FIELD ZOOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 333 



What Agassiz did for the fishes of the Amazon and what Hudson 

 did for the birds of the Argentine, are other instances of the work 

 that can thus be done. Burton's writings on the interior of Brazil 

 offer an excellent instance of the value of a sojourn or trip of this 

 type, even without any especial scientific object. 



Of course travellers of this kind need to remember that their 

 experiences in themselves do not qualify them to speak as wilder- 

 ness explorers. Exactly as a good archaeologist may not be com- 

 petent to speak of current social or political problems, so a man 

 who has done capital work as a tourist observer in little-visited 

 cities and along remote highways, must beware of regarding him- 

 self as being thereby rendered fit for genuine wilderness work or 

 competent to pass judgment on the men who do such work. To 

 cross the Andes on mule-back along the regular routes is a feat 

 comparable to the feats of the energetic tourists who by thousands 

 traverse the mule trails in out-of-the-way nooks of Switzerland. 

 An ordinary trip on the highway portions of the Amazon, Para- 

 guay, or Orinoco, in itself no more qualifies a man to speak of or 

 to take part in exploring unknown South American rivers than a 

 trip on the lower Saint Lawrence qualifies a man to regard himself 

 as an expert in a canoe voyage across Labrador or the Barren 

 Grounds west of Hudson Bay. 



A hundred years ago, even seventy or eighty years ago, before 

 the age of steamboats and railroads, it was more difficult than at 

 present to define the limits between this class and the next ; and, 

 moreover, in defining these limits I emphatically disclaim any 

 intention of thereby attempting to establish a single standard of 

 value for books of travel. Darwin's " Voyage of the Beagle " is to 

 me the best book of the kind ever written ; it is one of those 

 classics which decline to go into artificial categories, and which 

 stand by themselves ; and yet Darwin, with his usual modesty, 

 spoke of it as in effect a yachting voyage. Humboldt's work had 

 a profound effect on the thought of the civilized world ; his trip 

 was one of adventure and danger ; and yet it can hardly be called 

 exploratifflfc, proper. He visited places which had been settled and 

 inhabited for centuries, and traversed places which had been 

 travelled by civilized men for years before he followed in their foot- 

 steps. But these places were in Spanish colonies, and access to 



