Smith, Anthony

New York. 1990. Viking Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0670813109. 344 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Tom McKeveny Jacket art: Alexander von Humboldt. Engraving, after a painting by Ferdinand Keller, 1877, courtesy of The Bettmann Archive. keywords: Travel Latin America Amazon. FROM THE PUBLISHER - The Amazon River is not only the world's largest, and holder of most superlatives, but it has been the scene of some of the most fantastic adventures in the history of exploration since it was first encountered almost 500 years ago. Other large rivers have also been explored, but none quite like the Amazon with its various expeditions spanning centuries. Even today a journey up one of ib massive tributaries can force the traveler to feel that little has changed since Aguirre or Madame Godin or Richard Spruce paddled those same waters. In Explorers of the Amazon, Anthony Smith recounts the stories of the remarkable men and women drawn to investigate the unknown interior of the South American continent. He describes the early forays of the Spanish conquistadores who voyaged in search of the legendary El Dorado, the lost City of Gold; the scientific expeditions of La Condamine in the eighteenth century, and of the Prussian Baron von Humboldt - the last great universal man - in the nineteenth; the exploits of the British adventurer Henry Wickham, who smuggled rubber seedlings out of Brazil; and the story of Walter Hardenburg, a young American who traveled to Colombia at the beginning of the twentieth century and became embroiled in an international scandal exposing the horrors of the plantations along the banks of the Putumayo. In the tradition of Alan Moorehead's classic books on the exploration of the Nile, Anthony Smith captures all the excitement and adventure, the astonishing feats and bloodcurdling infamies, that accompanied the opening of the grandest of rivers, the Amazon. inventory #13387 ISBN: 0670813109.