Expedition to the Americas
Alexander von Humboldt · 1799 CE – 1804 CE · Earth
Measure and collect the natural world of Spain’s American colonies, at Humboldt’s own expense and with passports from the Spanish crown.
Historical context
Humboldt set out to measure the natural world, not to conquer or trade, and paid his own way. Spain gave him, a foreigner, passports he called the most extensive permission ever granted to a traveller, and he relied throughout on Indigenous pilots, rowers and guides.
The voyage, step by step
Landing in Venezuela
16 July 1799
On 16 July 1799 the Pizarro anchors at Cumaná, forty-one days out of A Coruña, and Humboldt and Bonpland go ashore for what became five years in the Americas.
Up the Orinoco
21 May 1800
On 21 May 1800, after a month on the Atabapo, the Rio Negro and the Casiquiare, the canoe re-enters the Orinoco below Esmeralda: the waterway between the Orinoco and Amazon basins is fixed by observation.
Climbing Chimborazo
23 June 1802
On 23 June 1802 Humboldt, Bonpland, Carlos Montúfar and a man from the village of San Juan climb Chimborazo’s ridge until a ravine stops them, by Humboldt’s barometer about 5,878 metres up.
The Peruvian coast
9 November 1802
In the autumn of 1802 he measures the cold current that later bears his name, and on 9 November he times the transit of Mercury from the fort at Callao.
Mexico and home
April 1803
From March 1803 to February 1804 he surveys New Spain between Acapulco, Mexico City, Guanajuato and Veracruz, then sails home by way of Havana and Philadelphia.
Outcome
Fixed the Casiquiare bifurcation by astronomy, climbed higher on Chimborazo than any European had recorded, and landed at Bordeaux on 3 August 1804 with thirty cases of collections.
Alexander von Humboldt
German naturalist and explorer whose five-year expedition in the Americas founded modern geography and ecology.
Sources
- Alexander von Humboldt — Wikipedia
- Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799–1804, Volume 1 (translated by Thomasina Ross)Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland · Henry G. Bohn, London (Project Gutenberg) · 1852
- Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Years 1799–1804, Volume 2 (translated by Thomasina Ross)Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland · Henry G. Bohn, London (Project Gutenberg) · 1852
- Life of Alexander von Humboldt, Volume 1 (translated by Jane and Caroline Lassell), with Humboldt’s 1837 account of the Chimborazo ascent and Jefferson’s letter of 28 May 1804Karl Bruhns (editor) · Longmans, Green and Co., London (Internet Archive) · 1873
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