The Invention of Nature

by Andrea Wulf

  For Alexander this meant that he still had to fulfil his travel dreams. Since his voyage to Latin America, almost three decades previously, he had repeatedly failed to organize other expeditions that might have allowed him to finalize his studies. Humboldt felt that if he truly wanted to present a view of nature as a global force, he needed to see more. The idea of nature as a web of life that had crystallized during his Latin American expedition required additional data from across the world. He, more than others, needed to examine as many continents as possible. The study of climate patterns, vegetation zones and geological formations required this comparative data.

  The high mountains of Central Asia had lured him for years. His ambition was to climb the Himalaya so that he could correlate his observations from the Andes. Humboldt had endlessly pestered the British to give him permission to enter the Indian subcontinent. And almost two decades earlier he had even questioned a Russian diplomat in Paris if there was a way to get from the Russian Empire into India or Tibet without becoming entangled in border skirmishes.

  Nothing had happened until Humboldt suddenly received a letter from the Russian Finance Minister, the German-born Count Georg von Cancrin. In autumn 1827, as Humboldt prepared his lecture series in Berlin, Cancrin wrote to request information about platinum as a possible Russian currency. Platinum had been found in the Ural Mountains five years previously and Cancrin hoped that Humboldt would be able to provide him with information about the platinum currency that was used in Colombia. He knew that Humboldt still had close connections in South America. Humboldt immediately saw a new opportunity. He answered Cancrin’s query in great detail and over many pages, and then added a short postscript explaining that a visit to Russia was his ‘most burning desire’. The Ural Mountains, Mount Ararat and the Baikal Lake were ‘the sweetest images’ to his mind, he explained.

  Though this was not India, if he could get permission to see the Asian part of the Russian Empire, it would probably provide him with enough data to complete his Naturgemälde. Humboldt assured Cancrin that though he had white hair, he could endure the deprivations of a long expedition, and could walk for nine or ten hours without a break.

  Less than a month after Humboldt’s reply, Cancrin had spoken to Tsar Nicholas I who invited Humboldt to Russia on an all-expenses-paid expedition. The close relationships between the Prussian and the Russian courts had probably also helped, because Friedrich Wilhelm III’s sister, Alexandra, was Tsar Nicholas I’s wife. Humboldt was finally going to Asia.

  1 Humboldt organized this conference for the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians.

  16

  Russia

  THE SKY WAS clear and the air was warm. Empty plains stretched out towards the distant line of the horizon, baking in the summer sun. A convoy of three carriages drove along the so-called Siberian Highway, a road that went several thousand miles east from Moscow.

  It was mid-June 1829, and Alexander von Humboldt had left Berlin two months earlier. As the Siberian landscape unfolded, the fifty-nine-year-old stared out of the carriage window, watching as the low-growing grasses of the steppes alternated with endless stretches of forest that mainly consisted of poplars, birches, limes and larch trees. Now and again, a dark green juniper stood out against the peeling white stems of birches. The wild roses were in bloom, as were the small lady’s slipper orchids with their bulging pouch-like blossoms. Though pleasant enough, this was not quite how Humboldt had imagined Russia. The scenery looked a little too similar to the countryside around the Humboldt family estate at Tegel.

  It had been the same for weeks now – all vaguely familiar. The roads were made of clay and gravel like those he knew from England, while the vegetation and animals were more or less ‘ordinary’, he thought. There were few animals: sometimes a small rabbit or squirrel, and never more than two or three birds. This was a quiet landscape, with little birdsong. It was all slightly disappointing. A Siberian expedition was certainly ‘not as delightful’, Humboldt said, as one to South America, but at least he was outside and not cooped up at court in Berlin. This was as close as he could get to what he wanted – which was, as he liked to say, a ‘life in wild nature’.

  The country rushed past as they sped along. Every ten or twenty miles the horses were changed at way stations in the scattered villages that lined this transit route to the east. The road was wide and well maintained – so good in fact that their coaches raced at an alarming speed. With few taverns or inns along the way, they travelled most nights and Humboldt slept in his carriage as one mile after another rolled by.

  Humboldt’s carriage speeding through Russia (Illustration Credit 16.1)

  Unlike in Latin America, Humboldt was travelling through Russia with a much larger retinue. He was accompanied by Gustav Rose, a twenty-nine-year-old professor of mineralogy from Berlin, and thirty-four-year-old Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, an experienced naturalist who had already completed an expedition to the Middle East. Then there was Johann Seifert, who was their huntsman for zoological specimens and who would remain Humboldt’s trusted servant and housekeeper in Berlin for many years, a Russian mining official who had joined them in Moscow, a cook, a convoy of Cossacks for their protection, as well as Count Adolphe Polier – an old French acquaintance from Paris, who had married a wealthy Russian countess with an estate on the western side of the Urals, not far from Yekaterinburg. Polier had joined Humboldt in Nizhny Novgorod, some 700 miles south-east of St Petersburg, on his way to his wife’s property. Between them they had three carriages that were filled up with people, instruments, trunks and their steadily increasing collections. Humboldt had prepared for all eventualities, packing everything from a thickly padded overcoat to barometers, reams of paper, vials, medicine and even an iron-free tent in which to make his magnetic observations.

  Humboldt had waited decades for this moment. Once Tsar Nicholas I had given permission at the end of 1827, Humboldt had taken his time to plan meticulously. After some back and forth, he and Cancrin had agreed that the expedition should set off from Berlin in early spring 1829. Humboldt had then postponed his departure by a few weeks because Wilhelm’s wife, Caroline, was in rapid decline, suffering from cancer. He had always liked his sister-in-law but also wanted to be there for Wilhelm during this difficult time. Alexander was ‘loving and affectionate’, Caroline wrote in her last letter. When she died on 26 March, after almost forty years of marriage, Wilhelm was devastated. Alexander stayed for another two and a half weeks but then finally left Berlin to embark on his Russian adventure. He promised his brother that he would write regularly.

  Humboldt’s plan was to travel from St Petersburg to Moscow and from there east to Yekaterinburg and Tobolsk in Siberia, and then to turn back in one big loop. Humboldt would avoid the area around the Black Sea where Russia was engaged in a war with the Ottoman Empire. This Russo-Turkish War had begun in spring 1828, and as much as Humboldt would have loved to see the Caspian Sea and the snow-capped inactive volcano of Mount Ararat at today’s Turkish–Iranian border, the Russians had told him that it was impossible. His wish for an ‘indiscreet glance to the Caucasus Mountains and Mount Ararat’ would have to wait for more ‘peaceful times’.

  Nothing was quite as Humboldt wanted it. The entire expedition was a compromise. It was a journey paid for by Tsar Nicholas I who hoped to learn what gold, platinum and other valuable metals might be mined more efficiently from his vast empire. Though labelled as an expedition for the ‘advancement of the sciences’, the tsar was more interested in the advancement of commerce. In the eighteenth century Russia had been one of Europe’s greatest exporters of ores and the leading iron producer but industrial England had long overtaken it. Feudal labour systems in Russia and antiquated production methods, as well as a partial depletion of some of the mines, were to blame. As a former mining inspector with an immense geological knowledge, Humboldt was a perfect choice for the tsar. It was not ideal for science but Humboldt didn’t see any other way to achieve his goal.
He was almost sixty and time was running out.

  He duly investigated the mines along their route through Siberia as agreed with Cancrin, but he also injected some excitement into this laborious task. He had an idea that would prove just how smart his comparative view of the world was. Over the years Humboldt had noted that several minerals seemed to occur together. In the mountains of Brazil, for example, diamonds had often been found in gold and platinum deposits. Equipped with detailed geological information from South America, Humboldt now applied his knowledge to Russia. Since there were similar gold and platinum deposits in the Urals as in South America, Humboldt was sure that there were diamonds in Russia. He was so certain that he had got carried away when he met Empress Alexandra in St Petersburg, boldly promising to find her some.

  Whenever they stopped at mines, Humboldt searched for diamonds. Arm-deep in the sand, he sifted through fine grains. Magnifying glass in hand, he pored over the sand, believing that he would find his sparkling treasures. It was just a matter of time, he was convinced. Most people who watched him thought he was utterly mad because no one had ever found diamonds outside the tropics. One of their accompanying Cossacks even called him ‘the crazy Prussian prince Humplot’.

  A few of his party were swept along, though, including Humboldt’s old Parisian acquaintance Count Polier. Having accompanied the expedition for several weeks and observed the search for diamonds, Polier departed from Humboldt on 1 July to inspect his wife’s estate near Yekaterinburg where they mined gold and platinum. Fired up by Humboldt’s determination, Polier immediately instructed his men where to look for the gems. A few hours after his arrival they found the first diamond in the Urals. News spread quickly across the country and Europe when Polier published an article about the discovery. Within a month, thirty-seven diamonds had been found in Russia. Humboldt’s predictions were proved correct. Though he knew that his guess had been based on hard scientific data, to many this seemed so mysterious that they believed he had dabbled in magic.

  The Urals, Humboldt excitedly wrote to Cancrin, were a ‘true El Dorado’. For Humboldt his accurate prediction might have been an act of beautiful scientific analogy but for the Russians it held the promise of commercial advantage. Humboldt chose to ignore this – and it wasn’t the only detail he brushed aside during the expedition. In Latin America Humboldt had criticized all aspects of Spanish colonial rule, from the environmental exploitation of the natural resources and the destruction of forests to the mistreatment of indigenous people and the horrors of slavery. Back then, he had insisted that it was up to travellers who witnessed grievances and oppressions ‘to bring the laments of the wretched to the ears of those who have the power to assuage them’. Only months before he left for Russia, Humboldt had enthusiastically told Cancrin that he was looking forward to seeing the peasants in the eastern ‘poorer provinces’. But this was certainly not what the Russians had in mind. Cancrin had sternly replied that the only aims of the expedition were scientific and commercial. Humboldt was not to comment on Russian society or serfdom.

  Tsar Nicholas I’s Russia was one of absolutism and inequalities, not a country that encouraged liberal ideas and open criticism. When the first day of his reign, in December 1825, had seen a revolt, Nicholas I had vowed to control Russia with a tight fist. A network of spies and informers infiltrated every part of the nation. The government was centralized and firmly in the hands of the tsar. Strong censorship restricted every written word from poems to newspaper articles, and a web of surveillance made sure that any liberal ideas were suppressed. Those who spoke out against the tsar or the government were promptly deported to Siberia. Nicholas I regarded himself as the guardian against revolutions.

  He was a ruler who adored meticulous order, formality and discipline. Only a few years after Humboldt’s Russia expedition, the tsar would declare the triad of ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’ as the ideological doctrine of Russia: orthodox Christianity, the rule of the House of Romanov and a focus on Russian tradition as opposed to westernized culture.

  Humboldt knew what was expected of him and had promised Cancrin to focus only on nature. He would avoid anything related to governmental rule and ‘the conditions of the lower classes’, he said, and would not publicly criticize the Russian feudal system – however badly the peasants were treated. Somewhat insincerely, he had even told Cancrin that foreigners who couldn’t speak the language were bound to misunderstand the conditions of a country and would only spread incorrect rumours across the world.

  Humboldt quickly discovered just how far Cancrin’s control extended because all along his route officials seemed to have lined up to meet him and to report back to St Petersburg. Though far from Moscow and St Petersburg, this was no untamed wilderness. Yekaterinburg, for example, 1,000 miles east of Moscow and the gateway to the Asian part of Russia, was a large industrial centre – a city of around 15,000 inhabitants, many of whom were employed in the mines and in manufacturing. The region had gold mines, iron works, furnaces, stone-grinding workshops, foundries and forges. Gold, platinum, copper, gems and semi-precious stones were among the many natural resources. The Siberian Highway was the main trade route that connected the manufacturing and mining towns across the vast country. Wherever Humboldt and his team stopped, they were welcomed by governors, city councillors, officers and other officials garlanded with medals. There were long dinners, speeches and balls – and no time to be alone. Humboldt despised these formalities because his every step was watched and he was held by the arm ‘like an invalid’, he wrote to Wilhelm.

  At the end of July, more than three months after leaving Berlin, Humboldt reached Tobolsk – 1,800 miles from St Petersburg and the most easterly point on the prescribed route – but it was still not wild enough for his taste. Humboldt had not come this far only to have to turn around. He had other plans. Instead of travelling back to St Petersburg as previously agreed, Humboldt now ignored Cancrin’s instructions and added a detour of 2,000 miles. He wanted see the Altai Mountains in the east where Russia, China and Mongolia met, as the counterpart to his observations in the Andes.

  As he had failed to see the Himalaya, the Altai was as close as he could get to collecting data from a mountain range in Central Asia. The results of the Russia expedition, he later wrote, were based on these ‘analogies and contrasts’. The Altai was the reason why he had endured so many uncomfortable overnight rides in the rattling carriage. They had managed to make up so much time that he thought he might just extend the itinerary without getting into too much trouble. He had already written to Wilhelm from Yekaterinburg about his intentions, but he had told no one else. He only informed Cancrin about the ‘small extension’ of their route on the day before they left Tobolsk – well aware that Cancrin, far away in St Petersburg, could do nothing at all about it.

  Humboldt tried to placate Cancrin by promising to visit yet more mines, also mentioning that he hoped to find some rare plants and animals. This was his last chance before ‘his death’, he added with melodramatic swagger. Instead of turning back, Humboldt now continued east through the Baraba steppes towards Barnaul and the western slopes of the Altai Mountains. By the time Cancrin received the letter almost a month later, Humboldt had long reached his destination.

  Once Humboldt had left Tobolsk and abandoned the imposed itinerary, he finally began to enjoy himself. Age hadn’t calmed him. His team was astounded at how the fifty-nine-year-old could walk for hours ‘without any sign of fatigue’, dressed always in a dark frock coat with a white necktie and a round hat. He walked carefully but determinedly and steadily. The more strenuous the journey, the more Humboldt relished it. At first sight this expedition might not have been as exciting as his South American adventures, but now they were entering much wilder scenery. Thousands of miles away from the scientific centres of Europe, Humboldt now found himself travelling through a harsh landscape. The steppes stretched out east for about 1,000 miles between Tobolsk and Barnaul in the foothills of the Altai range. As t
hey continued along the Siberian Highway, the villages became fewer and further apart – still frequent enough to change their horses – but in between the land was often deserted.

  There was a beauty in this emptiness. The summer blossom had turned the plains into a sea of reds and blues. Humboldt saw the tall candle-like reddish spikes of willow herb (Epilobium angustifolia) and the bright blues of delphiniums (Delphinium elatum). Elsewhere the colour came from the vivid reds of Maltese Cross (Lychnis chalcedonica) which seemed to set the steppes on fire, but there were still few wild animals and birds.

  The thermometer climbed from 6°C at night to 30°C during the day. Humboldt and his team were plagued by mosquitoes, just as he and Bonpland had been during their Orinoco expedition some thirty years previously. To protect themselves, they now wore heavy leather masks. These masks had a small opening for the eyes covered with mesh made of horsehair to see through – they protected against the pernicious insects but also trapped the air. It was unbearably hot. None of this mattered. Humboldt was in a great mood because he was liberated from the controlling hand of the Russian administration. They travelled day and night, sleeping in their jolting carriages. It felt like a ‘sea voyage on land’, Humboldt wrote, as they sailed across the monotonous plains as if on an ocean. They averaged more than a hundred miles a day, and sometimes covered almost 200 miles in twenty-four hours. The Siberian Highway was as good as the best roads in Europe. They travelled faster, Humboldt proudly noted, than any European express courier.