Alfred Russel Wallace – The Voyages on the AmazonI was lost in admiration of the dazzling brilliancy of its soft downy feathers. Not a spot of
blood was visible, not a feather was ruffled, and the soft, warm, flexible body set off the
fresh swelling plumage, in a manner which no stuffed specimen can approach.It is significant that during his time on the Upper Rio Negro, Wallace changes
from being a struggling collector of natural history specimens to being an explorer,
an observer of the customs of the indigenous peoples and a travel writer. Perhaps it
was the influence of the evocative writings of Alexander von Humboldt because as he
continued upstream he finally reached the Brazilian border post at Maribatanas where
Humboldt had been turned back by the Brazilian authorities after he tried to enter
from Venezuela. For Wallace, this was hallowed ground and he wished to follow the
example of his boyhood hero:
Not so much for my collections which I do not expect to be very profitable there, but because
I am so much interested in the country and the people, that I am determined to see and know
more of it and them, than any other traveller. If I do not get profit I hope at least to get some
credit as an industrious and persevering traveller.He then crossed into Venezuela and reached the village of San Carlos near the
junction of the Casiquiare canal. More than a century earlier a Jesuit priest had reported
that a river connected the two great river systems of South America – the Orinoco and
the Amazon. All the scientists of the day said this was an impossibility, as the great
river systems were always separated by a watershed or high ground. Humboldt and
his companion Bonplan decided to find this mysterious canal in an expedition which
covered almost 3000 kilometres of wild mostly uninhabited jungle. They spent four
months in Venezuela paddling with their Indian crews up the Rio Orinoco and then the
Rio Atabapo, ascending the rapids, fighting off the mosquitos, and collecting natural
history specimens as they went. Finally in May 1800 they found the entrance to the
Casiquiare canal and after paddling for ten days they reached the Rio Negro and the
headwaters of the Amazon at San Carlos. The canal is a branch of the Upper Orinoco
that meanders sluggishly south-westwards for 320 kilometres across flat forests,
dropping twenty-five metres along the way, to join the Rio Negro and flow down into
the Amazon, thus creating a rare fluvial link between two vast river systems flowing
in opposite directions.
It was not until 1924 that Alexander Rice, the founder of the Harvard Institute of
Geographical Exploration, completed the full journey by travelling up the Orinoco,
traversing the Casiquiare canal, and then descending the Rio Negro and the Amazon.
113