Schomburgk

Schomburgk, SIR ROBERT HERMANN, a traveller, was born at Freiburg in Prussian Saxony, June 5, 1804. He was trained for the mercantile profession, and went out to the United States in 1829, but in the following year he removed to Anegada, one of the Virgin Isles. Having surveyed the island and laid a report before the Royal Geographical Society, he was charged by that body to lead an exploring expedition to British Guiana in 1835. This enterprise, which was surrounded with formidable difficulties, he satisfactorily achieved, and from time to time laid the results of his investigations before the society, in whose Journal they were regularly published. It was during this exploration, and while he was ascending the Berbice River, that he discovered, January 1, 1837, the magnificent aquatic plant, the Victoria regia (q.v.), described in his Description of British Guiana (Lond. 1840), and his magnificent Views in the Interior of Guiana (folio, 1841). In 1840 he returned to Guiana to survey the colony for government, and to draw the long controverted 'Schomburgk-line' as a provisional boundary with Venezuela (q.v.) and Brazil, and was knighted. He was accompanied by his brother Richard, whose Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, 1840-44 (Leip. 1847-48) embody the results of this expedition. In 1847 the former published an excellent and elaborate History of Barbadoes, and in the following year departed for San Domingo, whither he had been accredited as British consul and representative. In this new sphere he continued to pursue his geographical and scientific researches, the results of which he communicated to the Geographical Society till 1853. In 1857 he was appointed British representative to the Siamese court, but returned to Europe in 1864, and died 11th March 1865 at Schöneberg near Berlin.