Back in Europe, Humboldt published his Essay on the Geography of Plants, the
first volume of his Personal Narrative of Travels. However, his most popular book
was Views of Nature in which he combined his observations of natural history with
a rich and enthralling description of the landscape. He wrote how monkeys filled the
jungle with ‘melancholy howlings’, he wrote how in the mists created by the rapids of
the Orinoco ‘rainbows danced in a game of hide-and-seek’ and he wrote how strange
tropical insects ‘poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground which
glowed with living fire’. Humboldt created a seductive new genre of nature writing
that eloquently described nature as part of the web of life.
Like many others, Darwin was entranced by his work and dreamed of following in
his footsteps. He was so excited by Humboldt’s description of the island of Tenerife
that he decided to organize his own expedition there. The plan was for Darwin and a
few friends from Cambridge to sail to Tenerife in their summer holidays and spend
three weeks botanizing and geologizing there. He started studying Spanish and spent
his free time ‘working like a tiger on geology’, a subject that during his lectures in
Edinburgh he found so boring that he resolved to ‘never read a book on geology
again’.
Painting of Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland in Venezuela, Eduard Ender, c. 185058 Where Australia Collides with Asia
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