172 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



risk — and are entitled to all the credit. He and his valise 

 are carried in practically the same fashion; and for each 

 the achievement stands about on the same plane. If this 

 kind of traveller is a writer, he can of course do admira- 

 ble work, work of the highest value; but the value comes 

 because he is a writer and observer, not because of any- 

 particular credit that attaches to him as a traveller. We 

 all recognize this truth as far as highly civilized regions 

 are concerned: when Bryce writes of the American com- 

 monwealth, or Lowell of European legislative assemblies, 

 our admiration is for the insight and thought of the ob- 

 server, and we are not concerned with his travels. When 

 a man travels across Arizona in a Pullman car, we do not 

 think of him as having performed a feat bearing even the 

 most remote resemblance to the feats of the first explorers 

 of those waterless wastes ; whatever admiration we feel in 

 connection with his trip is reserved for the traffic-super- 

 intendent, engineer, fireman, and brakeman. But as re- 

 gards the less-known continents, such as South America, we 

 sometimes fail to remember these obvious truths. There 

 yet remains plenty of exploring work to be done in South 

 America, as hard, as dangerous, and almost as important 

 as any that has already been done; work such as has 

 recently been done, or is now being done, by men and 

 women such as Haseman, Farrabee, and Miss Snethlage. 

 The collecting naturalists who go into the wilds and do 

 first-class work encounter every kind of risk and undergo 

 every kind of hardship and exertion. Explorers and nat- 

 uralists of the right type have open to them in South 

 America a field of extraordinary attraction and difficulty. 

 But to excavate ruins that have already long been known, 



