The Invention of Nature

Situated 3,000 feet above sea level, Caracas was home to 40,000 people. Founded by the Spanish in 1567, it was now the capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. Ninety-five per cent of the city’s white population were criollos, or as Humboldt called them ‘Hispano-Americans’ – white colonists of Spanish descent but born in South America. Though a majority, these South American creoles had been excluded from the highest administrative and military positions for decades. The Spanish crown had sent Spaniards to control the colonies, many of whom were less educated than the creoles. The wealthy creole plantation owners found it infuriating to be ruled by merchants dispatched from a distant mother country. The Spanish authorities treated them, some creoles complained, ‘as if they were vile slaves’.

Caracas lay nestled in a high valley skirted by mountains, near the coast. Once again Humboldt rented a house as a base from which to launch shorter excursions. From here Humboldt and Bonpland set out to scale the double-domed Silla, a mountain so close that they could see it from their house but which, to Humboldt’s surprise, no one he met in Caracas had ever climbed. On another day they rode into the foothills where they found a spring of the clearest water tumbling down a wall of shimmering rock. Observing a group of girls there, fetching water, Humboldt was suddenly struck by a memory of home. That evening he wrote in his journal: ‘Memories of Werther, Göthe and the king’s daughters’ – a reference to The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which Goethe had described a similar scene. On other occasions it was the particular shape of a tree, or a mountain, that gave him an immediate sense of familiarity. One glimpse of the stars in the southern sky or of the shape of the cacti against the horizon, was proof of how far away he was from his homeland. But then, all it took was the sudden tinkle of a cow bell or the roaring of a bull, and he was back in the meadows of Tegel.

Humboldt – far right, between the trees – sketching Silla (Illustration Credit 4.2)

‘Nature every where speaks to man in a voice,’ Humboldt said, that is ‘familiar to his soul’. These sounds were like voices from beyond the ocean that transported him in an instant from one hemisphere to another. Like the tentative pencil lines in a sketch, his new understanding of nature based on scientific observations and feelings was beginning to emerge. Memories and emotional responses, Humboldt realized, would always form part of man’s experience and understanding of nature. Imagination was like ‘a balm of miraculous healing properties’, he said.

Soon it was time to move on – inspired by the stories Humboldt had heard about the mysterious Casiquiare River. More than half a century earlier a Jesuit priest had reported that the Casiquiare connected the two great river systems of South America: the Orinoco and the Amazon. The Orinoco forms a sweeping arc from its source in the south near today’s border between Venezuela and Brazil to its delta on the north-eastern coast of Venezuela where it discharges into the Atlantic Ocean. Almost 1,000 miles further south along the coast is the mouth of the mighty Amazon – the river that crosses almost the entire continent from its source in the west in the Peruvian Andes less than 100 miles from the Pacific coast to the Brazilian Atlantic coast in the east.

Deep in the rainforest, 1,000 miles to the south of Caracas, the Casiquiare reputedly linked the network of tributaries of these two great rivers. No one had been able to prove its existence and few believed that major rivers such as the Orinoco and the Amazon could in fact be connected. All the scientific understanding of the day suggested that the Orinoco and Amazon basins had to be separated by a watershed because the idea of a natural waterway linking two large rivers was against all empirical evidence. Geographers had not found a single instance where it occurred elsewhere on the globe. In fact, the most recent map of the region showed a mountain range – the suspected watershed – exactly in the location where Humboldt had heard rumours that the Casiquiare might be.

There was much to prepare. They had to choose instruments that were small enough to fit into the narrow canoes in which they would be travelling. They needed to organize money and goods to pay for guides and food even in the deepest jungle. Before they set off, though, Humboldt dispatched letters to Europe and North America, asking his correspondents to publish them in newspapers. He understood the importance of publicity. From La Coruña in Spain, for example, Humboldt had written forty-three letters just before their departure. If he died during the voyage, he would at least not be forgotten.