Quotations from Humboldt, "Personal Narrative" last modified:1/16/13

…a man who believed he was European, with all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices and mistakes of civilization…

[The owner of the plantation] was almost naked, and brownish-black like a zambo; this did not stop him believing that he was from the caste of whites. He called his wife and daughter, as naked as he was, Doña Isabela and Doña Manuela.… I had brought a chiguire with me that I wanted to roast; but our host assured me that 'Nosotros caballeros blancos (white men like he and I) were not born to eat Indian game.' He offered us venison, killed the evening before with an arrow, as he did not have powder or firearms.… Don Ignacio congratulated us on the good fortune of not having slept on the beach but on his land with well-bred white people, 'entre gente blanca y de trato'. As we were soaked it was hard to convince ourselves of this better situation, and we listened impatiently to the long story that our host told of his expedition to the Meta river, the bravery he had displayed in the bloody battle with the Guahibo Indians, and of the 'favour he had rendered to God and his King in kidnapping children (los indiecitos) from their parents to distribute them around the missions'. What an odd experience it was to find ourselves in these vast solitudes with a man who believed he was European, with all the vain pretensions, hereditary prejudices and mistakes of civilization, but whose only roof was a tree."

from Alexander von Humboldt, Jaguars & Electric Eels, translated by Jason Wilson. London: Penguin Books, 1995, pp. 70-1.

Humboldt's travel through the Americas began in 1799 and ended in 1804. The "Personal Narrative" comprises the final three volumes of his "Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent", which comprises thirty-five volumes, and was written betweeen 1805 and 1834. Thus Humboldt is recollecting events and emotions that span not only the years of his travel, but those well before it; and he wrote his narration after the travel (sometimes many years after its end). The title "Jaguars & Electric Eels" was supplied for this translation and edition, and is not by Humboldt.