Personal Narrative of a Journey to the E (Revised)

One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the time of his death in 1859 he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.