From Carl Friedrich Alexander Hartmann   23 August 1839

My dear Sir!

I am very grateful for the present, what You have maked me some time ago with your very interressant “Journal of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle”.¹ I am sure that it is one of the best scientific travelworks of this time and I intend, soon as I have contracted with a publisher, to translate it into the german language.—² In the first place I have published a review of your classical work in one of our best critical and publishing Journals. Soon as my translation is out of the press, I shall do myself the honour to present you a copy. With a good deal of the geological observations in your work I am become acquainted through my translation of Mr. Lyells “Elements of Geology”. Pray to say this celebrated Geologist, when he is come back from the tour, what he mentions in his letter d.d. 10. June, that the translation is out and that I have forwarded a copy to Hamburgh, care Mrs. Perthes, Besser & Maucke, to send it with a letter, by the first steamer to the metropolis. I am very desirous to know your work on the special geological observations during the voyage, what shal be in the press. Dr. Krauss, a german traveller in the southern part of Afrika, is about to publish a Journal with a Gaea capensis.³ Excuse my bad English with so many germanisms and leave in consideration, that it is not so easy, to write in your language.

Believe my dear Sir | ever truly yours | Charles Hartmann.