- Joaquín Acosta
Joaquín Acosta was aSouth America nexplorer .A native of
Colombia in South America, he served in the Colombian army and in1834 attempted a scientific survey of the territory betweenSocorro and theMagdalena River . Seven years later he explored western Colombia from Antioquia toAncerma studying its topography, its natural history and the traces of its aboriginal inhabitants.In
1845 he went to Spain to examine such documentary material concerning Colombia and its colonial history as was then accessible, and three years later he published his "Compendio", a work on the discovery and colonization of New Granada (Colombia). The map accompanying this work, now out of date, was very fair for the time, and the work itself is still valuable for its abundant bibliographic references and biographic notes. What he says in it of the writings ofGonzalo Jiménez de Quesada the conqueror of New Granada, is very incomplete and in many ways erroneous, but his biographies remain a guide to the student of Spanish-American history. One year after the "Compendio", another work called "Semenario" appeared atParis , embodying the botanical papers ofCaldas .External links
* [http://virtualology.com/joaquinacosta/ Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889 ]
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