Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative linguistics. Volume II covers the period in which he undertakes a major exploration of the River Orinoco, as far as the borders of Brazil, finishing in Angostura, then the capital of Spanish Guiana.
