WOMEN IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 259 



woman would have left the tropics at once and returned 

 to her home and friends. Not so Mme. Coudreau. With 

 matchless courage and determination she buried her grief 

 in the work in which her husband had been so interested, 

 and, after completing the unfinished survey, published the 

 results of this expedition under the title Voyage au Trom- 

 betas. 



Having completed this work, she was engaged by the 

 states of Para and Amazonas to explore a number of other 

 rivers in the vast territory known as Amazonia. This com- 

 mission involved the most arduous and dangerous kind of 

 labor and was a task which few men would have been 

 willing to undertake. It is doubtful if any other woman 

 would have ventured on such an expedition, and it is quite 

 certain that no other one could have been found that was 

 so well equipped for this herculean undertaking or who 

 would have carried it to a more successful issue. 



Mme. Coudreau was in the service of Amazonia, in the 

 capacity of official explorer, from 1899 to 1906. Most of 

 this time she spent in a canoe on the affluents of the Ama- 

 zon, or in her tent in the dense forests under the equator. 

 Her only companions were negroes, or Indians, or Brazil- 

 ian halfbreeds who served her as porters, cooks and boat- 

 men. Frequently they were in the forest wilds for many 

 months at a time and far away from every vestige of civil- 

 ized life. As it was impossible to take sufficient provisions 

 with them to last them during the whole of their journey, 

 they had to depend on wild fruits and such fish and game 

 as they were able to secure. Often they were forced to 

 live for weeks at a time on an unchanging diet of manioc 

 and tapir meat. 



But their sufferings were not confined to hunger and 

 disagreeable often indigestible food. There were the 

 heavy steaming atmosphere and the broiling rays of a 

 superheated sun, especially when reflected from the mir- 

 ror-like surface of lake or river, which were so debilitating 



