publication of his Personal Narrative. In this, more than in any
other of his works, he shows his power of contemplating nature in
all her grandeur and variety.

The researches and discoveries of Humboldt's able coadjutor and
companion, M. Bonpland, afford not only a complete picture of the
botany of the equinoctial regions of America, but of that of other
places visited by the travellers on their voyage thither. The
description of the Island of Teneriffe and the geography of its
vegetation, show how much was discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland
which had escaped the observation of discerning travellers who had
pursued the same route before them. Indeed, the whole account of
the Canary Islands presents a picture which cannot be contemplated
without the deepest interest, even by persons comparatively
indifferent to the study of nature.

It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to remind the reader that since
the time when this work was first published in Paris, the
separation of the Spanish Colonies from the mother-country,
together with subsequent political events, have wrought great
changes in the governments of the South American States, as well as
in the social condition of their inhabitants. One consequence of
these changes has been to render obsolete some facts and
observations relating to subjects, political, commercial, and
statistical, interspersed through this work. However useful such
matter might have been on its original publication, it is wholly
irrelevant to the existing state of things, and consequently it has
been deemed advisable to omit it. By this curtailment, together
with that of some meteorological tables and discussions of very
limited interest, the work has been divested of its somewhat