178 Through the Brazilian Wilderness 



undergo every kind of hardship and exertion. Explorers 

 and naturalists 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, to visit out-of-the-way towns that date from 

 colonial days, to traverse old, even if uncomfortable, 

 routes of travel, or to ascend or descend highway rivers 

 like the Amazon, the Paraguay, and the lower Orinoco — 

 all of these exploits are well worth performing, but they 

 in no sense represent exploration or adventure, and they 

 do not entitle the performer, no matter how well he 

 writes and no matter how much of real value he con- 

 tributes to human knowledge, to compare himself in any 

 way with the real wilderness wanderer, or to criticise the 

 latter. Such a performance entails no hardship or diffi- 

 culty worth heeding. Its value depends purely on ob- 

 servation, not on action. The man does little ; he merely 

 records what he sees. He is only the man of the beaten 

 routes. The true wilderness wanderer, on the contrary, 

 must be a man of action as well as of observation. He 

 must have the heart and the body to do and to endure, 

 no less than the eye to see and the brain to note and 

 record. 



Let me make it clear that I am not depreciating the 

 excellent work of so many of the men who have not gone 

 off the beaten trails. I merely wish to make it plain that 

 this excellent work must not be put in the class with that 

 of the wilderness explorer. It is excellent work, never- 

 theless, and has its place, just as the work of the true 

 explorer has its place. Both stand in sharpest con- 

 trast with the actions of those alleged explorers, among 



