The Invention of Nature (11 page)

Unlike most Europeans, Humboldt did not regard the indigenous people as barbaric, but instead was captivated by their culture, beliefs and languages. In fact, he talked about the ‘barbarism of civilised man’ when he saw how the local people were treated by colonists and missionaries. When Humboldt returned to Europe, he brought with him a completely new portrayal of the so-called ‘savages’.

His only frustration came when the Indians failed to answer his many questions – questions that were often posed through a chain of interpreters, as one local language had to be translated into another, and then another until someone knew that language as well as Spanish. Often the content was lost in translation and the Indians would just smile and nod in affirmation. That was not what Humboldt wanted, accusing them of an ‘indolent indifference’, although he accepted that they must be ‘tired with our questions’. To these tribal societies, Humboldt said, Europeans must seem as if always in a rush and ‘chased by demons’.

One night, as the rain fell in torrents, Humboldt lay in his hammock fastened to palm trees in the jungle. The lianas and climbing plants formed a protective shield high above him. He looked up into what seemed like a natural trellis decorated with the long dangling orange blossoms of heliconias and other strangely shaped flowers. Their campfire lit up this natural vault, the light of the flames licking the palm trunks up to sixty feet high. The blossoms whirled in and out of these flickering illuminations, while the white smoke of the fire spiralled into the sky which remained invisible behind the foliage. It was bewitchingly beautiful, Humboldt said.

He had described the rapids of the Orinoco which were ‘illuminated by the rays of the setting sun’ as if a river made of mist were ‘suspended over its bed’. Though he always measured and recorded, Humboldt also wrote of how ‘coloured bows shine, vanish, and reappear’ at the great rapids and of the moon ‘encircled with coloured rings’. Later, he delighted in the dark river surface which during the day reflected like a perfect mirror the blossom-loaded plants of the riverbanks and at night the southern star constellations. No scientist had referred to nature like this before. ‘What speaks to the soul,’ Humboldt said, ‘escapes our measurements.’ This was not nature as a mechanistic system but a thrilling new world filled with wonder. Seeing South America with the eyes that Goethe had given him, Humboldt was enraptured.

Less pleasing was the news he received from the missionaries whom they met en route: apparently the fact that the Casiquiare connected the Amazon and the Orinoco had been well known in the region for several decades. The only thing left for Humboldt was to map the course of the river properly. On 11 May 1800 they finally found the entrance to the Casiquiare. The air was so saturated with humidity that Humboldt could see neither the sun nor the stars – without which he would not be able to determine the geographical position of the river, and hence his map would not be precise. But when their Indian guide predicted clear skies, they pressed on north-east. During the nights they tried to sleep in their hammocks along the riverbanks but found rest almost impossible. One night they were chased out by columns of ants marching up the ropes of their hammocks, and on others they were tormented by the mosquitoes.

As they paddled on, the vegetation grew denser. The embankment was like a living ‘palisade’, as Humboldt described it, green walls covered in leaves and lianas. Soon they couldn’t find a place to sleep at all any more, nor even get out of the canoe to go ashore. At least the weather was improving and Humboldt could take the necessary observations for his map. Then, ten days after they had first entered the Casiquiare, they reached the Orinoco again – the missionaries had been correct. It had not been necessary to travel all the way south to the Amazon, because Humboldt had proved that the Casiquiare was a natural waterway between the Orinoco and the Rio Negro. Since the Rio Negro was a tributary of the Amazon, it was clear that the two great river basins were indeed connected. And though Humboldt had not ‘discovered’ the Casiquiare, he had made a detailed map of the complex tributary system of these rivers. This map was a great improvement on all previous ones, which, he said, were as imaginary as if they ‘had been invented in Madrid’.

On 13 June 1800, having raced downstream towards the north and then east along the Orinoco for three more weeks, they arrived in Angostura (today’s Ciudad Bolívar), a small bustling town on the Orinoco, a little less than 250 miles south of Cumaná. After 1,400 miles and seventy-five days of gruelling river travelling, Angostura with its 6,000 inhabitants seemed like a metropolis to Humboldt and Bonpland. Even the humblest dwelling appeared magnificent and the smallest convenience became a luxury. They cleaned their clothes, sorted their collections and prepared for their ride back across the Llanos.

They had survived mosquitoes, jaguars, hunger and other dangers but, just as they thought the worst was over, Bonpland and Humboldt were suddenly struck down by a violent fever. Humboldt recovered quickly, but Bonpland was soon fighting for his life. When the fever slowly ebbed after two long weeks, it was replaced by dysentery. Embarking on the long journey across the Llanos in the middle of the rainy season would be too dangerous for Bonpland.

They waited a month in Angostura until Bonpland had regained enough strength for the journey to the coast from where they intended to catch a boat to Cuba and from there to Acapulco in Mexico. Once again their trunks were loaded on to mules, with cages of monkeys and parrots dangling off their sides. The new collections had added so much weight to their luggage that progress was now tediously slow. At the end of July 1800, they stepped out of the rainforest into the open space of the Llanos. After weeks in the dense jungle where the stars appeared as if viewed from the bottom of a well, it was a revelation. Humboldt felt a sense of freedom that made him want to gallop across the wide plains. The sensation of ‘seeing’ everything around him felt completely new. ‘Infinity of space, as poets have said in every language,’ Humboldt now mused, ‘is reflected in ourself.’

In the four months since they had first seen the Llanos, the rainy season had transformed the formerly bleak steppes into a partial seascape in which huge lakes and newly filled rivers were surrounded by carpets of fresh grass. But as the ‘air turned into water’, it was even hotter than it had been during their first crossing. The grasses and blooms spread their sweet fragrance across the expanse, jaguars hid in the high grass and thousands of birds sang in the early morning hours. The flatness of the Llanos was only interrupted by an occasional Mauritia palm. Tall and slender, these palms spread out their fingered fronds like huge fans. They were now loaded with shiny reddish edible fruits that reminded Humboldt of fir cones, and which seemed to possess a particular allure for their monkeys who stretched out to grab them through the bars of their cages. Humboldt had seen the palms already in the rainforest but here in the Llanos they had a unique function.

Mauritia palms (Mauritia flexuosa) (Illustration Credit 5.5)

‘We observed with astonishment,’ he reported, ‘how many things are connected with the existence of a single plant.’ The Mauritia fruits attracted birds, the leaves shielded the wind, and the soil that had blown in and accumulated behind the trunks retained more moisture than anywhere else in the Llanos, sheltering insects and worms. Just the sight of these palms, Humboldt thought, produced a feeling of ‘coolness’. This one tree, he said, ‘spreads life around it in the desert’. Humboldt had discovered the idea of a keystone species, a species that is as essential for an ecosystem as a keystone is to an arch, almost 200 years before the concept was named. For Humboldt the Mauritia palm was the ‘tree of life’ – the perfect symbol of nature as a living organism.

6

Across the Andes

AFTER SIX MONTHS of strenuous travel in the rainforest and the Llanos, Humboldt and Bonpland returned to Cumaná in late August 1800. They were exhausted but as soon as they had recovered and sorted their collections, they left again. In late November they sailed north for Cuba where they arrived in mid-December. Then, one morning in Havana in early 1801, Humboldt opened the newspapers just as they were preparing to leave for Mexico and read an article that made him change his plans. The newspaper reported that Captain Nicolas Baudin, whose expedition he had tried to join three years earlier in France, was sailing around the world after all. Back in 1798, when Humboldt had tried to find a passage out of Europe, the French government had not been able to finance the voyage but now, so Humboldt read, Baudin had been equipped with two ships – the Géographe and Naturaliste – and was on his way to South America from where he would sail across the South Pacific to Australia.

The most obvious route would be for Baudin to stop in Lima, Humboldt guessed, and calculated that if all went to plan the Géographe and Naturaliste would probably arrive there by the end of 1801. The timing would be tight, but Humboldt now decided to try to join Baudin in Peru and then to continue with him on to Australia instead of going to Mexico. Of course Humboldt had no way of letting Baudin know where and when to rendezvous, nor did he know if the captain was even going to sail via Lima or whether there was any space on the ship for two extra scientists. But the more obstacles that were thrown into his path, ‘the more I hastened their executions’.

To ensure the safety of their collections and to avoid carrying them across the globe, Humboldt and Bonpland now began frantically to make copies of their notes and manuscripts. They sorted and packed up everything they had hoarded over the past one and a half years to send to Europe. ‘It was very uncertain, almost improbable’, Humboldt wrote to a friend in Berlin, that he and Bonpland would survive a voyage around the globe. It made sense to get at least some of their treasures to Europe. All they retained was a small herbarium – a book filled with pressed plant specimens – so that they could compare any new species they found. A larger herbarium would remain in Havana for their return.

With the European nations still at war, sea voyages remained perilous and Humboldt feared that his valuable specimens might be captured by one of the many enemy vessels. To spread the risk, Bonpland suggested splitting the collection. One large delivery was dispatched to France, and another to Germany via England with instructions that if seized by the enemy it was to be forwarded on to Joseph Banks in London. Since his return from Cook’s Endeavour voyage, thirty years previously, Banks had set up such a wide-ranging and global plant-collecting network that sea captains from all nations knew his name. Banks had also always tried to help French scientists by providing them with passports, despite the Napoleonic Wars, in the belief that the international community of scientists transcended war and national interests. ‘The science of two Nations may be at Peace,’ he said, ‘while their Politics are at war.’ Humboldt’s specimens would be safe with Banks.1

Humboldt dispatched letters home, assuring his friends and family that he was happy and healthier than ever before. He described their adventures in detail, from the dangers of jaguars and snakes to the glorious tropical landscapes and strange blossoms. Humboldt was unable to resist ending a letter to the wife of one of his closest friends with: ‘and you, dearest, how is your monotonous life?’

Once the letters were posted and the collections dispatched, Humboldt and Bonpland sailed in mid-March 1801 from Cuba to Cartagena on the northern coast of New Granada2 (now Colombia). They arrived two weeks later, on 30 March. Once again, though, Humboldt added a detour – not only would he try to reach Lima by the end of December to meet Baudin’s expedition, but he would do so overland rather than by taking the easier sea route. On the way, Humboldt and Bonpland would cross, climb and investigate the Andes – the chain of mountains that runs from north to south in several spines along the length of South America, some 4,500 miles from Venezuela and Colombia in the north all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. It was the longest mountain range in the world and Humboldt wanted to climb Chimborazo, a beautiful snow-capped volcano south of Quito, in today’s Ecuador. At almost 21,000 feet, Chimborazo was believed to be the highest mountain in the world.

This journey of around 2,500 miles from Cartagena to Lima would take the men through some of the harshest landscapes imaginable, pushing them to their physical limits. The lure was that they would travel through regions where no scientist had ever been before. ‘When one is young and active’, Humboldt said, it was easy not to think too much about the uncertainties and perils involved. If they wanted to meet Baudin in Lima, they had less than nine months. First they would travel from Cartagena along the Río Magdalena towards Bogotá – today’s capital of Colombia – from where they would march through the Andes to Quito and then further south all the way to Lima. But ‘all difficulties,’ Humboldt told himself, ‘could be conquered with energy.’

On their way south, Humboldt also wanted to meet the celebrated Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, who lived in Bogotá. The sixty-nine-year-old Mutis had arrived from Spain four decades earlier and had led many expeditions through the region. No other botanist knew so much about South American flora, and in Bogotá Humboldt hoped to compare his collections with those that Mutis had accumulated during his long career. Though he had heard that Mutis could be difficult and guarded, Humboldt hoped to win him over. ‘Mutis, so close!’ he thought when they arrived in Cartagena from where he sent the botanist ‘a very artificial letter’ laced with praise and flattery. The only reason why he wasn’t sailing to Lima from Cartagena, Humboldt now wrote to Mutis, but had chosen the far more arduous route across the Andes was to meet him in Bogotá on the way.

On 6 April, they left Cartagena to reach the Río Magdalena some sixty miles to the east. They walked through dense forests lit by fireflies – their ‘signposts’ in the dark, as Humboldt said – and spent a few miserable nights sleeping on their coats on the hard ground. Two weeks later they pushed their canoe into the Río Magdalena, travelling south towards Bogotá. For almost two months they paddled upstream against a strong current and along thick forests that ribboned the river. It was the rainy season, and once again they encountered crocodiles, mosquitoes and unbearable humidity. On 15 June they arrived in Honda, a small river port of about 4,000 people, less than 100 miles north-west of Bogotá. They now had to ascend from the river valley along rugged steep paths to a plateau that was almost 9,000 feet high and on which Bogotá was situated. Bonpland was struggling with the thin air – feeling nauseous and feverish. It made for exhausting travelling but their arrival in Bogotá on 8 July 1801 was triumphal.