Equinoctial Regions of America, vol 1 | Page 9

work are all
engraved according to the method followed by M. Labillardiere, in the
Specimen Planterum Novae Hollandiae, a work remarkable for
profound research and clearness of arrangement.
After having distributed into separate works all that belongs to
astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain,
and the history of the ancient civilization of certain nations of the New
Continent, there still remained many general results and local
descriptions, which I might have collected into separate treatises. I had,
during my journey, prepared papers on the races of men in South
America; on the Missions of the Orinoco; on the obstacles to the
progress of society in the torrid zone arising from the climate and the
strength of vegetation; on the character of the landscape in the
Cordilleras of the Andes compared with that of the Alps in Switzerland;
on the analogies between the rocks of the two hemispheres; on the
physical constitution of the air in the equinoctial regions, etc. I had left
Europe with the firm intention of not writing what is usually called the
historical narrative of a journey, but to publish the fruit of my inquiries
in works merely descriptive; and I had arranged the facts, not in the
order in which they successively presented themselves, but according

to the relation they bore to each other. Amidst the overwhelming
majesty of Nature, and the stupendous objects she presents at every
step, the traveller is little disposed to record in his journal matters
which relate only to himself, and the ordinary details of life.
I composed a very brief itinerary during the course of my excursions on
the rivers of South America, and in my long journeys by land. I
regularly described (and almost always on the spot) the visits I made to
the summits of volcanoes, or mountains remarkable for their height; but
the entries in my journal were interrupted whenever I resided in a town,
or when other occupations prevented me from continuing a work which
I considered as having only a secondary interest. Whenever I wrote in
my journal, I had no other motive than the preservation of some of
those fugitive ideas which present themselves to a naturalist, whose life
is almost wholly passed in the open air. I wished to make a temporary
collection of such facts as I had not then leisure to class, and note down
the first impressions, whether agreeable or painful, which I received
from nature or from man. Far from thinking at the time that those pages
thus hurriedly written would form the basis of an extensive work to be
offered to the public, it appeared to me, that my journal, though it
might furnish certain data useful to science, would present very few of
those incidents, the recital of which constitutes the principal charm of
an itinerary.
The difficulties I have experienced since my return, in the composition
of a considerable number of treatises, for the purpose of making known
certain classes of phenomena, insensibly overcame my repugnance to
write the narrative of my journey. In undertaking this task, I have been
guided by the advice of many estimable persons, who honour me with
their friendship. I also perceived that such a preference is given to this
sort of composition, that scientific men, after having presented in an
isolated form the account of their researches on the productions, the
manners, and the political state of the countries through which they
have passed, imagine that they have not fulfilled their engagements
with the public, till they have written their itinerary.
An historical narrative embraces two very distinct objects; the greater
or the less important events connected with the purpose of the traveller,
and the observations he has made during his journey. The unity of
composition also, which distinguishes good works from those on an

ill-constructed plan, can be strictly observed only when the traveller
describes what has passed under his own eye; and when his principal
attention has been fixed less on scientific observations than on the
manners of different people and the great phenomena of nature. Now,
the most faithful picture of manners is that which best displays the
relations of men towards each other. The character of savage or
civilized life is portrayed either in the obstacles a traveller meets with,
or in the sensations he feels. It is the traveller himself whom we
continually desire to see in contact with the objects which surround him;
and his narration interests us the more, when a local tint is diffused
over the description of a country and its inhabitants. Such is the source
of the interest excited by the history of those early navigators, who,
impelled by intrepidity rather than by science, struggled against the
elements in their search for the discovery of a new world. Such