The Invention of Nature

In the four months since they had first seen the Llanos, the rainy season had transformed the formerly bleak steppes into a partial seascape in which huge lakes and newly filled rivers were surrounded by carpets of fresh grass. But as the ‘air turned into water’, it was even hotter than it had been during their first crossing. The grasses and blooms spread their sweet fragrance across the expanse, jaguars hid in the high grass and thousands of birds sang in the early morning hours. The flatness of the Llanos was only interrupted by an occasional Mauritia palm. Tall and slender, these palms spread out their fingered fronds like huge fans. They were now loaded with shiny reddish edible fruits that reminded Humboldt of fir cones, and which seemed to possess a particular allure for their monkeys who stretched out to grab them through the bars of their cages. Humboldt had seen the palms already in the rainforest but here in the Llanos they had a unique function.

Mauritia palms (Mauritia flexuosa) (Illustration Credit 5.5)

‘We observed with astonishment,’ he reported, ‘how many things are connected with the existence of a single plant.’ The Mauritia fruits attracted birds, the leaves shielded the wind, and the soil that had blown in and accumulated behind the trunks retained more moisture than anywhere else in the Llanos, sheltering insects and worms. Just the sight of these palms, Humboldt thought, produced a feeling of ‘coolness’. This one tree, he said, ‘spreads life around it in the desert’. Humboldt had discovered the idea of a keystone species, a species that is as essential for an ecosystem as a keystone is to an arch, almost 200 years before the concept was named. For Humboldt the Mauritia palm was the ‘tree of life’ – the perfect symbol of nature as a living organism.

6

Across the Andes

AFTER SIX MONTHS of strenuous travel in the rainforest and the Llanos, Humboldt and Bonpland returned to Cumaná in late August 1800. They were exhausted but as soon as they had recovered and sorted their collections, they left again. In late November they sailed north for Cuba where they arrived in mid-December. Then, one morning in Havana in early 1801, Humboldt opened the newspapers just as they were preparing to leave for Mexico and read an article that made him change his plans. The newspaper reported that Captain Nicolas Baudin, whose expedition he had tried to join three years earlier in France, was sailing around the world after all. Back in 1798, when Humboldt had tried to find a passage out of Europe, the French government had not been able to finance the voyage but now, so Humboldt read, Baudin had been equipped with two ships – the Géographe and Naturaliste – and was on his way to South America from where he would sail across the South Pacific to Australia.

The most obvious route would be for Baudin to stop in Lima, Humboldt guessed, and calculated that if all went to plan the Géographe and Naturaliste would probably arrive there by the end of 1801. The timing would be tight, but Humboldt now decided to try to join Baudin in Peru and then to continue with him on to Australia instead of going to Mexico. Of course Humboldt had no way of letting Baudin know where and when to rendezvous, nor did he know if the captain was even going to sail via Lima or whether there was any space on the ship for two extra scientists. But the more obstacles that were thrown into his path, ‘the more I hastened their executions’.

To ensure the safety of their collections and to avoid carrying them across the globe, Humboldt and Bonpland now began frantically to make copies of their notes and manuscripts. They sorted and packed up everything they had hoarded over the past one and a half years to send to Europe. ‘It was very uncertain, almost improbable’, Humboldt wrote to a friend in Berlin, that he and Bonpland would survive a voyage around the globe. It made sense to get at least some of their treasures to Europe. All they retained was a small herbarium – a book filled with pressed plant specimens – so that they could compare any new species they found. A larger herbarium would remain in Havana for their return.