The Invention of Nature

Humboldt also used his St Petersburg speech to encourage climate studies across the vast Russian Empire. He wanted data related to the effects of the destruction of forests on the climate – the first large-scale study to investigate the impact that man had on climatic conditions. It was the duty of scientists, Humboldt said, to examine the changeable elements in the ‘economy of nature’.

Two weeks later, on 15 December, Humboldt departed from St Petersburg. Before he left, he returned one-third of the money he had been given for expenses, asking Cancrin to use it to fund another explorer – the acquisition of knowledge was more important than his personal financial gain. His carriages were filled with the collections he had made for the Prussian king – so loaded with specimens that they were a ‘natural history cabinet’ on wheels, Humboldt said. Packed in between were his instruments, his notebooks and an opulent seven-foot vase on a plinth that the tsar had given him along with an expensive sable fur.⁴

It was freezing cold as they raced towards Berlin. Near Riga, Humboldt’s coachman lost control on a treacherously icy road and the carriage crashed full speed into a bridge. When the impact broke the railing, one of their horses fell into the river eight feet below, pulling his freight along. One side of the carriage was completely shattered. Humboldt and the other passengers were catapulted out, landing just four inches from the edge of the bridge. Amazingly only the horse was injured but the carriage was so damaged that the repairs delayed them for a few days. Humboldt was still excited. Dangling close to the edge, they must have looked rather ‘picturesque’, he mused. He also joked that with three learned men in the carriage, they had of course come up with a great many ‘contradictory theories’ about the causes of the crash. They spent Christmas in Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad) and on 28 December 1829 Humboldt arrived in Berlin, fizzing with so many ideas that he was ‘steaming like a pot full of boiling water’, a friend reported to Goethe.

This was Humboldt’s last expedition. He would not travel the world any more himself, but his views on nature were already spreading through the minds of thinkers in Europe and America with seemingly unstoppable force.

¹ The Kazakh Steppe is the largest dry steppe in the world, stretching from the Altai mountain range in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west.

² The two books were Fragmens de géologie et de climatologie asiatiques (1831) and Asie centrale, recherches sur les chaînes de montagnes et la climatogie comparée (1843).

³ Humboldt’s views were so new and different from what was generally believed at the time that even his translator questioned the arguments. The translator added a footnote in the German edition which stated that the influence of deforestation as presented by Humboldt was ‘questionable’.

⁴ Humboldt gave the vase to the Altes Museum in Berlin. Today it is in the Alte Nationalgalerie.

17

Evolution and Nature

Charles Darwin and Humboldt

HMS BEAGLE WAS riding the valleys and crests of the waves with relentless regularity as the wind ruffled the swelling canvas of the sails. The ship had left Portsmouth on the south coast of England four days previously, on 27 December 1831, on a voyage across the globe to survey coastlines and measure the exact geographical positions of ports. On board was twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin who felt ‘wretchedly out of spirits’. This was not how he had envisaged his adventure. Instead of standing on deck and watching the wild sea as they crossed the Bay of Biscay towards Madeira, Darwin was feeling more miserable than he ever had before. He was so seasick that the only way to bear it was to hide out in his cabin, eat dry biscuits and remain horizontal.

The small poop cabin that he shared with two crew members was so crammed that his hammock was strung above the table where the officers worked on sea charts. The cabin was about ten by ten feet, lined with bookshelves, lockers and a chest of drawers along the walls and the large surveying table in the middle. At around six feet tall, Darwin didn’t have the headroom to stand. Cutting through the midst of the small space was the ship’s mizzenmast like a large column next to the table. To move around in the cabin the men had to clamber over the bulky wooden beams of the ship’s steering gear which crossed the floors. There was no window, only a skylight through which Darwin watched the moon and the stars as he lay in his hammock.