His travels in Central and South America in 1857-1858 were inspired by those undertaken some fifty years earlier by Alexander von Humboldt, the great German natural scientist and traveller. Rosti took pictures of the larger cities and the natural wonders, mines, architectural monuments and flora of Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico. Venezuelan and Mexican historians regard his photographs as the first to depict the landscapes and distinctive features of their countries with the aim of producing a scientific record.¹
In its treatment of subjects and technical execution, Rosti's work rivals that of any of his contemporaries. The best known of his photographs are those he took of the waterfall near Cuernavacca (Quauhnahuac) (Picture 3) and of the ruins of the 16thcentury Franciscan cloister in Tlalmanalco (Mexico) (Picture 4). According to one account, on seeing the photograph of a zamang (Pithecolobium Saman), an enormous leguminous tree near Catuche Turmeo in Venezuela (Picture 5), the 90- year-old Humboldt, to whom Rosti had presented a copy of his album in 1858 at his family seat just outside Berlin, cried out with tears in his eyes:

see what has become of me, this fair tree is still the same as it was when I saw it sixty years ago. Not a single one of its giant branches has drooped... Then we were young and strong, filled with joy, and our youthful ardour brightened even our most solemn studies.²

In his own account, Rosti relates the meeting with a slightly different emphasis:

to my great delight, the renowned old man recognized at first glance the great zamang, which in his youth half a century before he had seen and described, so vivid was the impression that the beautiful tree had made on the yet youthful traveller's soul, and so wondrously true the memory of this distinguished man, who already stood so close to his grave, and so trifling the change that fifty years had made on the enormous tree!³

In terms of style, a photograph of a Mexican coffee plantation (El Palmar) in the valley of the Aragua river merits attention (Picture 6). It depicts the forest undergrowth and a footpath leading into its depths, bringing to mind a plein-air Barbizon painting. This is not a scholarly, descriptive introduction to the natural peculiarities and architectural monuments of alien lands and exotic cultures; it is, rather, an evocative landscape seen with a painter's eye.
Most of Rosti's photographs are taken from a distance (often from above). In contrast, this coffee plantation photograph emphasises intimacy through the closeness of the shot: the viewer's gaze is drawn to the winding path leading into the forest, arousing a desire to walk past the small cart left by the wayside and stroll among the trees. Rosti's own account reveals why this photograph of a coffee plantation might make us think of European forests. Between the young coffee trees

buchares and bananas have been planted so that their broad leaves might offer some shade to the delicate coffee beans. The buchares is a tall tree, the branches of which spread wide, offering splendid shade. Its leaves resemble those of the poplar, its trunk and form resemble the beech.⁴

It is interesting to compare the photograph and the lithograph accompanying this account, made by Gustav Klette for Rosti's account in book form on his travels. The latter is much more an ethnographic study, a genre painting, with its portrayal of the negro workers relaxing in the foreground. (Picture 7)

On August 8th, 1858 Rosti returned from his eighteen-month journey through Central and South America to England, arriving in Southampton. On November 1st he went on to Berlin to seek out Humboldt and, three days later, he arrived in Hungary. Since the bindings for his albums were the work of Despierres in Paris, he clearly spent some of this time in France, for he presented a bound copy of an album to Humboldt.
Following his return home, he took an active part in Hungary's scholarly, artistic, musical and athletic life. He gave lectures and wrote articles on his travels. In 1861 he had an account of these travels published, complete with lithographs and engravings (both steel and wood) produced from the photographs he had brought back. He devotes as much attention in his book to the siting of the cities, the climatic conditions and the natural spectacles (waterfalls, volcanoes, caves) as he does to individual buildings (Pictures 8, 10, 11), mining (Picture 9) and agricultural industries (sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations and sugar refining). He takes an archeological interest in pre-Columbian remains, devoting several photographs and detailed descriptions to the Aztec ruins at Xochicalco (Picture 12)

and captured the Aztec stone calendar walled up in the cathedral in Mexico City (Picture 13). The exposures in which he presents the history, customs, religion, outward racial characteristics, clothing and weapons of the indigenous peoples of South America (the Mexican Indians among them) indicate his ethnographic bent. Rosti was an acute observer of the social structures and peculiarities of South American society. One of his remarks reveals his sensitivity to social questions and the liberal outlook he presumably imbibed from his family environment:

What is monstrous and appalling in slavery is the thought that such a creature is compelled from early childhood until old age to allot, with not the slightest measure of free will, his hard work, strength, talents, his entire existence to another, that the fruit of his ceaseless labour will be reaped by another without him being able, with his industry and his application, to alter his fate in the slightest, that in such a manner he has ceased to be a member of the human race and is nothing more than a toiling brute.⁵

At the same time he notices that the circumstances in which Cuban slaves lived were no worse than those of European workers, and that they were treated far more humanely than black slaves in the United States.
He observes local customs with great interest. He makes mention of religious life, which he finds more intimate and absorbing than that of Europe, as well as the colourful religious processions and celebrations. He offers a vivid description of the cock fights, unusually popular in Havana, where the social barriers dividing rich and poor break down at the ringside; at the same time he strongly condemns the carnage of bull fights, much more savage than those in Spain. He provides a detailed account, seasoned with humour, of the strict courting traditions of young Mexicans. In the first stage of the relationship, the young man may only follow his chosen on horseback as she rides in a carriage on the paseo. A conversation between the two is permitted only several months later, followed by a secret correspondence, which also lasts several months. It may come to pass, however, that the young man's affections are left unrequited.
The climate and the mentality, both so different from those of Europe, tried his patience and his adaptability. In Mexico, he climbed Popocatepetl and spent the night in the miners' temporary quarters in the volcano's crater. Although he was badly affected by the altitude, the cold and the sulphurous gases, the sight of the stars resplendent with a glow and magnificence he had never seen before, and the profound tranquility and isolation above the clouds "almost made me forget the discomforts and dangers of my night-time lodgings, leaving a memory in my soul that will remain ineffaceable for the rest of my life."⁶ He quickly grew accustomed to and came to like sleeping in a hammock; whenever he did not find lodgings for the night, he would sleep outside in the chinchorr that he always brought with him.
Rosti the explorer was swift to adapt to the unexpected. In November 1857, a Mexican newspaper reported that lava had erupted in the Puente de Dios cave. At Rosti's suggestion the Mexican Miners' College launched an expedition, in which he naturally took part, with the purpose of observing the geological phenomenon. After an exhausting journey, they made their hazardous way into the cave. There they discovered that the smoke and flames that had been holding the local peasants in superstitious terror for months had been caused by the accumulated excrement of bats in the depths of the cave, which had caught fire. Rosti saw the incident as an example of the mentality and the conception of time in South America, so markedly different to the European. During the three months of his stay in Mexico, they never undertook a chemical analysis of the sample of fumes taken from the cave despite his continuous urgings.
He learned from personal experience that the turn of phrase often heard among the wealthy of Mexico that, "My home and my person are at your service," could only be taken seriously as long as one did not actually invoke assistance. Until the money he was expecting from his London banker arrived, he lived off the valuables he had pawned, eating cornpone and fruit. In need of food and lodging, he entered into service as an assistant to a German apothecary who had settled in Mexico. However, once confronted with more pleasant challenges, he quickly found his feet. When his host in El Palmar took him to a gathering in his honour organized by his coffee plantation workers; he used his knowledge of the Hungarian csárdás dance and soon mastered the local dance to the astonishment of the locals. He had intended to spend only a single day in El Palmar, he wrote, but the Hamburg-born owner of the plantation entreated him to stay so kindly, with a hospitality comparable only to that of Hungarians, that in the end he spent a month on the estate. Clearly he did everything in his power to acquaint himself with all the social strata and the thinking, values and customs of both natives and newcomers.