Volume 3

Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes : being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 / by Richard Spruce ; edited and condensed by Alfred Russel Wallace ; with a biographical introduction, portrait, seventy-one illustrations and seven maps.

Richard Spruce

Date:: 1908

Credit: Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes : being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga and Pastasa; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific, during the years 1849-1864 / by Richard Spruce ; edited and condensed by Alfred Russel Wallace ; with a biographical introduction, portrait, seventy-one illustrations and seven maps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

566/588 page 504

very many of which probably do not exist at all on the Rio Negro, and were certainly not seen there by him, for he did not ascend that river. When I was at San Fernando and Maypures, my notions of geography were continually shocked by hearing the people say “ aqui em Rio Negro” (“here in the Rio Negro”). “Why do you say Rio Negro,” I would ask, “when here we are on the Orinoco?” “Because,” said they, “we are in the Canton do Rio Negro.” Finally, as I came down the Rio Negro, the people were already beginning to say “ aqui en Amazonas ” (“ here in the Amazon ”). The only limits which can be counted constant are those formed by the rivers and mountains. Even the term “ North Brazil” may in a few years cease to have any significance. “ Guayana,” as it was anciently understood by the Spaniards and Portuguese, namely, all the tract between the ocean, the rivers Amazon, Negro, and Orinoco, is a quite natural division, and is still well known in common parlance under the same name. **•••• [The following Notes written during Spruce’s latest residence at Barra may follow here :—] Contrast between the Shores of the Amazon and those of the Rio Negro In the former river the receding waters in many places leave broad margins of mud hard enough to walk on, and becoming sparsely clothed with annual grasses and Cyperaceae as summer advances. In ascending it I have sometimes walked half a mile across these annual meadows, and at the farther side have come only on the common willow, Salix Humboldtiana, two or three Psidia with a willow-like aspect at a distance, and Mimosa Asperata. On the Upper Rio Negro nothing similar is seen; the forest

Licence and re-use

Contents

Volumes