The same remark holds good with regard to the population of these States. Exact enumeration is impossible, for the reasons both that the inhabitants are often enormously scattered over vast territories and that they often refuse to be numbered, or escape the census, fearing that they are to be taxed, or pressed into military service against their will, which latter condition has been a curse of Spanish America all through its history. Much of our earlier knowledge of Northern South America and Mexico was due to Humboldt, the famous German savant and traveller. He was born in Berlin in 1769, but it would appear that Berlin was certainly not his "spiritual home." Paris was the only centre congenial to him, and he settled there in 1808, after his travels, in order to be able to secure the needful scientific co-operation for the publication of the results of his work. "The French capital he had long regarded as his true home. There he found not only scientific sympathy, but the social stimulus which his vigorous and healthy mind eagerly craved. He was equally in his element as the lion of the _salons_ and as the savant of the institute and the observatory. The provincialism of his native city was odious to him. He never ceased to rail against the bigotry without religion, aestheticism without culture, and philosophy without common sense, which he found dominant on the banks of the Spree. He sought relief from this 'nebulous atmosphere' in Paris."[2] [2] _Vide_ Humboldt, _Encyc. Brit._, Eleventh Edition, 1910. It was by an accident that Humboldt directed his steps to Spanish America, for he had hoped, with Bonpland, to join Bonaparte in Egypt, but in Madrid he determined to make Spanish America the scene of his explorations. He explored the Orinoco, crossed the frozen Cordillera to Quito, investigated the mighty avenue of the Ecuadorian volcanoes--the farm he occupied still exists at their foot--and did much else in South America and in Mexico, geological, archæological, and botanical. The foregoing glimpse of Berlin which Humboldt's view of his native city affords is not without interest to-day, when the savagery of the German character--a curious development of that earlier obscure philosophy--has been brought so prominently before the world and has brought Germany to moral ruin, and what is in part financial ruin and the loss of her colonies.