the Philippines, and hastened to engage a vessel to convey me from the Island of Cuba to Cartagena de Indias. Baudin's Expedition, however, took quite a different route from that which was announced and expected; instead of sailing round Cape Horn, as had been designed when it had been intended that Bonpland and myself should form part of it, it sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. One of the two objects of my Peruvian journey and of our last passage over the Chain of the Andes failed; but on the other hand I had, at the critical moment, the rare good fortune of a perfectly clear day, during a very unfavourable season of the year, on the misty coast of Low Peru. I observed the passage of Mercury over the Sun at Callao, an observation which has become of some importance towards the exact determination of the longitude of Lima[20], and of all the south-western part of the New Continent. Thus in the intricate relations and graver circumstances of life, there may often be found, associated with disappointment, a germ of compensation.
