The Invention of Nature

In the valleys the grasses and shrubs were so high that they couldn’t see each other even when only a couple of steps apart; higher up there were no trees at all. The huge mountains rose like ‘mighty domes’, Rose noted in his diary. They could see the summit of Belukha which at almost 15,000 feet was about 6,000 feet lower than Chimborazo but the highest mountain of the Altai, its twin peaks entirely covered in snow. By mid-August they had penetrated deep enough into the mountain range that the highest peaks were tantalizingly close. The problem was that they were too late in the season – there was just too much snow to go higher. Some had melted in May but by July the mountains had been covered again. Humboldt had to admit defeat, although the sight of Belukha enticed him to go further. There was no way that they would be able to climb in these conditions – in fact it would take until the second decade of the twentieth century before Belukha was conquered. The high peaks of Central Asia were beyond reach. Humboldt could see them but would never scale their summits. The season was against him, as was his age.

Despite this disappointment, Humboldt felt that he had seen enough. His trunks were filled with pressed plants and long tables of measurements as well as rocks and samples of ores. When he found some hot springs, he deduced that they were linked to the gentle earthquakes in the region. No matter how much they walked and climbed during the day, he still had enough energy to set up the instruments at night for his astronomical observations. He felt strong and fit. ‘My health,’ he wrote to Wilhelm, ‘is excellent.’

As they marched on, Humboldt decided that he would like to cross the Chinese–Mongolian border. A Cossack was dispatched to prepare and announce their arrival to the officials who were patrolling the region. On 17 August Humboldt and his team arrived at Baty where they found the Mongolian border post on the left bank of the Irtysh River and the Chinese on the right. There were some yurts, a few camels, herds of goats and about eighty ruffian soldiers dressed in ‘rags’, as Humboldt described them.

Humboldt started with the Chinese post, visiting the commander in his yurt. There, seated on cushions and rugs, Humboldt presented his gifts: cloth, sugar, pencils and wine. Expressions of friendship were conveyed through a chain of interpreters, first from German to Russian, then from Russian to Mongolian, and finally from Mongolian to Chinese. Unlike the dishevelled soldiers, their commander, who had arrived only a few days previously from Beijing, looked impressive in his long blue silk coat and a hat that was decorated with several magnificent peacock feathers.

After a couple of hours Humboldt was rowed across the river to meet the Mongolian officer in the other yurt. All the while the audience was growing. The Mongolians were fascinated by their foreign guests, touching and prodding Humboldt and his companions. They poked bellies, lifted coats, and nudged them – for once Humboldt was the exotic specimen but he loved every minute of the strange encounter. He had been to China, the ‘heavenly kingdom’, he wrote home.

It was time to turn back. Since Cancrin had given him absolutely no permission to go further east than Tobolsk, Humboldt wanted to make sure that he would at least arrive in St Petersburg at the time they had agreed. They had to pick up their carriages at the fortress in Ust-Kamenogorsk and then turn west along the southern edge of the Russian Empire, passing Omsk, Miass and Orenburg, a journey of around 3,000 miles, following the border that separated Russia from China. The border, a long line of 2,000 miles dotted with stations, watchtowers and small fortresses manned by Cossacks along the Kazakh Steppe, was the home of the nomadic Kyrgyz.¹

In Miass, on 14 September, Humboldt celebrated his sixtieth birthday with the local apothecary, a man whom history would remember as Vladimir Lenin’s grandfather. The next day Humboldt dispatched a letter to Cancrin, recounting that he had reached a turning point in his life. Though he hadn’t achieved all he wanted before old age diminished his strength, he had seen the Altai and the steppes which had given him the greatest satisfaction and also the data he needed. ‘Thirty years ago,’ he wrote to Cancrin, ‘I was in the forests of the Orinoco and in the Cordilleras.’ Now he had finally been able to assemble the remaining ‘great bulk of ideas’. The year 1829 was ‘the most important in my restless life’.

From Miass they continued west to Orenburg where Humboldt once again decided to deviate from their route. Instead of turning north-west towards Moscow and then St Petersburg, he now went south to the Caspian Sea – another lengthy unauthorized detour. As a young boy he had dreamed of travelling to the Caspian Sea, he wrote to Cancrin on the morning of his departure. He had to see this huge inland sea before it was too late for him.