APPENDIX A 347 



wishes to do the best scientific work in the wilderness must not try to 

 combine incompatible types of work nor to cover too much ground in 

 too short a time. 



There is no better example of the kind of zoologist who does first- 

 class field-work in the wilderness than John D. Haseman, who spent from 

 1907 to 1910 in painstaking and thorough scientific investigation over 

 a large extent of South American territory hitherto only partially known 

 or quite unexplored. Haseman's primary object was to study the char- 

 acteristics and distribution of South American fishes, but as a matter 

 of fact he studied at first hand many other more or less kindred sub- 

 jects, as may be seen in his remarks on the Indians and in his excel- 

 lent pamphlet on "Some Factors of Geographical Distribution in South 

 America." 



Haseman made his long journey with a very slender equipment, his 

 extraordinarily successful field-work being due to his bodily health and 

 vigor and his resourcefulness, self-reliance, and resolution. His writings 

 are rendered valuable by his accuracy and common sense. The need 

 of the former of these two attributes will be appreciated by whoever 

 has studied the really scandalous fictions which have been published as 

 genuine by some modern "explorers" and adventurers in South Amer- 

 ica; * and the need of the latter by whoever has studied some of the 

 wild theories propounded in the name of science concerning the history 



* It would be well If a geographical society of standing would investigate the formal 

 and ofHcial charges made by Colonel Rondon, an officer and gentleman of the highest 

 repute, against Mr. Savage Landor. Colonel Rondon, in an official report to the Brazil- 

 ian Government, has written a scathing review of Mr. Landor. He states that Mr. 

 Savage Landor did not perform, and did not even attempt to perform, the work he had 

 contracted to do In exploration for the Brazilian Government. Mr. Landor had asserted 

 and promised that he would go through unknown country along the line of eleven de- 

 grees latitude south, and, as Colonel Rondon states, It was because of this proposal of his 

 that the Brazilian Government gave him material financial assistance in advance. How- 

 ever, Colonel Rondon sets forth that Mr. Landor did not keep his word or make any serious 

 effort to fulfil his moral obligation to do as he had said he would do. In a letter to me under 

 date of May i, 19 14 — a letter which has been published in full in France — Colonel Rondon 

 goes at length Into the question of what territory Mr. Landor had traversed. Colonel 

 Rondon states that — excepting on one occasion, when Mr. Landor, wandering off a 

 beaten trail, immediately got lost and shortly returned to his starting-point without 

 making any discoveries — he kept to old, well-travelled routes. One sentence of the colo- 

 nel's letter to me runs as follows: "I can guarantee to you that in Brazil Mr. Landor 

 did not cross a hand's breadth of land that had not been explored, the greater part of it 

 many centuries ago." As regards Mr. Landor's sole and brief experience in leaving a 

 beaten route. Colonel Rondon states that at Sao Manoel Mr. Landor engaged from 

 Senhor Jose Sotero Barreto (the revenue officer of Matto Grosso, at Sao Manoel) a guide 

 to lead him across a well-travelled trail which connects the Tapajos with the Madeira 



