the New Continent, there still remained many general results and
local descriptions, which I might have collected into separate
treatises. I had, during my journey, prepared papers on the races
of men in South America; on the Missions of the Orinoco; on the
obstacles to the progress of society in the torrid zone arising
from the climate and the strength of vegetation; on the character
of the landscape in the Cordilleras of the Andes compared with that
of the Alps in Switzerland; on the analogies between the rocks of
the two hemispheres; on the physical constitution of the air in the
equinoctial regions, etc. I had left Europe with the firm intention
of not writing what is usually called the historical narrative of a
journey, but to publish the fruit of my inquiries in works merely
descriptive; and I had arranged the facts, not in the order in
which they successively presented themselves, but according to the
relation they bore to each other. Amidst the overwhelming majesty
of Nature, and the stupendous objects she presents at every step,
the traveller is little disposed to record in his journal matters
which relate only to himself, and the ordinary details of life.

I composed a very brief itinerary during the course of my
excursions on the rivers of South America, and in my long journeys
by land. I regularly described (and almost always on the spot) the
visits I made to the summits of volcanoes, or mountains remarkable
for their height; but the entries in my journal were interrupted
whenever I resided in a town, or when other occupations prevented
me from continuing a work which I considered as having only a
secondary interest. Whenever I wrote in my journal, I had no other
motive than the preservation of some of those fugitive ideas which
present themselves to a naturalist, whose life is almost wholly
passed in the open air. I wished to make a temporary collection of