IT may be doubted whether the method of publication adopted
by M. de Humboldt is that in which either his interest or his
reputation has best been consulted. We know of no two travel-
lers, ancient or modern, who have traversed so many leagues of
foolscap as Doctor Clarke and the Baron de Humboldt:—we mean
* Wide Almanach Impérial de France for the years 1813 and 1814.

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 441
not, however, to insinuate any further comparison between them—
M. de Humboldt, unquestionably, possesses talents of the first
order; he has a vivid imagination, zeal bordering on enthusiasm,
and perseverance that seems never to tire; but we suspect that
having no settled principles of philosophy or physiology, he easily
yields to every new suggestion which crosses him, provided it wears
but the semblance of plausibility. The two volumes now before
us constitute, if we mistake not, the eighth separate work on which
he has been engaged, in the greater part of which we are enter-
tained with the same objects differently described, more or less ex-
tended, differently dressed up, and placed in somewhat different
points of view; but immediately recognizable as the same: finally
(if it be final) comes the ‘Personal Narrative, which, like Aaron's
rod, is intended to swallow up the rest; to exhibit, in extenso, and
in one connected narrative, all that has already been said in his
preceding publications—this, in our opinion, both for his own
and his readers' sake, ought to have been his first and only work.
The “Researches are only a re-publication, under a new name,
of a former work, entitled “Views of the Cordilleras and Monu-
ments of the indigenous Nations of the New Continent, with a
selection from the sixty-nine plates, which accompanied that work,
of nineteen to illustrate this; so that we have now in the ‘Re-
searches, references to plates that have no existence, or exist only
in another book. This, we repeat, is bad management—but it is
less our concern than the author's. -
The principal objects in these ‘Researches are fully explained
in the ‘Introduction to the ‘Personal Narrative of Travels.’
‘This work is meant to display a few of the great scenes of nature
in the lofty chain of the Andes, and at the same time to throw some light
on the ancient civilization of the Americans, from the study of their mo-
numents of architecture, their hieroglyphics, their religious rites, and
their astrological reveries. I have given in this work descriptions of the
Teocalli, or Mexican Pyramids, compared with that of the temple of
Belus, the arabesques which cover the ruins of Mitla, idols in basalt,
ornamented with the calantica of the heads of Isis; and a considerable
number of symbolical paintings, representing the serpent woman, who
is the Mexican Eve; the Deluge of Coxcox, and the first migrations
of the natives of the Azteck race. I have endeavoured to prove the
analogies which exist between the calendar of the Tolteck and the
catasterisms of their zodiac, and the division of time of the people of
Tartary and Thibet; as well as the Mexican traditions of the four
regenerations of the globe, the pralayas of the Hindoos, and the four
Ages of Hesiod. I have also included in this work, in addition to the
hieroglyphical paintings I brought back to Europe, fragments of all
the Azteck manuscripts which are found at Rome, Veletri, Vienna,
and Dresden; and of which the last reminds us, by its lineary symbols,

442 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
of the Kouas of the Chinese. Together with the rude monuments of
the natives of America, the same volume contains picturesque views
of the mountainous countries which these people have inhabited; such
as those of the Cataract of Tequendama, of Chimborazo, of the Vol-
cano of Jorullo, and of Cayambe, the pyramidal summit of which,
covered with perennial ice, is situate directly under the equinoxial
line.’
This is a faithful abstract of the contents of the “Researches,’
two-thirds of which might just as well have been composed by one
who never crossed the barriers of Paris, as by him who has
traversed the Cordilleras of the Andes: and M. de Humboldt has
here unwittingly added to the number of those who have shewn
that, to write “Researches, it is by no means necessary to travel:
Pauw, for instance, composed his ‘ Recherches Philosophiques sur
les Américains, as the Abbé Grozier says he did his ‘Recherches
sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois, while seated in his easy chair in
Berlin. We prefer, however, the descriptions and delineations of
one who has clambered up the sides of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi,
to the deepest researches of him who has mounted no higher than
the upper step of the library ladder, inasmuch as we prefer plain
matters of fact, collected by the senses, to the most splendid theory
and ingenious speculations collected out of books.
It is in vain for M. de Humboldt to endeavour to exonerate him-
self from the charge of being a theorist, while every page of his
book, that is not purely descriptive, teems with theory; it is
surprizing, indeed, that he should not perceive how high he stands
in the ranks of ‘those learned men who, allured by splendid hypo-
theses, built on very unstable foundations, have drawn general con-
sequences from a small number of solitary facts; and that he is
constantly offending against his own rule, that—‘in attempting to
generalize ideas, we should learn to stop at the point where pre-
cise data are wanting. It is true he does not appear to have any
preference for a particular theory, but indulges in all; sailing with
every wind, and swimming with every stream; he grounds an argu-
ment and draws his conclusion from suspicious and unauthenti-
cated data, with the same confidence as from established facts; he
sees resemblances and finds analogies between objects the most
discordant and heterogeneous, if they possess but one single point
of agreement, real or imaginary: can we wonder then to find him so
frequently drawn into inconsistencies and contradictions ? These
two volumes abundantly attest this uncontrollable propensity of an
exuberant imagination, a propensity encouraged and increased by
an unwearied, but indiscriminate, research for printed authorities.
All the institutions and religious notions, the monuments, the lan-
guages,

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 443
guages, the traditions, of the American savages, are at one time
traced to the Chinese, Moguls, Hindoos, Tungooses, and other
Asiatic nations; and, at another, to the ‘bearded Ainos of the
isles of Jesso and Sachalien'—And why to the Ainos, of all the peo-
ple in the world:—for no other reason, at least no other is
assigned by M. de Humboldt, than that “three men with beards,
and with clearer complexions than the natives of Anahuac, Cundina-
namarca, and the elevated plain of Couzco, whose names were
Quetzalcoatl, Bochica, and Manco-Capac, make their appearance
on the new continent without any indication of the place of their
birth.'—(Introduction.) The three fanciful figures, with long .
beards, flowing robes, and fine Grecian faces, which are given in
the Atlas to the voyage of the unfortunate La Peyrouse, as portraits
of the inhabitants of Sachalien, must have been fresh in the memory
of M. de Humboldt when he wrote this paragraph—portraits of
men, we venture to say, who never existed but in the painter's ima-
gination.
If, instead of a new continent, in the literal sense of the ex-
pression, America had been considered only as a newly-discovered
continent, many a learned disputation might have been spared on
the peopling of this supposed new world; for though there can be
no manner of doubt that the people who inhabit the American and
Asiatic shores of Behring's Strait have had, and still have, a mutual
intercourse, and consequently all difficulty of accounting for the
event is at once removed, yet it by no means follows as a neces-
sary consequence, that the people of America originally passed
from the continent of Asia. We are not to conclude that, because
the people of an adjacent continent are less civilized than those
of its neighbour, the former must have sprung from the letter.
The Egyptians, who inhabit the nost barbarous continent of the
old world, were at one time probably the most civilized of nations;
and, for ought we know to the contrary, the stupid negroes may be
the most ancient race of mankind. We agree, therefore, entirely,
with M. de Humboldt, that there is no proof whatever that the
existence of man is much more recent in America than on the other
continent; yet it is from the contrary assumption that all those dis-
cussions have originated. Those, who held them, proceeded on
the notion that the new continent emerged from the waters at a later
period than the old, and that it was more philosophical to account
for the peopling of the former from the latter, than to interpose
the hand of Divine Power to form a new creation of man! It is
' true that in the great family of the human race dispersed over
the globe, once so difficult but now so easy to be traversed in every
direction, there is but one species, or, as M. de Humboldt expresses
it, “one single organic type, modified by circumstances into a mul-
vol. xv. No. xxx. H H titude

444 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
titude of varieties, according to situation, subsistence, climate, em-
ployment, and education. And yet when a number of animals
were found, and, among others, those remarkable ones, the Lama,
the Alpaca, and the Guanaco, peculiar to the lofty region of the
Andes, and unknown to the rest of the world, it seemed to afford
the theorist some grounds for arguing, that the same power which
placed these quadrupeds on the newly-discovered continent might
also have planted there, originally, the American race of man,
which, says our author, is “characterized by the formation of the
scull, the colour of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and
straight and glossy hair. But, admitting that these were specific
differences, which they are not, such an argument might very easily
be overthrown. How do we know that these animals proceed not
from the remaining few of those which escaped one of those great
catastrophes which have so evidently befallen the earth, by taking
refuge on those elevated regions, while the Gnoo, the Hippopota-
mus, and the Camelopardalis found security on the opposite conti-
nent of Africa? At any rate, the opinion that the geological con-
stitution of America is different from that of the old world, has
completely been refuted.
“We discern in the former the same succession of stony strata that
we find in our own hemisphere; and it is probable that in the moun-
tains of Peru, the granites, the micaceous schists, or the different
formations of gypsum and gritstone existed originally at the same pe-
riods as the rocks of the same denominations in the Alps of Switzerland.
The whole globe appears to have undergone the same catastrophe.
At a height superior to that of Mount Blanc, on the summit of the
Andes, we find petrified sea-shells; fossil bones of elephants are spread
over the equinoxial regions; and what is very remarkable, they are
not discovered at the feet of the palm trees in the burning plains of
the Orinoco, but on the coldest and most elevated regions of the
Cordilleras. In the new world, as well as in the old, generations of
species long extinct have preceded those which now people the earth,
the waters, and the air.’—(Introduction, p. 12.)
We cannot discover from what particular Asiatic stock M. de
Humboldt supposes the American race to have derived their origin.
He finds in the Toltecks, the Aztecks, the Muyscas, and the Peru-
vians, so many resemblances and analogies to every nation of
Asia, and to every tribe, from the Caucasus to the Tschoudes, and
from the borders of Scandinavia to Japan, and occasionally to
some of the nations of Europe and Africa,—that, unless China or
Thibet preponderate, we are unable to say how he has settled the
point in his own mind. From etymological researches he derives
but little aid; though in his introduction to the ‘Personal Nar-
rative he prepares us for much learned discussion ‘on the cha-
racter

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 445.
racter of languages, which are the most durable monuments of
nations.”
In eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton
and Water, one hundred and seventy words only were found whose
roots could be considered as common to both continents; and of
these, three-fifths resemble the Mantchou, the Tongouse, the Mon-
gol, and the Samoyede; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tschoud,
the Biscayen, the Coptic, and the Congo languages. One hundred
and two words, however, common to Asia and America, were not
to be rejected by a comparative etymologist. ‘The terms, says
M. de Humboldt, “ of mor, igh, tor, baz, hir, and chic, do not
seem to belong to America, but to that part of Eastern Asia which
is inhabited by nations whose languages are monosyllabic. He
adds,—‘we shall on this occasion observe that the Chinese termi-
nation tsin is found in a great number of Mexican proper names;
for instance, in Tonantsin, Acamapitsin, Coanacotsin, Cuitlahua-
tsin, and Tzilacatsin.’—(ii. p. 223.)—We are surprized, we own,
that while on this subject we escaped a long and detailed compari-
son between the sesquipedalian compounds of the Sanscrit and
such Azteck words as Tlacahuepaneuercotzin, Tetlayhiouiltiliztli,
and Amatlacuilolitguitcatlaxtlahuilli. But the fact is, that M. de
Humboldt is not much of an etymologist, and we think not the
worse of him on that account. As to his monosyllabic derivatives,
we should just as soon expect to be told that old Lilly's monosylla-
bic hexameters—his ‘gryps, Thrax, rex, grex, Phryx,’ &c.—were
stolen from a Jesuit's Chinese dictionary, as to find M. de Hum-
boldt's mor, tor, hir, or chic, among the dialects of any of the Indo-
Chinese nations. We will not suspect that he can be ignorant of
the powers of the letters of the Spanish alphabet, but conclude
rather that he has merely transcribed from Spanish books, and not
collected from living authorities on the spot, such words as Irti-
lirochitl, Tirlpitzin, Q20cuiltereque, and a hundred of the same
kind, in all of which the Spanish x, whose power is so different
from the same letter in French, is religiously preserved. We re-
member a Portugueze x to have drawn a very learned etymologist
into a ridiculous blunder: he had proved, to his own satisfaction,
that the Latin word eximius was derived from the Chinese root
aim; not once suspecting that the power of x, in the Portugueze
alphabet, is, in ours, equivalent to sh, and that of m to ng ; so that,
according to his theory, the Romans must have pronounced their
derivative eshingius. We have always considered as extremely ab-
surd, the attempt to deduce a common origin between nations from
the identity of a few monosyllables, whether in sound or sense; a
similar mechanism in the structure of two different languages
affords a far better ground for such a conclusion.
H H 2 M. de

446 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
M. de Humboldt is almost as unfortunate in his “Chinese ter-
mination tsin. The Chinese language, being wholly, monosyllabic,.
can hardly be said to have terminations; the same syllable is at
once initial and final. But this little word tsin, in De Guignes'
Chinese Dictionary of 14,000 characters, scarcely the third part of
those in use, has no less than forty-three different significations; and
probably, therefore, in the whole language, three times that num-
ber, or one hundred and twenty-nine: among other things, it means
a particular kind of horse, a species of rice, of fish, of precious
stone; it means cold, and to make warm, to cut, to sleep, &c.
Whether in any, or which, of these senses it is employed in his
“Cuitlahuatzin' and “Tzilacatsin, he does not inform us. If, as
he says, it be true that ‘languages are the most durable monu-
ments of nations, still we think he has done right in deserting this
fruitful field of speculation; though the ground which he has taken
is, in our opinion, ten times more tender and treacherous than
that which he has abandoned. ‘If, says he, “languages supply
but feeble evidence of ancient communication between the two
worlds, this communication is fully proved by the cosmogonies,
the monuments, the hieroglyphics, and institutions of the people
of America and Asia. We shall state some of the proofs pro-
duced by M. de Humboldt, leaving our readers to form their own
judgment as to their validity;—but first, it should be observed, that
all which regards the history, cosmogony, institutions, &c. of this
people, is, to say the least of it, very problematical, being drawn
solely from those rude Mexican paintings, which may be made to
represent whatever the interpreter pleases,—and copied by M. de
Humboldt from the writings of the early Spaniards, Acosta, Go-
mara, Torquemada, Garcilasso de la Vega, and others;—but particu-
larly from that fanciful and credulous system-monger, the Abbé Cla-
vigero, whose two quarto volumes, as Robertson justly observes,
‘contain hardly any addition to the ancient history of the Mexican
empire as related by Acosta and Herrera, but what is derived from
the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada
and Boturini. This Italian Abbé and Gemelli Careri are the two
principal authorities on whom M. de Humboldt ventures to erect
a new and improved system of interpretation, although the lattes
has been strongly suspected of having exercised his ingenuity in
shewing how very successfully a ‘voyage round the world’ may be . .
performed by the fire-side. But having copied Gemelli's hiero-
glyphic painting, M. de Humboldt could not do less than defend
the author of the ‘Giro del Mundo against the charge of writing
a ‘fictitious voyage.’
‘I can affirm it, says M. de Humboldt, “to be no less certain that
- Gemell'.

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 447
Gemelli was in Mexico, at Acapulco, and the small villages of Mazat-
lan and of San Augustin de las Cuevas, than that Pallas has been in
the Crimea, and Mr. Salt in Abyssinia. Gemelli's descriptions have
that local tint which is the principal charm of the narratives of travels
written by the most unlettered men; and which can be given only by
those who have been ocular witnesses of what they describe.'
We can say the same of Gemelli's descriptions in another
quarter of the globe; and also bear testimony that his book
contains “an inextricable mixture of errors and well-observed
facts'—such facts and such errors, however, as might have been
collected out of the works of preceding travellers.
- The hieroglyphical paintings which M. de Humboldt undertakes
to explain over again, and improve on Clavigero's system, were not
procured by him in America, but are those of the Vatican, of
Weletri, of Vienna, of Dresden, of Berlin, of Paris, of Mendoza,
(which are printed in Purchas's Pilgrims,) and of Gemelli; he seems
to regret the want of a ‘Codex Mexicanus, which, as he learnt
from a well-informed traveller, is shewn in a library at Oxford,
and is surprized that it should have remained unknown to the illus-
trious Scottish historian,—but Robertson knew how to appreciate
those Mexican paintings; he knew that the most authentic and
valuable, if any value can be attached to them, are those pub-
lished by Purchas, and was therefore not likely to give himself
much concern about what was inexplicable, unauthenticated, and
consequently useless, if not injurious, to the truth of history:
besides, we have reason to believe no such ‘Codex exists at Ox-
ford. If our readers should not feel disposed to concur in opinion
with M. Pauw, when he says, “on n'est pas certain que le manu-
scrit Mericain renferme un seul mot de ce qu'on croit y entrevoir,’
we would recommend them to examine and form their own esti-
mate of M. de Humboldt's translation or interpretation of ‘a law-
suit in hieroglyphical writing, (vol. i. p. 141.) and the ‘Epochs
of Nature according to the Azteck Mythology, (vol. ii. p. 15.)
The explanation given to the latter will, we think, appear to them,
as it does to us, a precious piece of mummery; and yet it is from
this that M. de Humboldt lays the greatest stress on the ancient
intercourse of the Old and the New world.
“The most prominent feature, he says, “among the analogies ob-
served in the monuments, the manners, and traditions of the people of
Asia and America, is that which the Mexican mythology exhibits in
cosmogonical fiction of the periodical destructions and regenerations
of the world.”
The “Codex Vaticanus, which is supposed to contain this fic-
tion, was copied, in 1566, by a Dominican monk of the name of
H H 3 . Pedro

448 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
Pedro de los Rios; and we are told that it represents the four
different epochs or ages, at which the sun, and with it the human
race, has been destroyed. According to this matchless record, we are
now, that is to say the Mexicans are, in the fifth age, the gods hav-
ing, for the fifth time, created a man and a woman. This fifth cre-
ation rather militates against the Bhagavata Pourana; but we have it,
notwithstanding, elsewhere, — a tradition offive ages, analogous with
that of the Mexicans, being found on the elevated plains of Thibet.”
Hesiod too, in his explanation of ‘the oriental system of the reno-
vation of nature, makes five generations in four ages, by dividing
the age of brass into two parts; and M. de Humboldt observes,
that “we may be astonished that so clear a passage should ever
have been misinterpreted. The first sun, cycle, or age, was de-
stroyed by famine, or giants, or tigers, it is not clear which, after
a duration of 5206 years. “It corresponds with the age of justice
(Sakia Youga) of the Hindoos, and we can be at no loss for a
arallel case to that of the giants; as, ‘according to the Pouranas,
£ or the young Rama then also gained his first victory over
Ravana, King of the Giants of the Island of Ceylon.’
The second age was destroyed by fire; its duration was 4804
years. As birds alone were able to escape the general conflagra-
tion all men were transformed into birds. The third age was ter-
minated by tempests; the men who did not perish in them were
transformed into apes. The fourth age was destroyed by water
after a duration of 4008 years : “men were transformed into fish,
except one man and one woman, who saved themselves in the trunk
of an ahahuète, or cupressus distica. These two of course were
the Mexican Noah and his wife, named Corcor and Xochiquetzal.
We shall extract the history of the deluge of Corcor, though taken
from the suspicious authority of Gemelli Careri, and we must say
that, after reading it, in spite of the evidence of ‘all that is symbo-
lical and chronological in the painting of the migrations with the
hieroglyphics contained in the manuscripts of Rome and Veletri,’
we find ourselves “among the number of those infidels who give cre-
dit to the hypothesis, that the drawing of Gemelli is the fiction of
some Spanish monk, who has attempted to prove, by apocryphal
documents, that the traditions of the Hebrews are found among the
indigenous nations of America.’
“The painting represents Coxcox in the midst of the water lying in
a bark. The mountain, the summit of which, crowned by a tree, rises
above the waters, is the peak Colhuacan, the Ararat of the Mexicans.
The horn, which is represented on the left, is the phonetic hieroglyphic
of Colhuacan. At the foot of the mountain appear the heads of Coxcox
and his wife. The latter of these is known by the two tresses in the
form of horns, which denote the female sex. The men born after the
deluge

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 449
deluge were dumb: a dove from the top of a tree distributes among
them tongues represented under the form of small commas. We must
not confound this dove with the bird which brings Coxcox tidings that
the waters were dried up. The people of Mechoacan preserved a tra-
dition, according to which Coxcox, whom they called Tezpi, embarked
in a spacious acalli with his wife, his children, several animals, and
grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind. When
the great spirit Tezcatlipoca ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent
out from his bark a vulture, the zopilote (vultur aurea). This bird,
which feeds on dead flesh, did not return on account of the great num-
r of carcasses with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed.
ezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the humming bird, alone re-
turned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves; Tezpi, seeing
that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark near the
Mountain of Colhuacan.”—vol. ii. p. 64.
Well may M. de Humboldt say that ‘ these traditions remind
us of others of high and venerable antiquity. To us they smell
most rankly of the ‘Spanish Monk. This deluge took place not
many centuries before the Spanish conquest according to the an-
mals of a people that extended not more than 320 years back from
that invasion; according to Pedro de los Rios, Gomara, Cla-
vigero, Gemelli Careri, and M. de Humboldt, it happened eighteen
thousand and twenty-eight years (the sum of the four ages) after
the beginning of the first age; but, according to Ixtlilxochitl, (we
should like to hear M. de Humboldt pronounce this word,) a native
Mexican, only one thousand four hundred and seventeen years from
that epoch. Our author is not in the least disconcerted by this
trifling discrepancy in point of time. “We ought not to be
astonished at it, he says, “when we recollect the hypotheses which,
in our days, have been advanced by Bailly, Sir William Jones, and
Bentley, on the duration of the five Yougas of the Hindoos. He
adds, however, “I have never been able to discover any peculiar
propriety (property?) in the number of 18,028 years; it is not a
multiple of 13, 19, 52, 60, 72, 360, or 1440, which are the num-
bers found in the cycles of the Asiatic nations:’—but give M. de
Humboldt three years only—three little years—to add to these
Mexican four suns, let him but change their respective durations,
and then,-‘if for the numbers 5206, 4804, 4010, and 4008, the
numbers 5206,4807, 4009, and 4009, were substituted, we might
suppose that these cycles originated from a knowledge of the lunar
period of nineteen years!'
The next ‘cosmogonical analogy, taken from the ‘Codex Vati-
canus, represents the “ celebrated serpent woman, Cihuacohuatl,
called also Quelastli, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh; she is
always represented with a serpent, and is considered as the mother
of the human race.
H II 4 - ‘These

450 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
‘These allegories remind us of the ancient traditions of Asia. In the
woman and serpent of the Aztecks we think we perceive the Eve of the
Semetic nations; in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya
or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took his form of Krishna.
The Tonatiuh of the Mexicans appears also to be identical with the
Krishna of the Hindoos, recorded in the Bhagavata Purana, and with
the Mithras of the Persians.' *
This is not all. Two naked figures in the attitude of contention
suggest the idea that, as ‘the serpent woman was considered at
Mexico as the mother of two twin children, these naked figures
“remind us of the Cain and Abel of Hebrew tradition.’
“The cosmogony of the Mexicans; their traditions of the mother of
mankind fallen from her first state of happiness and innocence; the
idea of a great inundation, in which a single family escaped on a raft;
the history of a pyramidical edifice raised by the pride of men, and de-
stroyed by the anger of the gods; the ceremonies of ablution practised
at the birth of children; those idols made with the flour of kneaded
maize, and distributed in morsels to the people assembled in the tem-
ples; the confession of sins made by the penitent; those religious asso-
ciations similar to our convents of men and women; the universal belief
that white men, with long beards and sanctity of manners, had changed
the religion and political system of nations;—all these circumstances had
led the priests, who accompanied the Spanish army at the time of the
conquest, to the belief, that at some very distant epocha christianity
had been preached in the New Continent.”—vol. i. p. 196.
Might not these priests have suggested and encouraged such an
idea there as they are known to have done in other countries :
The hieroglyphical paintings which they found, and others which
they fabricated, afforded them an admirable opportunity of explain-
ing their recondite meaning to their own purposes; nothing could
be so well adapted for the propagation of monkish fictions and pious
frauds; and their success is recorded by M. de Humboldt. “Some
learned Mexicans, says he, “have imagined that the Apostle St.
Thomas was the mysterious personage, high priest of Tula, whom
the Cholulans acknowledged under the name of Quetzalcoatl.’
What could the learned Mexicans know about St. Thomas but
what the Spanish monks told them ? It is astonishing, however,
with what credulity these men embraced the most wild and extra-
vagant fancies. It actually beeame a question among the Spanish
priests, and was gravely discussed by them, whether this great per-
sonage, (Quetzalcoatl,) whom our author calls the ‘Mexican
Budha, was a Carthaginian or an Irishman: The Mac Carthays
could have settled this important question at once. Absurd as it
would appear to suppose that a rude people, like the Mexicans,
without any written language, either symbolical or alphabetical,
without any system of numeration, could have made much progress
lu

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 451
*
in astronomy, or in adjusting the irregular motions of the sun and
moon as to regulate their calendar; yet, according to M. de
Humboldt, they knew the causes of eclipses, and had a method of
computing time by means of cycles “identic with that made use of
by the Hindoos, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the
Asiatic people of the Tartar race. We shall see presently in what
this “identity consists. The Mexican year was divided into eighteen
months of twenty days and five days over, which are called memon-
tomi or voids, and cousidered as unlucky—the month into five
weeks of four days each. These days were represented by four
signs or hieroglyphics—tochtli, a rabit or hare; acatl, a cane;
tecpatl, a flint, calli, a house. By applying the same signs to a
period of four years, a simple system of chronology or reckoning
of time presented itself for their adoption. To lengthen this
without increasing the number of signs, and to prevent the con-
fusion which would arise from the constant recurrence of the same
signat the commencement of each short period, they repeated them
three times, making twelve years, to which the first in the series (the
rabbit) being added, gave them a period of thirteen years, of
which the first year was 1 rabbit, the last 13 rabbit. This was
called Tlalpuli, which M. de Humboldt finds “analogous to
the indiction of the Romans. The second Tlalpilli of thirteen
years would then of course begin with a new (the second) sign, and
be called 1 cane; and it would also end with the same sign and be
distinguished as 13 cane; in like manner the third Tlalpilli would
commence with the third sign, 1.flint, and end with 13 flint; and
the fourth begin with 1 house, and end with 13 house; and these
four added together would give them another period of (4X 13 or)
52 years, called riuhmopilli, tigature of the years. The series of
a new cycle of fifty-two years would then again commence with 1
rabbit, as before. All this is perfectly simple, but has very little
‘ identity with the cycles of sixty years in use among the Chinese,
the Japanese, the Mongols, the Mantchous, and other Tartar
hordes. None of these nations use any numbers in their cycles;
the series is carried on by two sets of signs, or syllables, one of
which is formed of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, the other
of the five elements, male and female. In China they are called
the twelve tchu, and the ten kan; and the binary combinations of
10 x 12\ . - -
2 )give a distinct and
proper name to every year of the period or age of sixty years, with-
out the employment of a single numeral character or figure, so that
in no respect is there the least resemblance between the oriental
cycles and the roues séculaires of the Mexicans; if the latter be not
altogether the fabrication of some “Spanish monk.”
these ten roots and twelve branches (
We

452 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
We will not attempt to follow M. de Humboldt through this
learned chapter on the Mexican calendar, which employs upwards
of 130 pages; suffice it to say, that having settled the identity of
the Mexican cycles and those of the Asiatic nations, all the rest of
the “analogies’ fall easily into his system, and the closest affinities
are discovered between every branch of astronomical knowledge,
every astrological reverie, every superstition, recorded of the
Greeks, Hebrews, Phemicians, Hindoos, Persians, and Chinese,
all the Tartar tribes, and all the corresponding branches among
the Mexicans; every difference and difficulty disappearing at
once when touched by the magic wand of M. de Humboldt.
“The very names even, he tells us, ‘of the oriental zodiacs, and
the Nacshatras of the Hindoos, are the names of the Mexican signs
of the days; and the way in which this is proved is so curious that
we shall select the history of one of the signs (Capricorn) as a spe-
cimen of it, as well as of the satisfactory manner of unravelling the
mysteries of the Mexican paintings. The sign Cipactli is repre-
sented by Gama as a sea animal. M. de Humboldt says it is a
whale with a horn in its forehead. Gomara and Torquemada call
it espadarté, a narwal. Boturini, mistaking the horn for a har-
poon, translated cipactli by ‘serpent armed with harpoons. But,
says our author, being a fabulous animal, it is natural enough its
form should vary; accordingly the horn is sometimes ‘a lengthen-
ing of the muzzle, as in the fish oxyrinchus.’ But Valades, Botu-
rini, and Clavigero converted this whale into a shark or lizard;
(very like each other, and the latter, according to the authority of
Count Osrick, ‘exceedingly like a whale;’) and in the Borgian
manuscript the head of this cipactli resembles that of a crocodile,
‘and this same name of crocodile is given by Sonnerat (Sonnerat!
a butterfly-hunter!) to the tenth sign of the Indian zodiac, which is
our capricorn'—ergo, cipactli is capricorn. But lest this clear
demonstration should not be considered as sufficient proof, we have
it in another shape. Cipactli, in Mexican mythology, is connected
with Coxcox, and Coxcox was Noah who saved himself at the top
of the mountain on the destruction of the fourth sun; and this,
somehow or other, connects itself with another discovery of Sonne-
rat, that the capricorn of the Hindoos is the fabulous fish maharan,
“represented from the most remote antiquity as a sea monster with
the head of an antelope; and as capricorn is an antelope, and an
antelope is also ‘exceedingly like a whale,'—ergo, cipactli is capri-
corn; and this striking analogy between the two signs suggests
other “analogies equally close and remarkable.
“An animal which, after having for a length of time inhabited the
waters, takes the form of an antelope, and scales the mountains, reminds
nations, whose disturbed imagination associates objects the most remote
from

I816. Humboldt's American Researches. 453.
from each other, of the ancient traditions of Menou, Noah, and the
Deucalions, famous among the Scythians and people of Thessaly.’
Were we to copy the list of ‘parallels and analogies similar to
the few we have given, it would occupy the whole of this article.
Among them we should find an Azteck priestess compared with
the Egyptian Isis—three rocpalli or prints of feet, with the sravana
or three prints of the feet of Vishnu-the Mexican teomortli,
with the Hindoo Puranas—the Peruvian trinity, with the Hindoo
trimurti—two unknown animals pierced with darts, the one com-
pared with the Paschal lamb of the Hebrews, and the other with
the anatomical man in the almanac—the gods hurling fire on the
top of the Pyramid of Cholula, with the destruction of the Tower
of Babel—the five complementary days of the Mexicans, with the
epagomena of the Memphian years, and the pendjehidouzdideh of
the Persians—the Mexican year divided like that of the Egyptians,
and the New French Calendar—the Mexican day commencing
with the sun rising, like that of the Persians, the Egyptians, the
Babylonians, and most Asiatic nations—divided into eight intervals,
like that of the Hindoos and the Romans—of unequal hours, like
that of the Jews—and, to sum up all, that as ‘Plato, the Prince
of Philosophers, thought there was something majestic and royal
in a large nose, so it would seem did the Mexicans, from the
enormity of this organ in the ‘Mexican paintings'—but enough,
and more than enough. We regret to find such foolery, for we
really can give it no better name, carried to so great an extent, and
by one too who is furnished with such abundance of matter of a
superior cast.
We do not mean to deny that the first attempts, however rude,
of an unenlightened people to register events, communicate ideas,
and render visible the operations of the mind, are void of interest;
on the contrary, we consider them as so many landmarks by which
we trace, in the most interesting manner, the progress of the intel-
lectual faculties of man; but we wish to discountenance that per-
verse ingenuity which would mould and twist them to its own pur-
poses, and give them a meaning which they were never intended to
bear.
Neither do we mean to deny that this people had their calen-
dar and their chronology. The alternate procession and recession
of the shadows of fixed objects, to and from their extreme points,
which have attracted the attention of all agricultural, and conse-
quently stationary, people, would, in the course of a few years obser-
vation, give them the four great divisions of the sun's revolution;
still, we cannot admit with our author, that a nation so barbarous
as the Mexicans had any knowledge of the causes of eclipses,
or the Metonic period of nineteen years. A picture language,
Of

454 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
or such rude representations of the objects of sense, as village chil-
dren chalk on walls and barn doors, are the first and rudest efforts
to record ideas, and the ale-scores of a village landlady the first
approach to symbolic writing; and with both of these, even the wild
ottentots called Bosjesmans, the very lowest, perhaps, of the hu-
man race, appear to be acquainted. They draw on the sides of
their caverns representations of the Dutch boors, whom they cha-
racterize by horses, large hats, muskets, and tobacco pipes, and
near them are often seen scores or strokes, supposed to be intended
as information for their countrymen of the numbers that are out in
pursuit of them. These people too, though always roving, mark
the revolution of a year by the flowering of the Uyntjes, or the iris
edulis, the bulb of which, while in season, constitutes the principal
article of their food; while the moon affords them the intermediate
periods of months. The Mexicans may have advanced, but, we
believe, not a great way, beyond the village children, the landlady,
or the Bosjesmans. “In them, says Robertson, “every figure of
men, of quadrupeds, of birds, as well as every representation of
inanimated nature, is extremely rude and aukward. The hardest
Egyptian style, stiff and imperfect as it was, is more elegant. The
scrawls of children delineate objects almost as accurately. What-
ever therefore may have been their condition in the tenth century,
‘when, our author says, “they were more advanced in civilization
than Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, they were sunk low enough
in the fifteenth century. But it is time to leave the regions of fancy
and fiction for those of reality, and proceed to notice some of the
few remaining monuments of the Mexicans and Peruvians.
M. de Humboldt observes that the only American tribes, among
whom we find remarkable monuments, are the inhabitants of
mountains. “Isolated in the region of clouds, on the most elevated
plains of the globe, surrounded by volcanoes, the craters of which
are encircled by eternal snows, they appear to have admired, in the
solitude of their deserts, those objects only which strike the imagi-
nation by the greatness of their masses; and their productions bear
the stamp of the savage nature of the Cordilleras. We shall not
stop to offer any objections to a theory by no means new—that
the local character of a country, its climate, soil, and scenery, pos-
sesses a commanding influence on the progress and style of the
arts—it is, however, liable to many, and to one in particular—it is
not borne out by facts. The greatest monument that exists of
Mexican industry, for it exhibits no skill, is the Pyramid of Cho-
lula; and that of Peru, which most deserves notice, is the causeway
that leads over the Paramo del Assuay. -
The general form of those edifices which, by the inhabitants of
the Mexican territory, were called Teocallis, or Houses of the Gods,
Was

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 455
was pyramidal, rising not by steps, but by a succession of four or
five lofty terraces: they were surrounded by walled enclosures,
which contained the dwellings of the priests, with gardens and
fountains; they were sometimes appropriated as arsenals, or forti-
fied places, like the ancient temple, so says our author, of Baal
Berith, burnt by Abimelech. On the summit were erected the
temples, serving at the same time as watch towers, in which Were
placed the colossal idols of the divinity to whom the Teocalli was
dedicated; and a grand staircase externally led to this platform.
Within these pyramids were the burial places of the kings and no-
bles. “It is impossible, says our author, ‘not to be struck with
the resemblance of the Babylonian temple of Jupiter Belus to the
Teocallis of Anahuac.’
The pyramids of Teotihuacan are situated in the valley of
Mexico, eight leagues north-east of the capital, on a plain called
Micoatl—the path of the dead. Two large ones, dedicated to the
sun and the moon, are surrounded by several hundred smaller ones,
forming streets in straight lines from north to south, and from east
to west. Each side of the base of the largest is 208 metres
(682 feet); the perpendicular height, 55 metres (180 feet). The
small pyramids are not more than 9 or 10 metres high, and are
supposed to be the tombs of the chiefs. The two great ones had
each four terraces: the nucleus is a mixture of clay and small
stones, and the casing a wall of porous amygdaloid or mandelstein.
On the tops were colossal statues of the sun and moon, said to
have been made of stone and covered with plates of gold, of which
they were stripped by the soldiers of Cortez; the idols were de-
stroyed by a Franciscan monk of the name of Zumaraga.
The pyramid of Papantla was discovered, scarcely more than
thirty years ago, by some Spanish hunters, in a thick forest called
Tajin, on the descent of the Cordillera on the east of Teotihuacan,
and between it and the gulf of Mexico. It is more tapering than
the others, being 18 metres high with only 25 of base, built entirely
with hewn stones of large dimensions and regularly shaped; it is
covered with hieroglyphical sculpture, and small niches, to the
number of 318, are cut in its sides and arranged with great.
symmetry. -
But the most ancient, and most celebrated (says M. de Hum-
boldt) of '' monuments of Anahuaca, is the Teocal/i.
of Cholula. It stands on the east side of the city of the same
name, which Cortez compared with the most populous cities of
Spain, but which scarcely contains, at present, 16,000 inhabitants.
Our author says he measured it carefully, and ascertained that its
perpendicular height is only 50 metres (164 feet), but that each
side of its base is 439 metres (1440 feet); the latter being twice as
broad

456 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
broad as that of the pyramid of Cheops, and the height little more
than that of Mycerinus. M. de Humboldt observes, that while in
the three great pyramids of Geeza, the heights are to the bases as
1 to 1.7; the ratio in that of Cholula is as 1 to 7.8: this is a mis-
take; if his own data be correct, the height of Cholula is to the
side of the base as 1 to 8.78. It is built of unbaked bricks alter-
nating with layers of clay. A few years ago a road from Puebla
to Mexico was carried through the first terrace, insulating about
one-eighth part of it. This laid open a square room in the inte-
rior, built of brick and supported by beams made of the wood of
the deciduous cypress. It contained two human skeletons, several
idols in basalt, and a great number of vases curiously varnished and
painted. It had no outlet, and the bricks were stepped over each
other, the upper overreaching the lower so as to meet in a point
and form a kind of Gothic arch, a mode of structure not uncommon
in Egypt and in India. The bricks were generally 8 centimetres
thick and 40 in length (3 inches by 153.) On the platform a ca-
tholic chapel, dedicated to the Virgin de los remedios, has sup-
planted the temple of the God of the Air; in this an ecclesiastic
of the Indian race celebrates mass every day; and M. de Humboldt
tells us that the people assemble there in crowds from distant quar-
ters. ‘A mysterious dread, a religious awe, fills the soul of the
Indian at the sight of this immense pile of bricks, covered with :
shrubs and perpetual verdure!’
The Peruvian monuments are many of them works of obvious
utility.
“The lofty plains that stretch along the back of the Cordilleras from
the equator to the third degree of south latitude end where a mass of
mountain rises from 4500 to 4800 metres (14,764 to 15,749 feet) of
height, which, like an enormous dyke, unites the eastern to the western
ridge of the Andes of Quito. This group of mountains, in which por-
phyry covers mica-slate and other works of primitive formation, is
known by the name of the Paramo del Assuay.”
The road which crosses this mountain is nearly as high as
Mount Blanc, and in winter, M. de Humboldt says, the travellers
are exposed to a cold so excessive that several perish every year
from its effects.
‘We were surprized to find in this place, and at heights which greatly
surpass the top of the peak of Teneriffe, the magnificent remains of a
road constructed by the Incas of Peru. This causeway, lined with
free-stone, may be compared to the finest Roman roads I have seen in
Italy, France, or Spain; it is perfectly straight and keeps the same
direction for six or eight thousand metres. We observed the continua-
tion of this road near Caxamarca, 120 leagues to the south of *''
-n

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 457
-
and it is believed in the country that it led as far as the city of Cousco."
—(vol. i. p. 242.)
Near this road, and at the height of 4042 metres (13,262 feet),
are the remains of a palace of the Inca Zupaympangi, and in
descending toward the south, another monument of ancient Peru-
vian architecture, known by the name of the fortress of Cannar.
It is a hill terminated by a platform, which is surrounded by a wall
17 or 18 feet high, built of large blocks of free-stone; its shape is
oval, and the larger diameter nearly 130 feet. It has a house in
the centre, which served as a lodging to the Incas in their journies
from Peru to Quito; and the foundations of edifices surrounding
it, indicate that there was room enough at Canmar to lodge a small
army. In like manner, at certain distances from station to station.
along this great public road, were houses built for the Incas, re-
markable for their simplicity, symmetry, and solidity. The stone
is a trappean porphyry of great hardness, cut into parallelopipedons
with such perfection, that M. de Humboldt confirms the remark of
M. de la Condamine, that the joints would be imperceptible if
the outer surface of each stone was not designedly made convex,
and cut slantingly towards the edge, so that the joints may form
small flutings by way of ornament. None of the stones seen by M.
de Humboldt at Cannar exceeded 8 feet in length, but Acosta men-
tions hewn stones at Traquanaco of 38 feet long, 18 feet broad,
and 6 feet thick; and Pedro Cieca, in the ‘Chronica del Peru,'
notices his having seen some of similar dimensions in the ruins of
Tiahuanaco. Such a stone of porphyry would weigh about 293
tons.
Among the ruins of the houses of the Incas, along the great
causeway, that of Callo is in the best state of preservation; M.
de Humboldt says, that the stones of it are beautifully cut, and
not, as Robertson asserts, used just as they were raised out of the
quarries: but Robertson was not here speaking of Callo, but of
Peruvian buildings in general, and Ulloa confirms the observation.
Condamine saw in some of these edifices, stones of porphyry
worked into the heads of animals, in the perforated noses of which
were moveable rings of the same stone. Hatchets of flints could
not have accomplished this; and M. de Humboldt tells us that
in viewing the masses of porphyry extracted from the quarries of
Pullal, he conjectured that the Peruvians must have been ac-
quainted with the compound metal of copper mixed with tin, in
which it seems he was justified by the discovery of an ancient Pe-
ruvian chissel found in a silver mine near Cuzco, which was worked
in the time of the Incas. The metal being analyzed by M. Vauque-
lin, was found to consist of 0.94 of copper, and 0.06 of tin. Had
it

458 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
it escaped M. de Humboldt that copper axes are mentioned by
Ulloa as common among the Peruvians?
The other monuments described in these volumes, the statue of
a Mexican priestess, the axe with engraved characters, the granite
vases, found on the Mosquito shore, if the latter be not Euro-
pean, have little deserving of admiration, except, like the Sarco-
phagi of Egypt, the useless labour that has been bestowed upon
them. We proceed therefore to that which is incomparably the
best part of these volumes—the description of those magnificent
and savage scenes of nature—those Cordilleras of the Andes,
which bear about the same proportion to the chain of the Alps
as these do to that of the Pyrenees. Into these wild regions
of eternal ice and snow, on which the direct rays of a cloudless
sun fail to make the slightest impression; to these colossal
summits, looking down on the most exuberant vegetation that
the bountiful earth produces, we accompany M. de Humboldt
with the greatest pleasure; confident of our security in trusting
to him as a steady and well-informed guide to the botanical,
geological, and physiological treasures of the ‘equinoctial regions
of the new continent.” -
The most stupendous of these mountainous summits are those
which rise out of the two parallel chains into which the Cordilleras
of the Andes are separared by a longitudinal valley, which com-
mencing about the equator, melt again into one mass to the south-
ward of Quito. This elevated valley, or succession of plains, is
thus described by M. de Humboldt. -
“In these plains the population of this marvellous country is concen-
trated, towns are there built which contain from thirty to fifty thousand
inhabitants. When we have lived for some months on this elevated
spot, where the barometer keeps at twenty inches high, we feel the irre-
sistible influence of an extraordinary illusion; we forget, by degrees,
that every thing which surrounds the observer--those villages which
proclaim the industry of a mountainous people; those pastures covered
at the same time with lamas, and flocks of European sheep; those
orchards bounded by hedges of duranta and barnadesia; those fields.
cultivated with care, and promising the richest harvests; hang as it were
suspended in the lofty regions of the atmosphere:—we scarcely recollect
that the soil we inhabit is more elevated above the neighbouring coasts
of the Pacific Ocean, than the summit of Canigou above the basin of
the Mediterranean.'—(vol. i. p. 232.)
The most active volcanoes in the kingdom of Quito are those on
the eastern Cordillera, or that which is farthest from the sea coast;
* We must not, however, forget that the way had been well cleared for M. de
Humboldt by Ulloa and John George Juau, Bouguer, and Condamine, who, with
inadequate ineans, undertook and accomplished more for science than the most san-
guine could have expected. - -
the

1816. Humboldt's American Researches, 459.
the lofty peaks that crown the western Cordillera, with the excep-
tion of Ruca Pichincha, appear to be volcanoes extinguished for
a long series of ages. The geologist, says M. de Humboldt, is
astonished at this, “as there is reason to suppose that the proximity
of the ocean contributes to feed the volcanic fire. We always
thought so, and considered, with M. de Humboldt, “the fact, not
merely accidental, that no active volcano has been discovered at a
greater distance than 40 or 50 leagues from the ocean. Yet, with
apparent inconsistency, he afterwards says, “very well-founded doubts
have been raised respecting these direct and constant communica-
tions between the waters of the sea and the focus of the volcanic
fire.’—(Per. Nar. vol. i. p. 163.)—Cotapaxi is, perhaps, of all
known volcanoes, the most distant from the ocean.”
The most remarkable peaks on the western chain are Chimborazo
and Carguairazo, Ruca Pichincha, Corazon, and Ilinissa; and on
the eastern ridge, Cotapaxi, Tungurahua, and Cayambe, whose
summit is traversed by the equator. “We may consider,’ says M.
de Humboldt, “this colossal mountain as one of those eternal monu-
ments by which nature has marked the great divisions of the terres-
trial globe.’ It so happens in a small £ of South America; but
two of the “great divisions of the globe the Equator does not
cross in any part, and not a foot of that part of Africa over which
it does pass is known: but if the imaginary divisions of the “ter-
restrial globe into the northern and southern hemispheres be meant,
the observation is still more unfortunate, as of the 360 degrees of the
equator, 282 (about , of it) pass over the trackless ocean whose sur-
face nature has not particularly ‘marked. We notice this to shew
what gross errors M. de Humboldt is led into by that thirst after
generalization, which he himself so properly condemns in others.
He adds, “among the mountains of eternal snow, that surround the
city of Quito, Cayambe, which is the most beautiful as well as the
most majestic, never ceases to excite admiration at sunset, when the
volcano of Guagua Pichincha, situate to the west, or toward the
Pacific ocean, throws its shadow over the vast plain which forms
the foreground of the landscape. Cayambe is the loftiest summit of
the Cordilleras, except Chimborazo; the first, according to Bou-
guer and Condamine, whose measurements are confirmed by Hum-
boldt, being 3208 toises, (5901 metres, or 19,361 feet); and the
latter 3640 metres above the plain of Topia, which is itself 2891
metres, that is 6531 metres, or 21,428 feet, of absolute height.
Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland attempted to ascend by a narrow
ridge, which rises amidst the snows on the southern declivity, to the
summit of Chimborazo; but the thick fog which surrounded them,
* It is about 140 English miles from it.
WG) L. X. V. N. O. x X x. I i and

460 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
and the inconvenience which they felt from the tenuity of the air,
compelled them to desist; not however before they had reached an
elevation greater than any yet attained by man, “it was more than
eleven hundred metres (3609 feet) higher than the top of Mount
Blanc. The summit of Chimborazo is circular. Seen from the
shores of the South Sea, ‘it detaches itself from the neighbouring
summits, and towers over the whole chain of the Andes, like that
majestic dome produced by the genius of Michael Angelo, over the
antique monuments which surround the Capitol. The flank of this
mountain, as viewed from the plain of Topia, is said to present that
gradation of vegetable life which M. de Humboldt has systematised
in what he calls his ‘Geography of Plants; as it is more general,
we hope it is also more correct, than the application of his theory
was found to be in his botanical chart of the Peak of Teneriffe.
“At three thousand five hundred metres absolute height, the ligneous
plants with coriaceous and shining leaves nearly disappear. The region
of shrubs is separated from that of the grasses by Alpine plants, by tufts
of nerteria, valerian, saxifrage, and lobelia, and by small criciferous
(cruciform) plants. The grasses form a very broad belt, covered at in-
tervals with snow, which remains but a few days. Above the pajonal
(the grass belt) lies the region of cryptogamous plants, which here and
there cover the porphyritic rocks destitute of vegetable earth. Farther
on, at the limit of the perpetual ice, is the termination of organic life.’
-(vol. ii. p. 12.)
Capac-Urca, or the altar, whose summit has sunk into the crater,
is said to have been once higher than Chimborazo; and a great
part of Carguerazo fell in on the night of the 19th of July, 1698.
Torrents of water and mud then issued from the sides of the
mountain and laid waste the neighbouring country, and an earth-
quake which accompanied, and probably was the cause of, this
dreadful catastrophe, swallowed up thousands of the inhabitants of
the adjacent towns. The appearance of Ilinissa, with its two
pyramidal points, warrants the supposition of their being the
wrecks of a volcano that has fallen in. The height of this majestic
and picturesque mountain was determined by the trigonometrical
measurements of Bouguer, to be 2717 toises, or 17,374 feet.
Corazon is a mountain covered with perpetual snow, rising out
of the western Cordillera between the summits of Pichincha and
Ilinissa. It was on this mountain that Messrs. Bouguer and Con-
damine observed the mercury in the barometer standing so low as
fifteen inches and ten lines, from which they concluded that they
were then 2470 toises (15,795 feet) above the level of the sea—a
result not strictly exact, as the true application of the corrections
for the influence of temperature and the decrement of caloris
were not at that time sufficiently known.
But

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 461
But Cotopaxi is the loftiest of those volcanoes of the Andes,
whose explosions have been most frequent and disastrous, its abso-
lute height being 5754 metres, or 18,879 feet, 800 metres or 2625
feet higher than Vesuvius would be if placed on the Peak of Tene.
riffe. Its form is said to be the most beautiful and regular of the
colossal summits of the Andes, being to appearance a perfect
cone, which, covered with an enormous layer of snow, shines with
dazzling splendour, more particularly when the sun approaches the
western horizon, and detaches itself in the most picturesque man-
ner from the azure vault of heaven. Every inequality of soil, every
rocky point, and stony mass, are entirely concealed by the thick
coating of perpetual snow, whose limit is at 441 I metres (14,472
feet) of absolute height. The cone itself resembles the peak of
Teyde, but its height is about six times that of the great volcano of
Teneriffe.
“The mass of scoriae, and the huge pieces of rock thrown out of this
volcano, which are spread over the neighbouring valleys, covering a
surface of several square leagues, would form, were they heaped toge-
ther, a colossal mountain. In 1738, the flames of Cotopaxi rose 900
metres, 2953 feet, above the brink of the crater. In 1744, the roarings
of the volcano were heard as far as Honda, a town on the borders of the
Magdalena, and at the distance of 200 common leagues. On the 4th
of April, 1768, the quantity of ashes ejected by the mouth of Cotopaxi
was so great, that, in the towns of liambato and Tacunga, day broke
only at three in the afternoon, and the inhabitants were obliged to use
lanterns in walking the streets. The explosion which took place in the
month of January, 1803, was preceded by a dreadful phenomenon, the
sudden melting of the snows that covered the mountain. For twenty
years before no smoke or vapour, that could be perceived, had issued
from the crater; and in a single night the subterraneous fire became so
active that, at sunset, the external walls of the cone, heated, no doubt,
to a very considerable temperature, appeared naked, and of the dark
colour, which is peculiar to vitrified scoriae. At the port of Guayaquil,
fifty-two leagues distant, in a straight line from the crater, we heard,
day and night, the noises of the volcano, like continued discharges of a
battery; we distinguished these tremendous sounds, even on the Pacific
ocean, to the south-west of the island of Puna.’—(vol. i. p. 118.)
Passing to the northward of the equator, which, as we have ob-
served, traverses the colossal summit of Cayambe, the Andes
are condensed, as it were, into one great cluster; but from the
parallel of 2° 30' N. to 5° 15' N. they again branch out into three
Cordilleras, and are again blended together in the sixth and seventh
degrees of northern latitude. In these parallels the highest sum-
mits of the eastern chain do not attain the region of perpetual
snow; the elevation of the western chain is scarcely fifteen hun-
dred metres; but the central ridge frequently reaches those limits,
I I 2 and

462 Humboldt's American Researches JULY
and towers far above them in the colossal summits of Guanacas,
Baragan, and Quindiu. This last mountain, situated in latitude
4° 36' N. is considered as the most difficult of all the passes in
the Cordilleras of the Andes. It presents a thick uninhabited
forest, in which not a hut is to be seen, nor any means of subsis-
tence found, and occupies from ten to twelve days in traversing
at the most favourable season of the year. It is usual therefore
for travellers at all times to take with them a month's provisions,
as it often happens, from the melting of the snows and the
sudden swell of the torrents, that they can neither proceed nor
descend on either side of the elevated path, the highest point of
which, the Garito del Paramo, is 3505 metres, or 11,500 feet,
above the level of the ocean. The pathway is only from twelve to
sixteen inches in width, and in several places has the appearance
of a deep gallery dug in the rock, and left open to the sky. Along
these crevices, which are full of mud, the traveller is frequently
obliged to grope his passage in the dark, the shrubbery overgrowing
the narrow opening above. The oxen, the common beasts of bur-
den, can with difficulty force their way through these gullies, some
of which are six or seven thousand feet in length; and if by chance
a traveller meets them in the passage, he must either turn back, or
scramble up the steep sides of the crevices, and suspend himself
by the roots of the superincumbent trees or shrubs: how the op-
posing oxen contrive to pass each other, or to squeeze through a
space of 16 inches, we are left to conjecture. Messrs. Humboldt
and Bonpland traversed this mountain, and the account here given
is so curious that we shall make no apology for extracting the
whole of it.
“We traversed the mountain of Quindiu in the month of October,
1801, on foot, followed by twelve oxen, which carried our collections
and instruments, amidst a deluge of rain, to which we were exposed
during the last three or four days, in our descent on the western side of
the Cordilleras. The road passes through a country full of bogs, and
covered with bamboos. Our shoes were so torn by the prickles, which
shoot out from the roots of these gigantic gramina, that we were forced,
like all other travellers who dislike being carried on men's backs, to go
barefooted. This circumstance, the continual humidity, the length of
the passage, the muscular force required to tread in a thick and muddy
clay, the necessity of fording deep torrents of icy water, render this
journey extremely fatiguing: but, however painful, it is accompanied
by none of those dangers, with which the credulity of the people alarm
travellers. The road is narrow, but the places where it skirts precipices
are very rare. As the oxen are accustomed to put their feet in the
same tracks, they form small furrows across the road, separated from
each other by narrow ridges of earth. In very rainy seasons these
ridges are covered by water which renders the traveller's step doubly
uncertain,

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 463
uncertain, since he knows not whether he places his foot on the ridge,
or in the furrow. As few persons in easy circumstances travel on foot
in these climates, through roads so difficult during fifteen or twenty days
together, they are carried by men in a chair, tied on their back; for in
the present state of the passage of Quindiu, it would be impossible to
go on mules. They talk in this country of going on a man's back
(andar en carguero), as we mention going on horseback; no humiliating
idea is annexed to the trade of cargueroes; and the men who follow
this occupation are not Indians, but Mulattoes, and sometimes even
whites. It is often curious to hear these men, with scarcely any
covering, and following a profession which we should consider so dis-
graceful, quarrelling in the midst of a forest, because one has refused
the other, who pretends to have a whiter skin, the pompous title of
don, or of su merced. The usual load of a carguero is six or seven
arrobas (165 to 195 pounds English): those who are very strong carry
as much as nine arrobas. When we reflect on the enormous fatigue,
to which these miserable men are exposed, journeying eight or nine
hours a day over a mountainous country; when we know that their
backs are sometimes as raw as those of beasts of burden, and that tra-
vellers have often the cruelty to leave them in the forests, when they
fall sick; that they earn by a journey from Ibague to Carthago only
twelve or fourteen piastres, (from 50s. to 60s.) in a space of fifteen and
sometimes even twenty-five or thirty days, we are at a loss to conceive
how this employment of a carguero, one of the most painful that can
be undertaken by man, is eagerly embraced by all the robust young
men, who live at the foot of the mountain. The taste for a wandering
and vagabond life, the idea of a certain independence amidst forests,
leads them to prefer this employment to the sedentary and monotonous
labour of cities.’-(vol. i. p. 65.)
Nor is this mountain the only part of South America which is
traversed on the backs of men. Those that surround the province
of Antioquia are all crossed in the same way; and M. de Humboldt
tells us that he knew a man of this province so bulky that he had
not met with more than two mulattoes capable of carrying him;
and that if either of these had died while he was on the banks of
the Magdalena, he never could have reached his home ! yet so
considerable is the number of young men who undertake the em-
ployment, that our travellers sometimes met a file of fifty or
sixty of them together.—When the government, a few years ago,
formed the project of making the passage from Nares to Antioquia
passable for mules, the Cargueros remonstrated against mending
the road, and it was thought expedient to yield to their clamours.
All this is very natural, however we may affect to wonder at it, on
the part of the Cargueros; and the same thing would happen,
without doubt, if some of our tender-hearted reformers were to
bring a bill into Parliament for the abolition of chair-men in the
cities of London and Westminster.
- * I 3 It

464 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
It appears also to be the practice in Mexico for every director
of the mines to have one or two Indians at his service, who are
called his horses (cavallitoes), because they are saddled every
morning, and, supported by a cane and bending forwards, carry
their owner on their backs from one part of the mine to another.
We shall not be surprized if, ere many years elapse, the Indians
and the directors change places, and the cavallitoes take their turn
to saddle and ride their old masters. -
Another occupation of the South Americans, no less singular,
is that of travelling by floating down the mountain rivers on logs
of wood—a practice which could only be adopted in the upper
branches of the Amazons, Marannan, and other mighty rivers, to
which the crocodiles do not ascend. The aquatic postman of the
province of Jaen de Bracamoros swims monthly for two days,
down the Chamaya and a part of the Amazons, as the shortest
and easiest communication between the eastern side of the Andes
and the coasts of the Pacific. The Chamaya is not navigable by
boats, on account of its numerous small cascades, its fall, as ascer-
tained by Humboldt, being, in the space of eighteen leagues, 542
metres, or 1778 feet. The postman therefore mounts a log of
bombax or ocroma, trees of very light wood. Wrapping his letters
in a handkerchief or in his guyaco or drawers, he winds them as
a turban round his head, and then, like the natives of Madras on
their catamarans, he braves the surf, seldom either losing or wet-
ing the letters with which he is entrusted. If a ledge of rocks
forming a cascade intersects the bed of the river, he lands just
above it, passes the forest, and resumes his log at the foot of the
cascade, or provides another. Numerous huts, surrounded with
plantain trees, afford him provisions; and having delivered his dis-
patches to the Governor of Jaen, he returns by a toilsome journey
to the place from which he set out, ready to start, when the period
arrives, on a fresh expedition.
It is highly probable that the greater part of the elevated plains
or valleys surrounded by mountains have been covered with
water, which by long and constant attrition in some cases, and
by the aid of man in others, has effected an outlet, and finally left
only a river to flow through the lowest level of the valley. Such
has been the elevated plain on which the city of Mexico stands, the
centre of which is yet covered with water; such also has been that
of Bogota, on which stands the city of Santa Fé, at an elevation
above the level of the ocean of 2660 metres, (8727 feet,) being
1256 feet higher than that of Mexico, and both of them higher
than the summit of Mount St. Bernard: and such will one day
be the case of the great lake Erie, when the barrier of Niagara,
oVer

1816. Humboldt's American Researches. 46.5
over which that vast sheet of water rolls, shall be worn down to the
level of the bottom of the lake.
Near the farm of Tequendama the Rio de Bogota rushes from
the plain through a narrow outlet into a crevice which descends
towards the basin of the river Magdalena. The natives have a tra-
dition that in remote times, before the moon accompanied the earth,
an old man named Bochica broke down the barrier of rocks, after
his wife Huythaca, a very beautiful, but malignant kind of a lady,
had, by her skill in magic, swelled the river, and inundated the
valley of Bogota. Here M. de Humboldt finds the good and evil
principle personified in the venerable Bochica and his wife;—and
the remote period when there was no moon reminds him of the
boast of the Arcadians as to the antiquity of their origin! The
fall of Tequendama is thus described:—
“The traveller who views the tremendous scenery of the cataract
of Tequendama will not be surprized that rude tribes should have
attributed a miraculous origin to rocks which seem to have been cut
by the hand of man; to that narrow gulf into which falls headlong the
mass of waters that issue from the valley of Bogota; to those rainbows
reflecting the most vivid colours, and of which the forms vary every
instant; to that column of vapour, rising like a thick cloud, and seen
at five leagues distance, from the walks around Santa Fé..... The ca-
taract of Tequendama forms an assemblage of every thing that is sub-
limely picturesque in beautiful scenery. This fall is not, however, as
it is commonly believed to be in the country, and repeated by natural-
ists in Europe, the loftiest cataract on the globe: the river does not
rush, as Bouguer relates, into a gulf of five or six hundred metres of
perpendicular depth; but there scarcely exists a cataract which, from
so lofty a height, precipitates so voluminous a mass of waters.’—
(vol. i. p. 76.)
The river just above the fall is stated to be about half the
breadth of the Seine at Paris, between the Louvre and the Palace
of the Arts, that is, from 140 to 150 feet; in entering the crevice,
which M. de Humboldt supposes, unnecessarily we think, to have
been formed by an earthquake, it is narrowed to less than forty
feet. The volume of water falls at a double bound to the depth
of 574 feet. The prospect from the top is magnificent, and as-
tonishes the traveller by the variety of its contrasts.
“Leaving the cultivated plain rich in corn, he finds himself sur-
rounded not only with the aralia, the alstonia theaeformis, the begonia,
and the yellow bark tree, (cinchona cordifolia,) but with oaks, with
elms, and other plants, the growth of which recals to his mind the
vegetation of Europe; when suddenly he discovers, as from a terrace,
and at his feet, a country producing the palm, the banana, and the
sugar cane.’-(p. 79.)
I 14 - M. de

466 Humboldt's American Researches. JULY,
M. de Humboldt adds that the difference of 175 metres, or 574
feet, of height, is too inconsiderable to have much influence on
the temperature of the air; and that the contrast between the
vegetation of the plain of Bogota and the foot of the cataract, is
not owing to the height of the soil on the former, for that the
palm trees which flourish at the foot of the latter would have
pushed their migrations to the upper level of the river, provided
the rock had not been £ and the elevated plain had been
sheltered like the bottom of the crevice. It would, however, be
as singular a phenomenon in vegetation, to find the palm and
banana flourishing ‘in a climate where the thermometer descends
very often to the freezing point, as it is to meet with them in that
state at the bottom of a deep crevice near 8000 feet above the
level of the sea, where only ‘a few feeble rays of noon shed an
impotent gleam of light and heat on the luxuriant vegetation that
clusters round it.
Amidst the majestic and ever-varied scenery of the Cordilleras, it
is the valleys, M. de Humboldt tells us, that most powerfully affect
the imagination of the European traveller, that present scenes of
the wildest aspect, and fill the soul with astonishment and terror.
The crevices of Chota and Cutaco were found to be, one fifteen
hundred, the other thirteen hundred metres in perpendicular depth.
A small torrent, called the Rio de la Summa Paz, rushing through
the valley of Icomonzo, flows through a deep crevice, which could
not have been crossed but with extreme difficulty, if nature had
not provided two bridges of rocks, which it seems are considered
in the country as among the objects most worthy the attention of
travellers. Such matural bridges over mountain torrents are not,
however, uncommon either on the new or the old continent; and
there needed not the aid of an earthquake here, any more than at
Tequendama, to rend the rocks asunder. The torrent alone was
uite sufficient to wear away the lower materials; and the view of
'. chasms and masses of rock in the plate which accompanies
the description, shews the strata to have been left undisturbed.
In the second bridge, which is contiguous to the other, three
enormous masses of rock have fallen so as to support one another,
that in the middle forming the key of the arch,— an accident
which might have given the natives the idea of arches in masonry,
unknown to the people of the new world, as well as to the ancient
inhabitants of Egypt. Numerous flights of nocturnal birds that
haunt this cavern send up a lugubrious noise; they could only
be examined by throwing down rockets to illumine the sides of
the chasm; but M. de Humboldt supposes them to belong to the
genus Caprimulgus, -
- Two

18 16. Humboldt's American Researches. - 467
Two geological phenomena, much more curious than these
natural bridges, remain to be noticed before we conclude our
account of M. de Humboldt's ‘Researches. The one is the
Volcanitoes, or little air volcanoes of Turbaco; the other the vol-
cano of Jorullo,-which rose out of the earth in the eighteenth
century.
The volcanitoes are situated about four miles to the east of the
village of Turbaco, in a thick forest abounding with balsam of
Tolu trees, and others of magnificent growth; the ground, sloping
gradually from the village to the height of 150 feet, every where
covered with vegetation rising out of a shelly calcareous soil. The
following description is all that is here given of these singular pro-
tuberancies.
“In the centre of a vast plain, bordered by bromelia karatas, are
eighteen or twenty small cones, in height not above seven or eight
metres. These cones are formed of a blackish grey clay, and have
an opening at their summits filled with water. On approaching these
small craters, a hollow but very distinct sound is heard at intervals,
fifteen or eighteen seconds previous to the disengagement of a great
quantity of air. The force with which this air rises above the surface
of the water may lead us to suppose that it undergoes a great pressure
in the bowels of the earth. I generally reckoned five explosions in
two minutes; and this phenomenon is often attended with a muddy
ejection. The Indians assured us that the forms of the cones undergo
no visible change in a great number of years; but the ascending force
of the gas, and the frequency of the explosions, appear to vary accord-
ing to the seasons. I found by analyses made by means of both
nitrous gas and of phosphorus, that the disengaged air scarcely con-
tains a thousandth part of oxygen. It is azotic gas, much more pure
than that which is generally prepared in our laboratories. The phy-
sical cause of this phenomenon is discussed in the historical narrative
of our travels into the interior of the new continent.'—(vol. ii. p. 97.)
The volcano of Jorullo appears to be, what M. de Humboldt
calls it, “one of the most singular catastrophes in the physical
history of our planet, and very little known to European geolo-
gists. It is situated about the 19th parallel of northern latitude,
in the intendency of Walladolid, to the west of the city of Mexico,
and about thirty-six leagues from the ocean. Its height is 1683
feet above the surrounding plain. This enormous excrescence
rose out of a savannah or swampy plain, on the night of the
29th September, 1759, surrounded by several thousand basaltic
cones, from six to nine feet in height, bristling a surface of four
square miles.
“The cones are so many funnels, which exhale a thick vapour, and
communicate an insupportable heat to the surrounding air. They are
called in this country, which is excessively unhealthy, by the name
of

468 Humboldt's American Researches. July,
of the little ovens, hornitas. They contain nodules of basalt embedded
in a mass of indurated clay. The slope of the great volcano, which
is constantly burning, is covered with ashes. We reached the inside
of the crater by climbing the hill of scorified and branching lavas.
We shall here observe, as a remarkable fact, that all the volcanoes of
Mexico are ranged in a line from East to West; and which forms, at
the same time, a parallel of great elevations. In reflecting on this fact,
and comparing it with our observations on the bocche nuove of Vesuvius,
we are tempted to suppose that the subterraneous fire has pierced
through an enormous crevice which exists in the bowels of the earth
between the latitudes of 18° 59' and 19°12', and stretches from the
Pacific to the Atlantic ocean.'—(vol. ii. p. 103.)
We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to bring together
the membra disjecta,—those huge protuberances starting out of the
backbone of the earth, –scattered as we find them in these vo-
lumes, without any attempt at arrangement; and we are not
aware that we have omitted the notice of any object of actual
“research on the spot which could be deemed either curious or
important. We have dwelt but little, and that little will perhaps
be thought too much, on those cycles and calendars, those chro-
nologies and cosmogonies extracted out of the—to us, at least-
unintelligible daubings designated under the name of the ‘Codices
Mexicani. To M. de Humboldt, however, they would appear
to be of first-rate importance, and some idea may be formed of
his laborious ‘Researches (in the libraries of Europe) to collect
and explain those Sybilline documents, and to trace, in their dark
and mysterious leaves, the ‘parallels and “analogies between
the several natives of the old world and the Aztecks, the Toltecks,
the Cicimecks, and Tlascaltecks,—from the list which he has
given, rather ostentatiously, as we think, of authors or works re-
ferred to at the end of the second volume, occupying fifteen pages,
and containing the names of about two hundred and forty different
authors or books of all ages, nations, and languages, from the Bible
to Carey's Pocket Atlas, from the Iliad to some obscure Maga-
zine. On the whole, however, we deem the descriptive part of
these ‘Researches’ less objectionable, as being less prolix, than the
“Personal Narrative, though strongly tinged with the same faults
as those which we took the liberty of pointing out in that work.
*->