninsular and American ports. This tariff was first created by Alfonso X, the Wise (1221–
1284), together with the alcabala. Initially, the almojarifazgo had been a percentage of the value
of all imports; it was calculated on the basis of the value that the merchandize would have in the
Americas, not in the port of embarkation. Alfonso XI (1311–1350), eventual successor to
Alfonso the Wise, attempted to replace the Jewish tax inspectors of old (almojarifes) with
Christian officials, which the Courts of Alcalá authorized in 1348. The almojarifazgo was
abolished in 1783.
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IV.233t. The anata, or MEDIA ANATA, was introduced in 1631 and required that a person, upon
entering the crown’s service, had to pay in an amount equivalent to six months (media, half) of
his wages. This tax paid on assuming office continued after the end of the Franco-Spanish War
(1635–1656).
IV.247. Born in Vitoria, Ignacio María ÁLAVA y Sáenz de Navarrete (1750–1817) was the
fourteenth admiral of the Royal Spanish Armada, which he had joined in 1766. After passing his
theoretical and practical exams later that year, he participated in many voyages to the
Philippines. Promoted to lieutenant in 1778, he became commander of the vessel San Luis. In
1792, he was named mayor-general of the San Francisco de Paula fleet in the war against
England, and he became the head of the fleet two years later. The following year, Álava y Sáenz
commanded a fleet destined to circumnavigate the world. During this voyage, he organized the
naval forces in the Philippines and returned to Cádiz in 1803. In 1810, he was promoted to
commander-general of the Havana colony.
IV.251. Spanish politician Pedro López de LERENA (1734–1792), also known as the Count of
Lerena, was minister of Property and War. After conducting studies at the University of
Salamanca, he devoted himself to business and commerce. In 1770, he was named Royal
Accountant, and he granted permissions for the construction of the medicinal baths of Solán de
Cabras. Secretary of the Spanish treasury in 1785, he is best known for his Memoria sobre la
naturaleza de las rentas públicas de España (Report on the nature of public income in Spain),
from 1790.
IV.253n. Born into a family of wealthy textile manufacturers and merchants, French lawyer
Jacques (also Dominique-Vincent) RAMEL de Nogaret (1760–1829) was Minister of Finance
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under the French Directory from 1796 to 1799, the year when he married Ange-Pauline-
Charlotte Panckoucke, grand-niece of the encyclopedist Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (1739–
1798). A vigorous reformer of the tax system, Ramel was blamed for many of the financial
problems of the time. He kept a low political profile during the Consulate (1799–1804) and the
First French Empire, reentering national politics by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)
after his return from Elba. After the second Bourbon Restoration, Ramel was forced into exile in
Belgium, where he died without be able to return to France.
IV.271n. Together with MANUEL GUAL (1759–1800), the wealthy Venezuelan merchant José
Maria ESPAÑA (1761–99) fomented a conspiracy against imperial Spain in their native port town
of La Guaira. The so-called Gual-España Conspiracy was directly inspired by the French
Revolution: Gual, a military man, was also a passionate reader of French philosophical and
political treatises. When the plot was uncovered in 1797, España fled to the island of Curaçao.
Gual, who was in poor health, sailed for Trinidad in search of arms and supporters. He is
supposed to have died there in 1800. España returned to Venezuela in 1799, where he was
promptly arrested and executed.
IV.305. A native of Fife, Scotland, James GLENIE (bapt. 1750–1817) was a prominent
geometrician and lieutenant. He studied Greek and Latin at the University of St. Andrews, where
he discovered a passion for geometry and other sciences. He also attended divinity class due to
his interest in serving the church but abandoned this idea in favor of making a fortune in the
British Royal Army. Among his greatest geometric achievements, Glenie found a solution to
Matthew Stewart’s 42nd proposition on the 39th theorem, which had remained unsolved for
sixty-five years. Glenie also demonstrated the impossibility of squaring a circle, a lingering
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question in his field of study. He obtained a commission in the artillery unit that allowed him to
put his expertise in geometry into practice. During the eruption of the American War of
Independence, Glenie, now lieutenant of artillery, embarked for the country with his regiment.
During his time in America, he demonstrated exceptional skill, not only in geometry but also in
engineering. In 1776/77, he published a series of impressive papers in the Philosophical
Transactions, along with a book, The History of Gunnery with a New Method of Deriving the
Theory of Projectiles (1776). These publications secured him a membership in the Royal Society
of Edinburgh.
IV.305. Captain-general José Joaquín de BUSTAMANTE y Guerra (1759–1825) was a Spanish
sailor and politician who had joined the Spanish navy of Cádiz in 1770. He took part in various
battles against the Berbers and in a voyage to the Philippines. From 1789 to 1794, he
commanded the corvette Atrevida as part of the Malaspina Expedition, which took him to the
port of Acapulco in 1791, where he made astronomical observations and sounded the depths of
the port and the bay. In 1804, he was placed in command of a fleet of four frigates that carried a
total of four million pesos from South America to the Spanish peninsula. This fleet was
intercepted by the English, and Bustamante was forced to forfeit the cargo. He was court-
martialed as a result but was later exonerated. In 1810, he was appointed captain-general of
Guatemala, a position he kept for nine years.
IV.305. Irish naturalist, botanist, physician, and mineralogist Thomas COULTER (1793–1843) is
considered one of the most significant botanical explorers in early America. His collections were
the foundations of many important contributions to the descriptive botany of Mexico and
California. Coulter received his college education at the University of Dublin (Trinity College),
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where he studied the mechanical and physical sciences and also demonstrated an aptitude for
entomology and botany. In 1824, he accepted a three-year position as a medical physician for the
Real del Monte mining company in Hidalgo, Mexico. During his ten years in Mexico, Coulter
kept meticulous notes and drew up many tables pertaining to the geology and meteorology of
Mexico, particularly the state of Hidalgo, Mexico City, and Real del Monte. Most of his notes
and the specimens he collected were lost when he returned to Europe, leaving only scant
sketches of his travels. Coulter was a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
IV.306. Spanish general and engineer JUAN DE HORBEGOZO (also Orbegozo) was a member of
the Provisional Governing Board during the independence of Mexico (1810–1821). He was
elected a foreign corresponding member of the Royal Geographical Society in London around
1836.
IV.307. Aristides Franklin MORNAY (b. 1779–1855) was a geologist, miner, and mineralogist
best known for classifying the Bendigo iron mass as a meteorite (the iron mass was first located
in Brazil in 1784, and its source and origins had previously been unknown). Mornay collected
samples of this iron mass and gave some of them to Lord Henry Dundas, who donated them to
the English Geological Society. A sample of this meteorite was also given to Alexander von
Humboldt.