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CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Humboldt's Gifts Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
RALPH WALDO EMERSON would label him "one of those wonders of the world, like Aristotle ... who appear from time to time, as if to show us the possibilities of the human mind." Edgar Allan Poe would dedicate his last major work, "Eureka," a 150-page prose poem, to him. He so dazzled Thomas Jefferson that the two men began a lifelong correspondence. Though he never saw the American West, no fewer than thirty-nine towns, counties, mountains, bays, and caves were named for him, and the state of Nevada was nearly so. Only Napoleon would be as famous in his time.
But that was all yet to come. First, the young Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and his companion, the French botanist Aimé Bonpland, would have to get their bearings in the South American paradise in which they had landed in the summer of 1799. No naturalist had ever been there; all that lay before them was new and unexplored. Humboldt wrote to his brother back in Europe:
"What trees! Coconut trees, fifty to sixty foot high ... with enormous leaves and scented flowers, as big as the palm of a hand, of which we knew nothing ... And what colors in birds, fish, even crayfish (sky blue and yellow)! We rush around like the demented; in the first three days we were quite unable to classify anything; we pick up one object to throw it away for the next, Bonpland keeps telling me that he will go mad if the wonders do not cease soon."
The wonders did not cease, and thankfully Bonpland did not go mad, despite some of Humboldt's exploits.
Humboldt was curious, and well read, about everything. Two years earlier, while still in Europe, he had completed several thousand experiments that confirmed Luigi Galvani's discovery that muscle and nerve tissue are electrically excitable. His interest in animal electricity was thus very fresh when he encountered the wonder of "electric eels" in the streams in the Calabozo region of central Venezuela. Mesmerized by the three- to five-foot- long fish that he and his native assistants had brought to shore, he mistakenly stepped on one — and received an agonizing shock. "I do not remember ever having received a more dreadful shock from the discharge of a Leyden jar [an early device for conducting experiments in electricity], than which I experienced ... I was affected for the rest of the day with a violent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint."
The eel's 500-volt wallop did not dissuade Humboldt from various experiments: "I often tried, both insulated and uninsulated, to touch the fish, without feeling the least shock. When M. Bonpland held it by the head, or by the middle of the body, while I held it by the tail, and, standing on the moist ground, did not take each other's hand, one of us received shocks while the other did not ... If two persons touch the belly of the fish with their fingers, at an inch distance, and press simultaneously, sometimes one, sometimes the other will receive the shock."
He was game as well for many other potentially unpleasant experiments. When he and Bonpland discovered a "cow tree," a relative of the rubber tree named for its production of a kind of milk, Humboldt drank a gourd full of the liquid — much to Bonpland's horror. When a servant repeated the act, the poor fellow "vomited up rubber balls for several hours." Humboldt also tasted curare, the lethal poison used by the Indians to tip their blow-darts. Figuring it was deadly only if taken intravenously, Humboldt found "its taste of an agreeable bitter."
Such was the science of natural history in 1800.
But Humboldt's interests and aptitude spread far beyond these few curiosities. He was well versed in every domain of science — botany, geography, astronomy, geology — and in every aspect of human history in the New and Old World. In the course of his five-year journey (1799–1804) through Venezuela, Brazil, Guiana, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico, he and Bonpland collected vast quantities of botanical, zoological, geological, and ethnographic specimens; made countless highly accurate maps; and witnessed a total eclipse, an earthquake, and a spectacular meteor shower (Leonid). They measured mountains and scaled the highest peak in Ecuador to an altitude of 19,286 — higher than any human had ever gone before (even in a balloon) and a feat that would not be topped for 80 years; descended into a volcano; noted the cold north-flowing Pacific current that now bears Humboldt's name; and studied and admired the ancient civilizations of the pre-Columbian world (then unknown in Europe).
Such experiences were only made possible, of course, by Humboldt and Bonpland's exposing themselves to many dangers. Indeed, Humboldt was pessimistic about his odds of surviving the expedition, for he was convinced that his destiny was to be drowned on the high seas. After five years during which he escaped attacks from natives, dodged ambush by jaguars, withstood the endless assaults of swarms of mosquitoes, battled tropical diseases, endured jailing by authorities, and somehow avoided drowning when his canoe capsized (he could not swim), Humboldt's destiny was almost realized on his return journey.
When Humboldt stopped in Cuba, an American diplomat encouraged him to delay his return to Europe and to visit the United States. Humboldt was already an admirer of Thomas Jefferson and decided to make the detour. But in May 1804, on his way to Philadelphia from Havana, his ship was caught in a bad storm off the coast of Georgia. Humboldt feared for his life. After all he and Bonpland had endured, he despaired that they might die so close to the conclusion of their voyage. He later wrote in his journal;
I felt very much stirred up. To see myself perish on the eve of so many joys, to watch all the fruits of my labors going to pieces, to cause the death of my two companions [a young Ecuadoran accompanied Bonpland and Humboldt on their trip], to perish during a voyage to Philadelphia which seemed by no means necessary ...
Once the storm abated, the ship had to pass through the British naval blockade that then extended across all of the harbors along the east coast.
Finally safe in Philadelphia, Humboldt took to the new republic very quickly. He believed that America was a great new country that was freeing itself from the shackles of the outmoded European order. He wrote directly to Jefferson both to introduce himself and to state his purpose in visiting. After a warm, flattering greeting and a brief description of his past five years of travels, he told the president: "I would love to talk to you about a subject that you have treated so ingeniously in your work on Virginia, the teeth of a mammoth which we discovered in the Andes of the southern hemisphere at 1,700 toises [about 10,800 feet] above the level of the Pacific Ocean."
Yes, that's right, Humboldt wanted to talk to the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, the former governor of Virginia (1779–1781), the first secretary of state (1789–1793), the second vice president of the United States (1797–1801), and its third president — about fossils.
Humboldt knew of Jefferson's keen interest in fossils, particularly those of the mammoth, from his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). The work began as a response to a list of questions from the French concerning the fledgling states they were assisting. It grew to be a comprehensive treatment of the geography, flora, fauna, agriculture, history, customs, commerce, and other subjects concerning Virginia and the United States.
In Notes, Jefferson had written about the "mammoth" bones that had been discovered in Kentucky and New York's Hudson Valley. He used their existence to refute the so-called Theory of American Degeneracy propounded by a French naturalist, the Comte de Buffon. Buffon had alleged that the more humid and colder climate of North America, compared to that of Europe, led to a marked inferiority in its wildlife, livestock, and indigenous people. That did not sit well at all with Jefferson, who emphasized the great size of the mammoth — "the largest of all terrestrial beings" — and thought it alone was sufficient to squash Buffon's theory.
Years later, while vice president, Jefferson was given a set of bones from a cave in West Virginia. He analyzed a forelimb and a hand with giant claws and dubbed the unknown animal "Megalonyx," or "Giant-Claw." He first thought that they might belong to a giant cat threetimes the size of a lion. He was not confident of his interpretation, however, and when he caught a glimpse of a giant ground sloth in an article by the French paleontologist Georges Cuvier, he saw a possible resemblance. His bones were in fact those of a ground sloth, which was later named Megalonyx jeffersonii in his honor.
In 1799, Jefferson's article on Megalonyx was published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, perhaps the first American publication in the field of paleontology. But far more important to Jefferson than scientific credit was what the mammoth and the Megalonyx bones signified about his expanding republic. At the time, the idea that fossils represented extinct species was not well established. Jefferson and many others could not accept that any link in God's chain of creation would be allowed to perish. "Such is the economy of nature," Jefferson wrote, "that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any race of animals to become extinct." He believed that mammoths and other beasts were still roaming:
In the present interior of our continent there is surely space and range enough for elephants and lions ... Our entire ignorance of the immense country to the West and North-West, and of its contents, does not authorise us to say what it does not contain.
A few years later, as president, when he sent Lewis and Clark west, he included the order to observe "all the animals of the country generally, & especially ... any which are deemed rare or extinct." After their return, he then personally financed an expedition led by Clark to a large deposit in Kentucky, which yielded several hundred mammal bones. About half of them were sent to the White House, where they filled the unfinished East Room, dubbed at the time the "Bone" or "Mastodon" Room.
When Humboldt arrived in Washington in June 1804, he met with Jefferson, Vice President James Madison, and other officials over a span of ten days. There was talk of fossils, but Jefferson had many other concerns on his mind. The recently completed Louisiana Purchase now gave the United States a border with Spanish America. Jefferson was desperate for intelligence on Mexico when Humboldt appeared — fresh from Mexico with accurate data and maps and insights into its political and economic situation. Humboldt had all of the answers to Jefferson's questions about roads, mines, Indian tribes,crops, settlements, and more, and he was delighted to share it with perhaps the only man whose reach and grasp matched his own.
Humboldt thereafter showed his admiration for Jefferson, and all things American, in many ways. After he returned to Europe, he received a steady stream of American dignitaries — diplomats, politicians, inventors, and writers — over the next few decades. Most important, Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia served as a model for Humboldt's writings. The American's full descriptions of his country, its geography, people, and history, its animals and plants, its climate and commerce, influenced Humboldt's approach to documenting his travels in the New World.
Those writings would encompass every dimension of the countries Humboldt visited, as well as the heavens above them. The full account of his voyage comprised some thirty volumes, which were published over the ensuing three decades. The 1,425 maps and illustrations in his opus were so elaborate that the cost of reproducing them would eventually bankrupt him. In his later years, Humboldt maintained his prodigious output. At the age of seventy-six, he published the first part of his five-volume Kosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe (1845), "an attempt to delineate nature in all its vivid animation and exalted grandeur." His books and frequent contact with the leaders and most prominent citizens of the New and Old Worlds made him famous the world over.
Humboldt was, as one historian described, "the master of all branches of science at the last moment in history when this was possible for a single human being." After Humboldt, even the greatest naturalists would be specialists.
And because of Humboldt, there came many naturalists.
The shorter account of his voyage, his Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (1815), not only enlarged his fame but also inspired many of the major figures of nineteenth-century natural history and exploration — names that are, ironically, better known today than Humboldt's. Young Charles Lyell, who became the father of modern geology, remarked after meeting the great Humboldt in Paris, "There are few heroes who lose so little by being approached as Humboldt." Humboldt also directly supported the young Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz and convinced him to move to the United States, where he became a professor at Harvard and the leading figure in American natural history.
Then there was Charles Darwin. As a fledgling student at Cambridge University in the late 1820s, Darwin read all seven volumes and 3,754 pages of Humboldt's Personal Narrative. He was so enamored of Humboldt's descriptions of the Tropics that he read them over and over, committing parts to memory and reciting them aloud until he drove his friends crazy. The first volume of the Personal Narrative was one of the few books that Darwin took with him on the voyage of the Beagle, and he read it often to buck up his courage to endure his constant seasickness. It became the model for his own travelogue, The Voyage of the Beagle.
Humboldt's tales of his South American adventures had the same effect on Alfred Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, inspiring their decision to explore the Amazon region.
But, as great as Humboldt's accomplishments and influence were, his particular view of nature was to be overturned by the very generation of naturalists he inspired. Humboldt saw nature, both its living and nonliving components, as a somewhat static and peaceful domain that reflected an integrated design and divine order. Before his expedition, he wrote to a colleague that his main purpose was "to observe the interactions of forces, the influence of the inanimate environment on plant and animal life. My eyes will constantly focus on this harmony.
Humboldt did not seek explanations of, for example, the origins of living things, for he saw that question as outside the sphere of natural history. So, too, did many of his contemporaries. Agassiz defined a species as a "thought of God" and declared that "Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe."
Those who followed Humboldt into the Tropics developed an altogether different agenda for natural history and a picture of nature as a perpetual struggle among all organisms, a view that would replace entirely the Humboldtian ideal.
Humboldt died in May 1859, just six months before this new world view was articulated in The Origin of Species.
The eminent historian David McCullough has suggested that Humboldt's most important impact was to demonstrate "how relatively little had been known of the richness and variety of life on Earth, the infinite abundance of life's forms, and how infinitely muchmore there was to know." To young bug collectors who had exhausted the limited resources of damp, cold, gray England, the destinations of Humboldt's Narratives were irresistible. Add the high adventure and romance of traveling in unexplored regions and the thrill of encountering natural wonders, and it is perhaps no wonder why so many followed in his footsteps.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Remarkable Creatures"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Sean B. Carroll.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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