Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Notwithstanding
The Efforts I Have Made To Avoid, In This Narrative, The Errors I
Had To Dread, I Feel Conscious That I Have Not Always Succeeded In
Separating The Observations Of Detail From Those General Results
Which Interest Every Enlightened Mind.
These results comprise in
one view the climate and its influence on organized beings, the
aspect of the country,
Varied according to the nature of the soil
and its vegetable covering, the direction of the mountains and
rivers which separate races of men as well as tribes of plants; and
finally, the modifications observable in the condition of people
living in different latitudes, and in circumstances more or less
favourable to the development of their faculties. I do not fear
having too much enlarged on objects so worthy of attention: one of
the noblest characteristics which distinguish modern civilization
from that of remoter times is, that it has enlarged the mass of our
conceptions, rendered us more capable of perceiving the connection
between the physical and intellectual world, and thrown a more
general interest over objects which heretofore occupied only a few
scientific men, because those objects were contemplated separately,
and from a narrower point of view.
As it is probable that these volumes will obtain the attention of a
greater number of readers than the detail of my observations merely
scientific, or my researches on the population, the commerce, and
the mines of New Spain, I may be permitted here to enumerate all
the works which I have hitherto published conjointly with M.
Bonpland. When several works are interwoven in some sort with each
other, it may perhaps be interesting to the reader to know the
sources whence he may obtain more circumstantial information.
1.I.1. ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS, TRIGONOMETRICAL OPERATIONS, AND
BAROMETRICAL MEASUREMENTS MADE DURING THE COURSE OF A JOURNEY TO
THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF THE NEW CONTINENT, FROM 1799 TO 1804.
This work, to which are added historical researches on the position
of several points important to navigators, contains, first, the
original observations which I made from the twelfth degree of
southern to the forty-first degree of northern latitude; the
transits of the sun and stars over the meridian; distances of the
moon from the sun and the stars; occultations of the satellites;
eclipses of the sun and moon; transits of Mercury over the disc of
the sun; azimuths; circum-meridian altitudes of the moon, to
determine the longitude by the differences of declination;
researches on the relative intensity of the light of the austral
stars; geodesical measures, etc. Secondly, a treatise on the
astronomical refractions in the torrid zone, considered as the
effect of the decrement of caloric in the strata of the air;
thirdly, the barometric measurement of the Cordillera of the Andes,
of Mexico, of the province of Venezuela, of the kingdom of Quito,
and of New Grenada; followed by geological observations, and
containing the indication of four hundred and fifty-three heights,
calculated according to the method of M. Laplace, and the new
co-efficient of M. Ramond; fourthly, a table of near seven hundred
geographical positions on the New Continent; two hundred and
thirty-five of which have been determined by my own observations,
according to the three co-ordinates of longitude, latitude, and
height.
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