In 1852 and 1853 a new title appeared in the London publisher Henry Bohn's ‘Scientific Library’ series. Bound in smart red cloth with ‘Humboldt's Travels’ in gilt letters on the spine, this second English translation of Humboldt's Relation historique to come out on the British book market was the work of Thomasina Muir Ross (1796?–1875). By condensing Humboldt's travel narrative into three 500-page volumes, where Williams's translation had straddled seven tomes and nearly 4,000 pages, Ross provided mid-century readers with a version of Humboldt's voyage to the Americas that was less daunting in size and more agreeable on the pocket. Affordably priced at five shillings a volume– since Bohn had dispensed with maps and illustrations– and with an index for easy reference purposes, this more modern translation swiftly won critical approval. The Athenæum considered the translation well executed and Ross's editorial additions pertaining to ‘the modern political and moral conditions of equinoctial America’ essential in increasing the value of the work.

It was not just the supplementary material that drew the critics’ atten¬tion. The extensive omissions required to slim the Relation historique down to three volumes– the same format as the immensely popular nineteenth-century ‘three-decker novel’– were deemed a great improve¬ment. As the Examiner noted, ‘we observe some judicious curtailment of statistical and political details which have quite lost any supposed importance they may have had when the narrative was published origi¬nally’. Putting it more bluntly, the critic in the Daily News applauded Ross's omission of those passages in Humboldt's account that recent political changes in South America had made ‘obsolete, and– to the general reader,– useless’.

Restoring relevance to the Relation historique almost half a century after Humboldt's return from the Americas, and some thirty years after the publication of the French original, was fraught with difficulty. Vivid descriptions of tropical exuberance would always make for inspiring reading, but the collapse in 1808 of monarchical power in Spain had initiated movements towards independence across South America that made Humboldt's account of colonial occupation decidedly passé. Science too had moved on.