Chapter VIII: Part 8

The question has often been propounded: What is it that burns in volcanos,--What produces the heat which melts and fuses together earths and metals? Modern chemical science has essayed to answer, that what burns are the earths, the metals, the alkalies themselves; viz. the metalloids of those substances. The solid and already-oxydised crust of the globe separates the surrounding atmosphere, with the oxygen which it contains, from the inflammable unoxydised substances in the interior of our planet: when those metalloids come in contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere there arises disengagement of heat. The great and celebrated chemist who propounded this explanation of volcanic phenomena soon himself relinquished it. Observations made in mines and caverns in all climates, and which in concert with M. Arago I have collected in a separate memoir, shew that, even at what may be considered a very small depth, the temperature of the Earth is much above the mean temperature of the atmosphere at the same place. A fact so remarkable, and so generally confirmed, connects itself with that which we learn from volcanic phenomena. The depth at which the globe may be regarded as a molten mass has been calculated. The primitive cause of this subterranean heat is, as in all planets, the process of formation itself, the separation of the spherically condensing mass from a cosmical gaseous fluid, and the cooling of the terrestrial strata at different depths by the loss of heat parted with by radiation. All volcanic phenomena are probably the result of a communication either permanent or transient between the interior and exterior of the globe. Elastic vapours press the molten oxydising substances upwards through deep fissures. Volcanos might thus be termed intermitting springs or fountains of earthy substances; _i. e._ of the fluid mixture of metals, alkalis, and earths which solidify into lava currents and flow softly and tranquilly, when being upheaved they find a passage by which to escape. In a similar manner the Ancients represented (according to Plato’s Phædon) all volcanic fiery currents as streams flowing from the Pyriphlegethon.

To these considerations and views let me be permitted to add another more bold. May we not find in this internal heat of our globe,--(a heat indicated by thermometric experiments on the waters of springs rising from different depths,[40] as well by our observations on volcanos),--a cause which may explain one of the most wonderful phænomena with which the study of fossils has made us acquainted? Tropical forms of animals, and, in the vegetable kingdom, arborescent ferns, palms, and bambusaceæ, are found buried in the cold regions of the North. Everywhere the ancient world shews a distribution of organic forms at variance with our present climates. To resolve so important a problem, recourse has been had to several hypotheses; such as the approach of a comet, a change in the obliquity of the Ecliptic, and a different degree of intensity in the solar light. None of these explanations are satisfactory at once to the astronomer, the physicist, and the geologist. For my part I willingly leave the axis of the Earth in its place, and suppose no change in the light of the solar disk (from whose spots a celebrated astronomer was inclined to explain the favourable or unfavourable harvests of particular years); I am disposed to recognise that in each planet there exist, independently of its relations to the central body of the system to which it belongs, and independently of its astronomical position, various causes for the development of heat;--processes of oxydation, precipitations and chemical changes in the capacity of bodies, by increase of electro-magnetic intensity, and communications opened between the internal and external portions of the planet.

It may be that in the Ancient World, exhalations of heat issuing forth through the many openings of the deeply fissured crust of the globe may have favoured, perhaps for centuries, the growth of palms and tree-ferns and the existence of animals requiring a high temperature, over entire countries where now a very different climate prevails. According to this view of things (a view already indicated by me in a work entitled “Geological Essay on the Superposition of Rocks in both Hemispheres”) the temperature of volcanos would be that of the interior of the earth, and the same cause which, operating through volcanic eruptions, now produces devastating effects, might in primeval ages have clothed the deeply fissured rocks of the newly oxydised earth in every zone with the most luxuriant vegetation.

If, with a view to explain the distribution of tropical forms whose remains are now discovered buried in northern regions, it should be assumed that the long-haired species of Elephant now found enclosed in ice was originally indigenous in cold climates, and that forms resembling the same leading type may, as in the case of lions and lynxes, have been able to live in wholly different climates, still this manner of solving the difficulty presented by fossil remains cannot be extended so as to apply to vegetable productions. From reasons with which the study of vegetable physiology makes us acquainted, Palms, Musaceæ, and arborescent Monocotyledones, are incapable of supporting the deprivation of their appendicular organs which would be caused by the present temperature of our northern regions; and in the geological problem which we have to examine, it appears to me difficult to separate vegetable and animal remains from each other. The same mode of explanation ought to comprehend both.

I have permitted myself at the conclusion of the present discussion to connect with facts collected in different and widely separated countries some uncertain and hypothetical conjectures. The philosophical study of Nature rises beyond the requirements of a simple description of Nature: it does not consist in a sterile accumulation of isolated facts. It may sometimes be permitted to the active and curious mind of man to stretch forward from the present to the still obscure future; to divine that which cannot yet be clearly known; and thus to take pleasure in the ancient myths of geology reproduced in our own days in new and varied forms.

ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.

[38] p. 226.--“_A more complete determination of the height of all parts of the margin of the crater._”

Oltmanns, my astronomical fellow labourer, of whom, alas! science has been early deprived, re-calculated the barometric measurements of Vesuvius referred to in the preceding memoir (of the 22d and 25th of November and of the 1st of December, 1822), and has compared the results with the measurements which have been communicated to me in manuscript by Lord Minto, Visconti, Monticelli, Brioschi, and Poulett Scrope.

A. _Rocca del Palo, the highest and northern margin of the Crater of Vesuvius._

Toises. Eng. ft.
Saussure, barometric measurement computed in
1773, probably by Deluc’s formula 609 3894
Poli, 1794, barometric 606 3875
Breislak, 1794, barometric (but, like Poli, the formula
employed uncertain) 613 3920
Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt, 1805,
barometric, computed by Laplace’s formula, as
are also all the barometric results which follow 603 3856
Brioschi, 1810, trigonometric 638 4080
Visconti, 1816, trigonometric 622 3977
Lord Minto, 1822, barometric, often repeated 621 3971
Poulett Scrope, 1822, barometric, somewhat uncertain
from the proportion between the diameters
of the tube and cistern being unknown 604 3862
Monticelli and Covelli, 1822 624 3990
Humboldt, 1822 629 4022

Most probable result 317 toises, or 2027 English feet, above the Hermitage; or 625 toises, or 3996 English feet, above the level of the sea.

B. _The lowest and southern margin of the crater opposite to Bosche Tre Case._

Toises. Eng. ft.
After the eruption of 1794 this edge became 400
(426 Eng.) feet lower than the Rocca del Palo;
therefore if we estimate the latter at 625 toises
(3996 English feet) 559 3574
Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
1805, barometric 534 3414
Humboldt, 1822, barometric 546 3491

C. _Height of the cone of scoriæ inside the crater, which fell in on the 22d of October, 1822._

Toises. Eng. ft.
Lord Minto, barometric 650 4156
Brioschi, trigonometric, according to different
combinations either 636 4066
Or 641 4098

Probable final result for the height of the above-mentioned cone of scoriæ 646 toises, or 4130 English feet.

D. _Punta Nasone, highest summit of the Somma._

Toises. Eng. ft.
Schuckburgh, 1794, barometric, probably computed
by his own formula 584 3734
Humboldt, 1822, barometric, Laplace’s formula 586 3747

E. _Plain of the Atrio del Cavallo._

Toises. Eng. ft.

Humboldt, 1822, barometric 403 2577

F. _Foot of the cone of ashes._

Toises. Eng. ft.

Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
1805, barometric 370 2366

Humboldt, 1822, barometric 388 2481

G. _Hermitage del Salvatore._

Toises. Eng. ft.

Gay-Lussac, Leopold von Buch, and Humboldt,
1805, barometric 300 1918

Lord Minto, 1822, barometric 307.9 1969

Humboldt, 1822, barometric repeated 308.7 1974

Part of my measurements have been printed in Monticelli’s Storia de’ fenomeni del Vesuvio, avvenuti negli anni 1821-1823, p. 115; but the neglected correction for the height of the mercury in the cistern has somewhat disfigured the results as there published. When it is remembered that the results given in the above table were obtained with barometers of very different constructions, at various hours of the day, with winds from very different quarters, and on the unequally heated declivity of a volcano, in a locality in which the decrease of atmospheric temperature differs greatly from that which is supposed in our barometric formulæ,--the agreement will be found to be as great as could be expected, and quite satisfactory.

My measurements in 1822, at the time of the Congress of Verona, when I accompanied the late King of Prussia to Naples, were made with more care and under more favourable circumstances than those of 1805. Differences of height are besides always to be preferred to absolute heights, and these show that since 1794 the difference between the heights of the edges of the crater at the Rocca del Palo and on the side towards Bosco Tre Case has continued almost the same. I found it in 1805 exactly 69 toises (441 English feet), and in 1822 almost 82 toises (524 English feet). A distinguished geologist, Mr Poulett Scrope, found 74 toises (473 English feet), although the absolute heights which he assigns to the two sides of the crater appear to be rather too small. So little variation in a period of twenty-eight years, in which there were such violent commotions in the interior of the crater, is certainly a striking phænomenon.

The height attained by cones of scoriæ rising from the floor of the crater of Vesuvius is also deserving of particular attention. In 1776 Schuckburgh found such a cone 615 toises, or 3932 English feet, above the surface of the Mediterranean: according to the measurements of Lord Minto, (a very accurate observer,) the cone of scoriæ which fell in on the 22d of October, 1822, even attained the height of 650 toises, or 4156 English feet. On both occasions, therefore, the height of the cones of scoriæ in the crater surpassed that of the highest part of the margin of the crater. When we compare together the measurements of the Rocca del Palo from 1773 to 1822, we are almost involuntarily led to entertain the bold conjecture that the north margin of the crater has been gradually upraised by subterranean forces. The accordance of the three measurements between 1773 and 1805 is almost as striking as that of those taken from 1816 to 1822. In the latter period we cannot doubt the height being from about 621 to 629 toises (3970 to 4022 English feet). Are the measurements made from thirty to forty years earlier, which gave only 606 to 609 toises (3875 to 3894 English feet), less certain? At some future day, after longer periods shall have elapsed, it will be possible to decide what is due to errors of measurement, and what to an actual rise in the margin of the crater. There cannot be in this case any accumulation of loose materials from above. If the solid trachyte-like lava beds of the Rocca del Palo really become higher, we must assume them to be upheaved from below by volcanic forces.

My learned and indefatigable friend Oltmanns has placed all the details of the above measurements before the public, accompanied by a careful critical examination of them, in the Abhandl. der königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1822-1823, S. 3-20. May this investigation be the means of inducing geologists frequently to examine hypsometrically this low and most easily accessible (except Stromboli) of the European volcanos, so that in the course of centuries there may be obtained a frequently checked and accurate account of its periods of development!

[39] p. 235.--“_Where the pressure is less._”

Compare Leopold von Buch on the Peak of Teneriffe in his Physikalische Beschreibung der canarischen Inseln, 1825, S. 213; and in the Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie zu Berlin, 1820-1821, S. 99.

[40] p. 289--“_Waters of springs rising from different depths._”

Compare Arago in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 1835, p. 234. The increase of temperature is in our latitudes 1° of Reaumur (2°.25 of a degree of Fahrenheit) for every 113 Parisian feet (120.5 English feet), or 1° Fah. to 53.5 English feet nearly. In the Artesian boring at New Salzwerk (Oeynhausen’s Bad), not far from Minden, which is the greatest known depth below the level of the sea, the temperature of the water at 2094-1/2 Parisian feet (2232-1/4 Eng.) is fully 26°.2 Reaumur, or 91° Fahr.; while the mean temperature of the air above may be taken at 7°.7 Reaumur, or 49°.2 Fahr. It is very remarkable that in the third century Saint Patricius, Bishop of Pertusa, was led by seeing the hot springs near Carthage to a very just view respecting the cause of such an increase of heat. (Acta S. Patricii, p. 555, ed. Ruinart; Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 231,--English Edition, Vol. i. p. 211.)

THE

VITAL FORCE;

OR,

THE RHODIAN GENIUS.

[FIRST PRINTED IN 1795.]

The Syracusans, like the Athenians, had their Pœcile, in which representations of gods and heroes, the works of Grecian and Italian art, adorned the halls, glowing with varied colours. The people resorted thither continually; the young warriors to contemplate the exploits of their ancestors, the artists to study the works of the great masters. Among the numerous paintings which the active zeal of the Syracusans had collected from the mother country, there was one which, for a century past, had particularly attracted the attention of spectators. Sometimes the Olympian Jove, Cecrops the founder of cities, and the heroic courage of Harmodius and Aristogiton, would want admirers, while men pressed in crowded ranks around the picture of which we speak. Whence this preference? Was it a rescued work of Apelles, or of the school of Callimachus? No; it possessed indeed grace and beauty; but yet neither in the blending of the colours, nor in the character and style of the entire picture, could it be compared with many other paintings in the Pœcile.

The multitude (comprehending therein many classes of society), often regard with astonishment and admiration what they do not comprehend: this picture had occupied its place for a hundred years; but though Syracuse contained within the narrow limits enclosed by its walls more of the genius of art than the whole of the remainder of sea-surrounded Sicily, no one had yet divined the hidden meaning of the design. It was even uncertain to what temple the painting had originally belonged, for it had been rescued from a shipwrecked vessel, which was only conjectured from the merchandise it contained to have come from Rhodes.

On the foreground of the picture youths and maidens formed a closely crowded group. They were without clothing and well formed, but at the same time did not exhibit the more noble and graceful proportions admired in the statues of Praxiteles and Alcamenes. Their robust limbs, shewing the traces of laborious efforts, and the purely terrestrial expression of their desires and sorrows, seemed to take from them every thing of a diviner character, and to chain them exclusively to their earthly habitation. Their hair was simply ornamented with leaves and field-flowers. Their arms were outstretched towards each other, as if to indicate their desire of union, but their troubled looks were turned towards a Genius who, surrounded by bright light, hovered in the midst. A butterfly was placed on his shoulder, and in his hand he held on high a lighted torch. The contours of his form were soft and child-like, but his glance was animated by celestial fire: he looked down as a master upon the youths and maidens at his feet. Nothing else that was characteristic could be discovered in the picture. Some persons thought they could make out at its foot the letters ζ and ς, from whence (as antiquaries were then no less bold in their conjectures than they now are), they took occasion to infer, in a somewhat forced manner, the name of Zenodorus; thus attributing the work to a painter of the same name as the artist who at a later period cast the Colossus of Rhodes.

The “Rhodian Genius,” however,--for such was the name given to the picture,--did not want for commentators and interpreters in Syracuse. Amateurs of the arts, and especially the younger amongst them, on returning from a short visit to Corinth or Athens, would have thought it equivalent to renouncing all pretensions to connoisseurship if they had not been provided with some new explanation. Some regarded the Genius as the personification of Spiritual Love, forbidding the enjoyment of sensual pleasures; others said it was the assertion of the empire of Reason over Desire: the wiser among the critics were silent, and presuming some high though yet undiscovered meaning, examined meanwhile with pleasure the simple composition of the picture.

Still, however, the question remained unsolved. The picture had been copied with various additions and sent to Greece, but not the least light had been thrown on its origin; when at length, at the season of the early rising of the Pleiades, and soon after the reopening of the navigation of the Egean Sea, ships from Rhodes entered the port of Syracuse, bearing a precious collection of statues, altars, candelabras, and paintings, which Dionysius’s love of art had caused to be brought together from different parts of Greece. Among the paintings was one which was immediately recognised as the companion or pendent of the Rhodian Genius: the dimensions were the same, and the colouring similar, but in a better state of preservation: the Genius was still the central figure, but the butterfly was no longer on his shoulder; his head was drooping, and his torch extinguished and inverted. The youths and maidens pressing around him had met and embraced; their glance, no longer subdued or sad, announced, on the contrary, emancipation from restraint, and the fulfilment of long-cherished desires.

The Syracusan antiquaries were already seeking to modify the explanations they had previously proposed, so as to adapt them to the newly-arrived picture, when Dionysius commanded the latter to be carried to the house of Epicharmus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, who dwelt in a remote part of Syracuse called Tyche. Epicharmus rarely presented himself at the court of Dionysius, for although the latter was fond of calling around him the most distinguished men from all the Greek colonial cities, yet the philosopher found that the proximity of princes takes even from men of the greatest intellectual power part of their spirit and their freedom. He devoted himself unceasingly to the study of natural things, their forces or powers, the origin of animals and plants, and the harmonious laws in accordance with which the heavenly bodies, as well as the grains of hail and the flakes of snow, assume their distinctive forms. Oppressed with age, and unable to proceed far without assistance, he caused himself to be conducted daily to the Pœcile, and thence to the entrance of the port, where, as he said, his eyes received the image of the boundless and the infinite which his spirit ever strove in vain to apprehend. He lived honoured alike by the tyrant, whose presence he avoided, and by the lower classes of the people, whom he met gladly, and often with friendly help.

Exhausted with fatigue, he was reposing on his couch, when the newly-arrived picture was brought to him by the command of Dionysius. Care had been taken to bring, at the same time, a faithful copy of the “Rhodian Genius,” and the philosopher desired the two paintings to be placed side by side before him. After having remained for some time with his eyes fixed upon them, and absorbed in thought, he called his scholars together, and spoke to them in the following terms, in a voice which was not without emotion:--

“Withdraw the curtain from the window, that I may enjoy once more the view of the fair earth animated with living beings. During sixty years I have reflected on the internal motive powers of nature, and on the differences of substances: to-day for the first time the picture of the Rhodian Genius leads me to see more clearly that which I had before only obscurely divined. As living beings are impelled by natural desires to salutary and fruitful union, so the raw materials of inorganic nature are moved by similar impulses. Even in the reign of primeval night, in the darkness of chaos, elementary principles or substances sought or shunned each other in obedience to indwelling dispositions of amity or enmity. Thus the fire of heaven follows metal, iron obeys the attraction of the loadstone, amber rubbed takes up light substances, earth mixes with earth, salt collects together from the water of the sea, and the acid moisture of the Stypteria (στυπτηρια υγρα), as well as the flocculent salt Trichitis, love the clay of Melos. In inanimate nature all things hasten to unite with each other according to their particular laws. Hence no terrestrial element (and who would dare to include light among the number of such elements?) is to be found anywhere in its pure and primitive simple state. Each as soon as formed tends to enter into new combinations, and the art of man is needed to disjoin and present in a separated state substances which you would seek in vain in the interior of the earth, and in the fluid oceans of air or water. In dead inorganic matter, entire inactivity and repose reign so long as the bonds of affinity continue undissolved, so long as no third substance comes to join itself to the others. But even then, the action and disturbance produced are soon again succeeded by unfruitful repose.

“It is otherwise, however, when the same substances are brought together in the bodies of plants and animals. In these the vital force or power reigns supreme, and regardless of the mutual amity or enmity of the atoms recognised by Democritus, commands the union of substances which in inanimate nature shun each other, and separates those which are ever seeking to enter into combination.

“Now come nearer to me, my friends; look with me on the first of the pictures before us, and recognise in the Rhodian Genius, in the expression of youthful energy, in the butterfly on his shoulder, and in the commanding glance of his eye, the symbol of vital force animating each individual germ of the organic creation. At his feet are the earthy elements desiring to mix and unite, conformably to their particular tendencies. The Genius, holding aloft his lighted torch with commanding gesture, controls and constrains them, without regard to their ancient rights, to obey his laws.

“Now view with me the new picture which the tyrant has sent to me for explanation: turn your eyes from the image of life to that of death. The butterfly has left its former place and soars upwards; the extinguished torch is reversed, the head of the youth has sunk: the spirit has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is dead. Now the youths and maidens joyfully join hands, the earthy substances resume their ancient rights: they are freed from the chains that bound them, and follow impetuously after long restraint the impulse to union.--Thus inert matter, animated awhile by vital force, passes through an innumerable diversity of forms, and perhaps in the same substance which once enshrined the spirit of Pythagoras, a poor worm may have enjoyed a momentary existence.

“Go, Polycles, and tell Dionysius what thou hast heard;--and you my friends, Euryphamos, Lysis, and Scopas, come nearer to me and support me; I feel that in my weakened frame the enfeebled vital power will not long hold in subjection the earthly substances which reclaim their ancient liberty. Lead me once again to the Pœcile, and thence to the sea shore; soon you will collect my ashes.”

NOTE.

I have noticed in the Preface to the Second and Third Editions (S. xiii., p. xii. English Trans.) the subject of the republication here of the preceding pages, which were first printed in Schiller’s Horen (Jahrg. 1795, St. 5, S. 90-96). They contain the development of a physiological idea clothed in a semi-mythical garb. In the Latin “Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants” appended to my “Subterranean Flora,” in 1793,--I had defined the “vital force” as “the unknown cause which prevents the elements from following their original affinities.” The first of my aphorisms were as follows:--Rerum naturam si totam consideres, magnum atque durabile, quod inter elementa intercedit, discrimen perspicies, quorum altera affinitatum legibus obtemperantia, altera, vinculis solutis, varie juncta apparent. Quod quidem discrimen in elementis ipsis eorumque indole neutiquam positum, quum ex sola distributione singulorum petendum esse videatur. Materiam segnem, brutam, inanimam eam vocamus, cujus stamina secundum leges chymicæ affinitatis mixta sunt. Animata atque organica ea potissimum corpora appellamus, quæ, licet in novas mutari formas perpetuo tendant, vi interna quadam continentur, quominus priscam sibique insitam formam relinquant.

“Vim internam, quæ chymicæ affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus. Itaque nullum certius mortis criterium putredine datur, qua primæ partes vel stamina rerum, antiquis juribus revocatis, affinitatum legibus parent. Corporum inanimorum nulla putredo esse potest.” (Vide Aphorismi ex doctrina Physiologiæ chemicæ Plantarum, in Humboldt, Flora Fribergensis subterranea, 1793, p. 133-136).

I have placed in the mouth of Epicharmus the above propositions, which were disapproved by the acute Vicq d’Azyr, in his Traité d’Anatomie et de Physiologie, T. i. p. 5, but are now entertained by many distinguished persons among my friends. Reflection and continued study in the domains of physiology and chemistry have deeply shaken my earlier belief in a peculiar so-called vital force. In 1797, at the close of my work entitled “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel und Nervenfaser, nebst Vermuthungen über den chemischen Process des Lebens in der Thier und Pflanzenwelt” (Bd. ii. S. 430-436), I already declared that I by no means regarded the existence of such peculiar vital forces as demonstrated. Since that time I have no longer called peculiar forces what may possibly only be the operation of the concurrent action of the several long-known substances and their material forces. We may, however deduce from the chemical relations of the elements a safer definition of animate and inanimate substances, than the criteria which are taken from voluntary motion, from the circulation of fluids within solids, from internal appropriation, and from the fibrous arrangements of the elements. I term that an animated substance “of which the parts being separated by external agency alter their state of composition after the separation, all other and external relations continuing the same.” This definition is merely the enunciation of a fact. The equilibrium of the elements in animated or organic matter is preserved by their being parts of a whole. One organ determines another, one gives to another its temperature and tone or disposition, in all which, these, and no other, affinities are operative. Thus in organised beings all is reciprocally means and end. The rapidity with which organic parts, separated from a complete living organism, change their slate of combination, differs greatly, according to the degree of their original dependence, and to the nature of the substance. Blood of animals, which varies much in the different classes, suffers change sooner than the juices of plants. Funguses generally decay sooner than leaves of trees, and muscle more easily than the cutis.

Bones, the elementary structure of which has been very recently recognised, hair of animals, wood in plants or trees, the feathery appendages of seeds of plants (Pappus), are not inorganic or without life; but even in life they approximate to the state in which they are found after their separation from the rest of the organism. The higher the degree of vitality or susceptibility of an animated substance, the more rapidly does organic change in its composition ensue after separation. “The aggregate total of the cells is an organism, and the organism lives so long as the parts are active in subservience to the whole. In opposition to lifeless or inorganic, organic nature _appears_ to be self-determining.” (Henle, Allgemeine Anatomie, 1841, S. 216-219). The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phenomena of organic life to physical and chemical laws, consists chiefly (almost as in the question of predicting meteorological processes in the atmosphere), in the complication of the phænomena, and in the multiplicity of simultaneously acting forces and of the conditions of their activity.

I have remained faithful in “Kosmos” to the same mode of viewing and representing what are called “Lebenskräfte,” vital forces, and vital affinities, (Pulteney, in the Transact. of the Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), the formation-impulse, and the active principle in organisation. I have said, in Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 67, (English Ed. vol. i. p. 62), “The myths of imponderable matter and of vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions and forms of recognition the prodigious mass of our experimental knowledge has progressively accumulated, and is now enlarging with increased rapidity. Investigating reason essays from time to time with varying success to break through ancient forms and symbols, invented to effect the subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical constructions.” Farther on in the same volume, (p. 339 English, and 367 of the original,) I have said, “In a physical description of the universe, it should still be noticed that the same substances which compose the organic forms of plants and animals are also found in the inorganic crust of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings likewise, combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating the forms and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases under complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very vague terms of ‘vital phænomena,’ ‘operations of vital forces,’ have been assigned, and which have been systematically grouped, according to analogies more or less happily imagined.” (Compare also the critical notices on the assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces in Schleiden’s Botanik als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an Inductive Science), Th. i. S. 60, and in the recently published excellent Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (Researches on Animal Electricity), by Emil du Bois-Reymond, Bd. i. S. xxxiv.-l.)

THE

PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA,

THE

ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA:

AND

THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN,

FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.

After a residence of an entire year on the crest of the chain of the Andes or Antis[41], between 4° North and 4° South Latitude, in the high plains of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, whose mean elevations range between 8500 and 12800 English feet, we rejoiced in descending gradually through the milder climate of the Quina-yielding forests of Loxa to the plains of the upper part of the course of the Amazons, a terra incognita rich in magnificent vegetation. The small town of Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious of all the species of medicinal Fever-Bark: Quina, or Cascarilla fina de Loxa. It is the precious production of the tree which we have described botanically as Cinchona condaminea, but which, under the erroneous impression that all the kinds of the Quina or fever bark of commerce were furnished by the same species of tree, had previously been called Cinchona officinalis. The Fever Bark was first brought to Europe towards the middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebastian Badus asserts, to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of the wife of the Viceroy, the Countess of Chinchon[42], who had been cured of intermittent fever at Lima, accompanied by her physician, Juan del Vego. The trees which yield the finest quality of Quina de Loxa are found from 8 to 12 miles to the south east of the town, in the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Rumisitana, growing on mica-slate and gneiss, at very moderate elevations above the level of the sea, being between 5400 and 7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet, heights about equal respectively to those of the Hospice on the Grimsel and the Pass of the great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the Quina-woods in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu.

The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the fourth or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed: we heard with astonishment that at the period of my journey, according to official computations, the collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina Hunters),--only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found its way at that time into commerce; the whole was sent from the port of Payta on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish Court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 11000 Spanish pounds, eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and thicker stems have become more and more scarce; but the luxuriance of vegetation is such that the younger trees which are now resorted to, though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English feet in height. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves above 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found, ranges between 12-1/2° and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit), which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be from their nature but little satisfactory.

In order to descend South-South-East from the mountain knot of Loxa to the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the _Paramos_ of Chulucanas, Guamani and Yamoca,--mountain wildernesses of a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10125 English) feet; they are stormy, often enveloped for days in dense mist, or visited by violent and formidable showers of hail,--consisting not merely of hailstones of different spherical forms, usually a good deal flattened by rotation, but also sometimes of less regular forms, the hail having run together into thin plates of ice (papa-cara) which cut the face and hands. At such times I have occasionally seen the thermometer sink to 7° or 5° Reaumur, (47°.8 and 43°.2 Fahr.) and the electric tension of the atmosphere, measured by Volta’s electrometer, pass in a few minutes from positive to negative. When the temperature sinks below 5° Reaumur, (43°.2 Fahrenheit) snow falls in large and thinly scattered flakes. The vegetation of the Paramos has a peculiar physiognomy and character, from the absence of trees, the short close branches of the small-leaved myrtle-like shrubs, the large sized and numerous blossoms, and the perpetual freshness of the whole from the constant and abundant supply of moisture. No zone of Alpine vegetation in the temperate or cold parts of the globe can well be compared with that of the Paramos in the tropical Andes.

The impressions produced on the mind by the natural characters of these wildernesses of the Cordilleras are heightened in a remarkable and unexpected manner, from its being in those very regions that we still see admirable remains of the gigantic work, the artificial road of the Incas, which formed a line of communication through all the provinces of the Empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand English geographical miles. We find, placed at nearly equal distances apart, stations consisting of dwelling houses built of well-cut stone; they are a kind of Caravanserai, and are called Tambos and sometimes Inca-pilca (from _pircca_, the wall?). Some of them are surrounded by a kind of fortification; others were constructed for baths with arrangements for conducting hot water; the larger were designed for the use of the family of the Monarch himself. I had previously seen, measured, and drawn with care, buildings of the same kind in a good state of preservation at the foot of the volcano of Cotopaxi, near Callo. Pedro de Cieça, writing in the 16th century, called them “Aposentos de Mulalo.”[43] In the pass between Alausi and Loxa, called the Paramo del Assuay,--(a much frequented route across the Ladera de Cadlud, 14568 French or 15526 English feet above the level of the sea, or almost equal to the height of Mont Blanc),--as we were leading our heavily laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground on the elevated plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca’s road, which with a breadth of twenty-one English feet ran by our side for above a German mile. It had a deep under-structure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman roads in Italy, in the South of France, and in Spain, was more imposing than these works of the ancient Peruvians, which are moreover situated, according to my barometric measurements, at an elevation of 12440 (13258 English) feet above the sea, or more than a thousand feet higher than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ruins of what is called the Palace of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and which are known by the name of the “Paredones del Inca,” are situated at the same elevation on the Assuay. Proceeding from thence to the southward towards Cuenca, the road leads to the small but well preserved fortress of Cañar[44], belonging probably to the same period, that of Tupac Yupanqui, or to that of his warlike son, Huayna Capac.

We saw still finer remains of the old Peruvian artificial roads on the way between Loxa and the Amazons, at the Baths of the Incas on the Paramo de Chulucanas, not far from Guancabamba, and in the neighbourhood of Ingatambo, at Pomahuaca. These last named remains are at a so much lower elevation, that I found the difference of level between the Inca’s Road at Pomahuaca and that on the Paramo del Assuay upwards of 9100 (about 9700 English) feet. The distance in a straight line is by astronomically determined latitudes exactly 184 English geographical miles, and the ascent of the road is 3500 (3730 English) feet greater than the height of the Pass of Mount Cenis above the Lake of Como. There are two great artificial Peruvian paved roads or systems of roads, covered with flat stones, or sometimes even with cemented gravel[45] (Macadamised); one passes through the wide and arid plain between the Pacific Ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Mile-stones, or stones marking the distances, are often found placed at equal intervals. The road was conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges, stone, wood, and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca or de Maroma), and there were also aqueducts, or arrangements for bringing water to the Tambos, (hostelries or caravanserais) and to the fortresses. Both systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of government of the great empire, in 13° 31´ South latitude, and which is placed, according to Pentland’s map of Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378 English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly laden lamas, we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting places at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, who on their distant expeditions used the military roads of the Incas with so much advantage, found great difficulties for the Spanish Cavalry at the places where these steps occurred[46]. The impediment presented to their march on these occasions was so much the greater, because in the early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to deliberate on every step he takes. It was not until a later period that mules were employed.

Sarmiento, who saw the Roads of the Incas whilst they were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks in a “Relacion” which long lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, “how a nation unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand works in so high and rocky a region (“Caminos tan grandes y tan sovervios”), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles,” he adds, “with all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered Government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over whom they ruled.” Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilised of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years’ imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years of age “in the odour of sanctity,” “en olor de Santidad,” exclaims: “in the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here admire.” The two important capitals and seats of government of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are 1000 English geographical miles apart in a straight line (SS.E., NN.W.), without reckoning the many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilaso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at “500 leguas.” Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the building materials for the “princely buildings,” (the houses of the Incas) in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco.

When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity of communication, especially in the movement of troops, became an important necessity of government. Hence the construction of artificial roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of cultivation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians, Greeks[47], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, shew many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have been completed in less than 30 or 35 years; _i. e._ within the short period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of “Quitu” and the death of Huayna Capac, but entire obscurity prevails as to the period of the formation of the Southern, and more properly speaking Peruvian, roads.

The mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually placed 400 years before the landing of Pizarro in the Island of Puna (1532), therefore towards the middle of the 12th century, almost 200 years before the foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); some Spanish writers even reckon, instead of 400, 500 and 550 years between Manco Capac and Pizarro. But the history of the empire of Peru only recognises thirteen ruling princes of the Inca-dynasty, a number which, as Prescott very justly remarks, is not sufficient to occupy so long an interval as 550 or even 400 years. Quetzalcoatl, Botschica, and Manco Capac, are the three mythical forms with which the commencements of civilisation among the Aztecs, the Muyscas (more properly Chibchas), and the Peruvians, are connected. Quetzalcoatl, bearded, clothed in black, a high priest of Tula, subsequently a penance-performing anchorite on a mountain near Tlaxapuchicalco, comes to the highlands of Mexico from the coast of Panuco; therefore from the eastern coast of Anahuac. Botschica, or rather Nemterequeteba[48] (a Buddha of the Muyscas), a messenger sent by the Deity, bearded and wearing long garments, arrives in the high plains of Bogota from the grassy steppes east of the chain of the Andes. Before Manco Capac a degree of civilisation already prevailed on the picturesque shores of the Lake of Titicaca. The strong fort of Cuzco, on the hill of Sacsahuaman, was formed on the pattern of the older constructions of Tiahuanaco. In the same manner the Aztecs imitated the pyramidal structures of the Toltecs, and these, those of the Olmecs (Hulmecs); and gradually ascending, we arrive, still on historic ground in Mexico, as far back as the sixth century of our Era. According to Siguenza, the Toltec step-pyramid (or Teocalli) of Cholula is a repetition of the form of the Hulmec step-pyramid of Teotihuacan. Thus as we penetrate through each successive stratum of civilisation we arrive at an earlier one; and national self-consciousness not having awoke simultaneously in the two continents, we find in each nation the imaginative mythical domain always immediately preceding the period of historic knowledge.

Notwithstanding the tribute of admiration which the first Conquistadores paid to the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians, not only did they neglect the repair and preservation of both these classes of useful works, but they even wantonly destroyed them; and this still more towards the sea-coast, (for the sake of obtaining fine cut stones for new buildings; and where the want of water consequent on the destruction of the aqueducts has rendered the soil barren), than on the ridges of the Andes, or in the deep-cleft valleys by which the mountain chain is intersected. In the long day’s journey from the syenitic rocks of Zaulaca to the Valley of San Felipe (rich in fossils, and situated at the foot of the icy Paramo de Yamoca), we were obliged to wade through the Rio de Guancabamba (which flows into the Amazons), no less than twenty-seven times, on account of the windings of the stream; while we continually saw near us, running in a straight line along the side of a steep precipice, the remains of the high built road of the Incas with its Tambos. The mountain torrent, though only from 120 to 150 English feet broad, was so strong and rapid that, in fording it, our heavily laden mules were often in danger of being swept away by the flood. They carried our manuscripts, our dried plants, and all that we had been collecting for a year past. Under such circumstances one watches from the other side of the stream with very anxious suspense until the long train of eighteen or twenty beasts of burden have passed in safety.

The same Rio de Guancabamba, in the lower part of its course, where it has many falls and rapids, is made to serve in a very singular manner for the conveyance of correspondence with the coast of the Pacific. In order to expedite more quickly the few letters from Truxillo which are intended for the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, a “swimming courier,” “el correo que nada,” as he is called in the country, is employed. This post messenger, who is usually a young Indian, swims in two days from Pomahuaca to Tomependa, first by the Rio de Chamaya (the name given to the lower part of the Rio de Guancabamba), and then by the Amazons. He carefully places the few letters entrusted to him in a large cotton handkerchief, which he winds round his head in the manner of a turban. When he comes to waterfalls he leaves the river, and makes a circuit through the woods. In order to lessen the fatigue of swimming for so long a time, he sometimes throws one arm round a piece of a very light kind of wood (Ceiba, Palo de balsa), of a tree belonging to the family of Bombaceæ. Sometimes also a friend goes with him to bear him company. The pair have no concern about provisions, as they are always sure of a hospitable reception in any of the scattered huts, which are abundantly surrounded with fruit trees, in the beautiful Huertas de Pucara and Cavico.

Happily the river is free from crocodiles, which, in the upper part of the Amazons, are first met with below the cataracts of Mayasi. These unwieldy and slothful monsters generally prefer the more tranquil waters. According to my measurements the Rio de Chamaya, from the Ford (Paso) de Pucara to the place where it enters the Amazons River below the village of Choros, has a fall[49] of 1668 (1778 English) feet in the short space of 52 English geographical miles. The Governor of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros assured me that letters carried by this singular water-post were rarely either wetted or lost. Soon after my return to Europe from Mexico, I received, in Paris, letters from Tomependa, which had been sent in the manner above described. Several tribes of wild Indians, living on the banks of the Upper Amazons, make their journeys in a similar manner, swimming down the stream sociably in parties. I had the opportunity of seeing in this manner, in the bed of the river, the heads of thirty or forty persons (men, women, and children), of the tribe of the Xibaros, on their arrival at Tomependa. The “Correo que nada” returns by land by the difficult route of the Paramo del Paredon.

On approaching the hot climate of the basin of the Amazons, the eye is cheered by the aspect of a beautiful, and occasionally very luxuriant vegetation. We had never before, not even in the Canaries or on the hot sea coast of Cumana and Caraccas, seen finer orange trees than those of the Huertas de Pucara. They were principally the sweet orange (Citrus aurantium, Risso), and less frequently the bitter or Seville orange (C. vulgaris, Risso). Laden with many thousands of their golden fruits, they attain a height of sixty or sixty-four English feet; and, instead of rounded tops or crowns, have aspiring branches, almost like a laurel or bay tree. Not far from thence, near the Ford of Cavico, we were surprised by a very unexpected sight. We saw a grove of small trees, only about eighteen or nineteen English feet high, which, instead of green, had apparently perfectly red or rose-coloured leaves. It was a new species of Bougainvillæa, a genus first established by the elder Jussieu, from a Brazilian specimen in Commerson’s herbarium. The trees were almost entirely without true leaves, as what we took for leaves at a distance, proved to be thickly crowded bracteas. The appearance was altogether different, in the purity and freshness of the colour, from the autumnal tints which, in many of our forest trees, adorn the woods of the temperate zone at the season of the fall of the leaf. A single species of the South African family of Proteaceæ, Rhopala ferruginea, descends here from the cold heights of the Paramo de Yamoca to the hot plain of Chamaya. We often found here the Porlieria hygrometrica (belonging to the Zygophylleæ), which, by the closing of the leaflets of its finely pinnated foliage, foretels an impending change of weather, and especially the approach of rain, much better than any of the Mimosaceæ. It very rarely deceived us.