Matriculating at the university of Gottingen in 1811, he began by devoting himself to astronomy under Carl Friedrich Gauss; but he enlisted in the Hanseatic Legion for the campaign of 1813 - 14, and became lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service in 1815.
Humboldt's contemporary, Carl Ritter (1779-1859), extended and disseminated the same views, and in his interpretation of " Comparative Geography " he laid stress on the importance of Iditter.
This argument was tacitly accepted or explicitly avowed by almost every writer on the theory of geography, and Carl Ritter distinctly recognized and adopted it as the unifying principle of his system.
There is an excellent article by Carl Mirbt in Hauck's Realencyklopcidie, 3rd edition.
It is owing to these leading orographical features - divined by Carl Ritter, but only recently ascertained and established as fact by geographical research - that so many of the great Rivers.