PICO DEL TEIDE SKETCHED BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

 

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859)
Pico del Teide (3, 718 m -12, 198 ft)
Tenerife - Canari Islands - Spain

 In  "Intérieur du Cratère du Pic de Teneriffe " Dessin, Alexander von Humboldt

The mountain
Pico del Teide (3,718m - 12,198 ft) (« Teide Peak") is a volcano on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain. Before the 1495 Spanish colonization of Tenerife, the native Guanches called the volcano Echeyde, which in their legends referred to a powerful figure leaving the volcano, which could turn into hell. El Pico del Teide is the modern Spanish name.
Its summit is the highest point in Spain and the highest point above sea level in the islands of the Atlantic. If measured from its base on the ocean floor, it is at 7,500 m-24,600 ft the third highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island in the world after Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Its elevation makes Tenerife the tenth highest island in the world. It remains active: its most recent eruption occurred in 1909 from the El Chinyero vent on the northwestern Santiago rift.
Historical volcanic activity on the island is associated with vents on the Santiago or northwest rift (Boca Cangrejo in 1492, Montañas Negras in 1706, Narices del Teide or Chahorra in 1798 and El Chinyero in 1909) and the Cordillera Dorsal or northeast rift (Fasnia in 1704, Siete Fuentes and Arafo in 1705). The 1706 Montañas Negras eruption destroyed the town and principal port of Garachico, as well as several smaller villages.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reported seeing "a great fire in the Orotava Valley" as he sailed past Tenerife on his voyage to discover the New World. This was interpreted as indicating that he had witnessed an eruption there. Radiometric dating of possible lavas indicates that in 1492 no eruption occurred in the Orotava Valley, but one did occur from the Boca Cangrejo vent.
The last summit eruption from Teide occurred about the year 850 CE, and this eruption produced the "Lavas Negras" that cover much of the flanks of the volcano.
About 150,000 years ago, a much larger explosive eruption occurred, probably of Volcanic Explosivity Index 5.
The United Nations Committee for Disaster Mitigation designated Teide a Decade Volcano because of its history of destructive eruptions and its proximity to several large towns, of which the closest are Garachico, Icod de los Vinos and Puerto de la Cruz. Teide, Pico Viejo and Montaсa Blanca form the Central Volcanic Complex of Tenerife.
In a publication of 1626, Sir Edmund Scory, who probably stayed on the island in the first decades of the 17th century, gives a description of Teide, in which he notes the suitable paths to the top and the effects the considerable height causes to the travellers, indicating that the volcano had been accessed via different routes before the 17th century. In 1715 the English traveler J. Edens and his party made the ascent and reported their observations in the journal of the Royal Society in London.
After the Enlightenment, most of the expeditions that went to East Africa and the Pacific had Teide as one of the most rewarding targets. The expedition of Lord George Macartney, George Staunton and John Barrow in 1792 almost ended in tragedy, as a major snowstorm and rain swept over them and they failed to reach the peak of Teide, just barely getting past Montaña Blanca.
During an expedition to Kilimanjaro, the German adventurer Hans Heinrich Joseph Meyer visited Teide in 1894 to observe ice conditions on the volcano. He described the two mountains as "two kings, one rising in the ocean and the other in the desert and steppes"
The volcano and its surroundings comprise Teide National Park, which has an area of 18,900 hectares (47,000 acres) and was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on June 28, 2007. Teide is the most visited natural wonder of Spain, the most visited national park in Spain and Europe and – by 2015 – the eighth most visited in the world, with some 3 million visitors yearly. A major international astronomical observatory is located on the slopes of the mountain.

The cartographer
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a While. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

___________________________________________
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

EL CHIMBORAZO SKETCHED BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

 

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859)
Chimborazo (6,263 m-20,549 ft)
Ecuador

In  El Chimborazo vu de la plaine de Tapia, 1810

The mountain
El Chimborazo (6,263 m -20,548 ft) is a currently inactive stratovolcano in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes ans the highest mountain in Ecuador and the Andes north of Peru ; it is higher than any more northerly summit in the Americas. Chimborazo is not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center.
Chimborazo is at the main end of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, north west of the town of Riobamba. Chimborazo is in la Avenida de los Volcanes (the Avenue of Volcanoes) west of the Sanancajas mountain chain. Carihuairazo, Tungurahua, Tulabug, and El Altar are all mountains that neighbor Chimborazo. The closest mountain peak, Carihuairazo, is 5.8 mi (9.3 km) from Chimborazo. There are many microclimates near Chimborazo, varying from desert in the Arenal to the humid mountains in the Abraspungo valley.
Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around A.D. 550.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1746, the volcano was explored by French academicians from the French Geodesic Mission. Their mission was to determine the sphericity of the Earth. Their work along with another team in Lapland established that the Earth was an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. They did not reach the summit of Chimborazo.
In 1802, during his expedition to South America, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian Carlos Montufar, tried to reach the summit. From his description of the mountain, it seems that before he and his companions had to return suffering from altitude sickness they reached a point at 5,875 m, higher than previously attained by any European in recorded history. (Incans had reached much higher altitudes previously). In 1831, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall reached a new "highest point", estimated to be 6,006 m.
On 4 January 1880, the English climber Edward Whymper reached the summit of Chimborazo. The route that Whymper took up Chimborazo is now known as the Whymper route. Edward Whymper, and his Italian guides Louis Carrel and Jean-Antoine Carrel, were the first Europeans to summit a mountain higher than 20,000 feet. As there were many critics who doubted that Whymper had reached the summit, later in the same year he climbed to the summit again, choosing a different route (Pogyos) with the Ecuadorians David Beltrбn and Francisco Campaсa.


The cartographer and artist
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a While. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

___________________________________________ 

2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

EL JORULLO SKETCHED BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

 

 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859)
El Jorullo (1,329m- 4,360ft)
Mexico

 In Volcan de Jorullo,  Vue des Coridllères et monumens des peuples indigènes de l'Amérique, 1816, Paris chez F. Schoell.

About this drawing
Alexander von Humboldt climbed El Jorullo during the Mexican portion of his scientific expedition to Spanish America. When he visited on 19 September 1803, its multiple cones were still smoldering and the air was extremely hot and filled with volcanic gases. He wrote a detailed description of the climb, noting that his face and those of his travel companions were burned. The volcano enriched the local soil and there was considerable vegetation. Humboldt sketched the volcano in the distance (see above), showing multiple smoking cones. Humboldt undertook the climb with his scientific travel partner Aimé Bonpland, as well as a local Basque settler Ramón Epelde, and two local indigenous servants, whose names have not been recorded. Humboldt noted their assistance on site. Humboldt also notes that he consulted a 1782 publication Rusticatio Mexicana, by Rafael Landívar, who calculated the height of the volcano and the temperature of the thermal waters.


The volcano
El Jorullo  (1,329m- 4,360ft) is a cinder cone volcano in Michoacán, central Mexico, on the southwest slope of the central plateau, 33 miles (53 kilometers) southeast of Uruapan in an area known as the Michoacán-Guanajuato volcanic field.  It is about 6 miles (10 km) east-northeast of La Huacana.  El Jorullo has four smaller cinder cones which have grown from its flanks.  El Jorullo's crater is about 1,300 by 1,640 feet (400 by 500 m) wide and 490 feet (150 m) deep.   El Jorullo is one of two known volcanoes to have developed in Mexico in recent history. The second, born about 183 years later, was named Parícutin after a nearby village that it eventually destroyed. Parícutin is about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of El Jorullo. El Jorullo was first erupted on 29 September 1759. Earthquakes occurred prior to this first day of eruption. Once the volcano started erupting, it continued for 15 years, eventually ending in 1774.
El Jorullo did not develop on a corn field like Parícutin did, but it did destroy what had been a rich agricultural area. It grew approximately 820 feet (250 meters) from the ground in the first six weeks. The eruptions from El Jorullo were primarily phreatic and phreatomagmatic. This 15 year eruption was the longest one El Jorullo has had, and was the longest cinder cone eruption known. Lava flows can still be seen to the north and west of the volcano.  Parícutin and El Jorullo both rose in an area known for its volcanoes. Called the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, the region stretches about 700 miles (1,120 km) from east to west across southern Mexico. The eruptive activity deposited a layer of volcanic rock some 6,000 feet thick, creating a high and fertile plateau. During summer months, the heights snag moisture-laden breezes from the Pacific Ocean; rich farmland, in turn, has made this belt the most populous region in Mexico. Though the region already boasted three of the country's four largest cities: Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara (the area around Parícutin, some 200 miles west of the capital), it was still a peaceful backwater inhabited by Purépecha in the early 1940s. The crater and lake can now be reached by car.


The artist
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a while. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.

___________________________________________ 

2021 - Wandering Vertexes and Mountain paintings 
by Francis Rousseau

EL CHIMBORAZO & EL CARGUAIRAZO BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT (1769-1859

El Chimborazo (6,263 m -20,548 ft)  

Ecuador

1. Coloured aquatint by F. Arnold after J. Gmelin after Alexander von Humboldt.

2. Original print in Vista del Chimborazo y del Carguairazo from the book Vistas de las cordilleras y monumentos de los pueblos indígenas de América by Alexander von Himboldt and Aimé Bonpland, 1816

The mountain
El Chimborazo  (6,263 m -20,548 ft) is a currently inactive stratovolcano in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes ans the highest mountain in Ecuador and the Andes north of Peru ; it is higher than any more northerly summit in the Americas. Chimborazo is not the highest mountain by elevation above sea level, but its location along the equatorial bulge makes its summit the farthest point on the Earth's surface from the Earth's center.
Chimborazo is at the main end of the Ecuadorian Volcanic Arc, north west of the town of Riobamba. Chimborazo is in la Avenida de los Volcanes (the Avenue of Volcanoes) west of the Sanancajas mountain chain. Carihuairazo, Tungurahua, Tulabug, and El Altar are all mountains that neighbor Chimborazo.  The closest mountain peak, Carihuairazo, is 5.8 mi (9.3 km) from Chimborazo. There are many microclimates near Chimborazo, varying from desert in the Arenal to the humid mountains in the Abraspungo valley.
Its last known eruption is believed to have occurred around A.D. 550.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1746, the volcano was explored by French academicians from the  French Geodesic Mission. Their mission was to determine the sphericity of the Earth. Their work along with another team in Lapland established that the Earth was an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. They did not reach the summit of Chimborazo.
In 1802, during his expedition to South America, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, accompanied by Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian Carlos Montufar, tried to reach the summit. From his description of the mountain, it seems that before he and his companions had to return suffering from altitude sickness they reached a point at 5,875 m, higher than previously attained by any European in recorded history. (Incans had reached much higher altitudes previously; see Llullaillaco). In 1831, Jean-Baptiste Boussingault and Colonel Hall reached a new "highest point", estimated to be 6,006 m.
El Carguairazo is an ancient collapsed volcano (to the right of Chimborazo on the engraving). The muddy flood which, in 1698, covered 18 square leagues of land, was not the result of an eruption proper. When the Carguairazo collapsed, the waters that it concealed in its breast rushed into the plain with impetuosity, and caused the disasters of which the historians of America speak.

The cartographer
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.
Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multi-volume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.
On their way back to Europe from Mexico on their way to the United States, Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland stopped in Cuba for a While. After their first stay in Cuba of three months they returned the mainland at Cartagena de Indias (now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda and arrived in Bogotá on July 6, 1801 where they met Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, the head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until September 8, 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Humboldt had hopes of connecting with the French sailing expedition of Baudin, now finally underway, so Bonpland and Humboldt hurried to Ecuador. They crossed the frozen ridges of the Cordillera Real, they reached Quito on 6 January 1802, after a tedious and difficult journey.
Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but a thousand feet short of the summit. Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury. On 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.
___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau