22 



INTRODUCTORY. 



travelled over the roads already trodden. , The broken and precipitous 

 mountain track — the deep morass — the thick and tangled forest — the 

 danger from Indians, wild beasts, and reptiles — the scarcity of provi- 

 sions — the exposure to the almost appalling rains — and the navigation 

 of the impetuous and rock-obstructed river, threatening at every moment 

 shipwreck to the frail canoe — form obstacles that might daunt any heart 

 but that of the gold-hunter or the missionary. 



The most remarkable voyage down the Amazon was made by a 

 woman. Madame Godin des Odonnais, wife of one of the French 

 commissioners who was sent with Condamine to measure an arc of 

 the meridian near Quito, started in 1769, from Rio JBamba, in Ecuador, 

 to join her husband in Cayenne by the route of the Amazon. She 

 embarked at Canelos, on the Borbonaza, with a company of eight per- 

 sons; two, besides herself, being females. On the third day the Indians 

 who conducted their canoe deserted : another Indian, whom they found 

 sick in a hovel near the bank, and employed as pilot, fell from the 

 canoe in endeavoring to pick up the hat of one of the party, and was 

 drowned. 



The canoe, under their own management, soon capsized, and they 

 lost all their clothing and provisions. Three men of the party now 

 started for Andoas, on the Pastaza, which they supposed themselves to 

 be within five or six days of, and never returned. The party left 

 behind, now consisting of the three females and two brothers of 

 Madame Godin, lashed a few logs together and attempted again to 

 navigate ; but their frail vessel soon went to pieces by striking against 

 the fallen trees in the river. They then attempted to journey on foot 

 along the banks of the river, but finding the growth here too thick and 

 tangled for them to make any way, they struck off into the forest in 

 hopes of finding a less obstructed path. 



They were soon lost: despair took possession of them, and they 

 perished miserably of hunger and exhaustion. Madame Godin, recov- 

 ering from a swoon, which she supposes to have been of many hours' 

 duration, took the shoes from her dead brother's feet and started to 

 walk, she knew not whither. Her clothes were soon torn to rags, her 

 body lacerated by her #certions in forcing her way through the tangled 

 and thorny undergrowth, and she was kept constantly in a state of 

 deadly terror by the howl of the tiger and the hiss of the serpent. It 

 is wonderful that she preserved her reason. Eight terrible days and 

 nights did she wander alone in the howling wilderness, supported by a 

 few berries and birds' eggs. Providentially (one cannot say accidentally) 

 she struck the river at a point where two Indians (a man and a woman) 



