The Invention of Nature

Greeted by Mutis and the city’s luminaries, the men found themselves rushed from one feast to another. No one had seen such festivities in Bogotá for decades. Humboldt had never enjoyed rigid ceremony, but Mutis explained that it would all have to be endured for the sake of the viceroy and the city’s leading inhabitants. After that, though, the old botanist opened his cabinets. Mutis also had a botanical drawing studio where thirty-two artists, some Indians among them, would eventually produce 6,000 different watercolours of indigenous plants. Even better, Mutis owned so many botanical books, as Humboldt later told his brother, that his collection was only surpassed by Joseph Banks’s library in London. This was an invaluable resource because it had been two years since Humboldt had left Europe, and this was the first time he could leaf through a vast selection of books, checking, comparing and cross-referencing his own observations. The visit brought advantages for both men. Mutis was flattered because he was able to show off that a European scientist had made this dangerous detour just to see him, while Humboldt received the botanical information he needed.

Then, just as they were preparing to leave Bogotá, Bonpland was struck down by a recurrence of his fever. It took him several weeks to recover, leaving them even less time to cross the Andes en route to Lima. On 8 September, exactly two months after their arrival, they finally bade farewell to Mutis who gave them so much food that their three mules struggled to carry it all. The rest of their luggage was divided between another eight mules and oxen but the most delicate instruments were carried by five porters, local cargueros, as well as by José, the servant who had accompanied them for the past two years since their arrival in Cumaná. They were ready for the Andes, even though the weather could not have been worse.

From Bogotá they crossed the first mountain chain along the Quindío Pass, a trail at almost 12,000 feet that was known to be the most dangerous and difficult in all the Andes. Battling thunderstorms, rain and snow, they walked along a muddy path that was often only eight inches wide. ‘These are the paths in the Andes,’ Humboldt wrote in his diary, ‘to which one has to entrust one’s manuscripts, instruments, [and] collections.’ He was amazed how the mules managed to balance along, although it was more a ‘patch-worked falling’, he said, than walking. They lost the fish and reptiles they had preserved from the Río Magdalena when the glass jars containing them were all smashed. Within days their shoes had been torn to shreds by the bamboo shoots that grew in the mud, and they had to continue barefoot.

Crossing the Andes on heavily loaded mules (Illustration Credit 6.1)

Their progress south towards Quito was slow as they crossed mountains and valleys. Moving up and down in altitude, they marched through fierce snowstorms before descending into the heavy heat of tropical forests. At times, they walked through dark ravines so deep and narrow that they had to grope their way blindly along the rocks, and at others they walked across sunlit meadows in the valleys. Some mornings the snow-capped peaks stood out against a pristine blue cupola and on others they were enveloped in clouds so thick that they could see nothing. High above them, huge Andean condors spread their three-metre-wide wings as they glided alone against the sky – solemnly black except for a necklace of white feathers and their white-fringed wings that shone ‘mirror-like’ against the midday sun. One night, about midway on their journey between Bogotá and Quito, they saw flames licking out of the Pasto volcano against the darkness.

Humboldt had never felt further away from home. If he died now, it would be months or even years before his friends and family found out. And he had no idea what they were all doing. Was Wilhelm still in Paris, for example? Or had he and Caroline maybe moved back to Prussia? How many children did they have by now? Since leaving Spain two and a half years before, Humboldt had only received one letter from his brother and two from an old friend – and that had been over a year ago. Somewhere between Bogotá and Quito, Humboldt’s feeling of loneliness became so strong that he composed a long letter to Wilhelm, describing in great detail their adventures since his arrival in South America. ‘I don’t get tired of writing letters to Europe,’ was his first line. He knew that the letter was unlikely ever to reach its destination but it didn’t really matter. Writing from the remote Andean village in which the men found themselves that night was the closest Humboldt could get to a dialogue with his brother.