Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
savage realm. Gibbon was in the lands of the mission cultures of the upper Amazon and
in the ghost empire of the great pre-Columbian societies of the Moxos. 50 Though the
Jesuits had been gone for most of a century, the vibrant syncretic culture built on the
ruins of an earlier civilization remained. 51 Regarding the Yacaré, Gibbon said,”there are
two characteristic of the Indian we particularly notice: his honesty and his truthfulness.”
Gibbon's view of natives is a Rousseauian counterpoint of the noble savage to Herdon's
savage brutes.
Gibbon paid close attention to diseases: one hundred Indians die of smallpox in the
Bolivian town of Trinidad while he is there; the Brazilian garrison has some kind of
languishing affliction, or “Fort Fever” (perhaps beriberi). Gibbon himself has malaria.
He notes runaway slaves on the Bolivian side of the Madeira (said to number two thou-
sand—an enormous number at the time, one that hardly boded well for the new immig-
rant slave-based production yearned for by Maury), the village of Borba, composed al-
most entirely of blacks, and the free black militias in Mato Grosso. 52 He provides de-
tailed information on forts, economic activities of the most varied types, military men,
andequipmentbecausehewasinapositiontoactuallyseethem.Gibbon'sreportreflects
the social milieu where he traveled, closer to the realities of Amazonian economies, and
was dependent on the goodwill of locals. While he was at times a guest at missions, he
often slept rough, in farmhouses and muleteer taverns or in the open. Unlike Herndon,
he had no interlocutor.
For later adventurers and explorers, it was Gibbon's work that was the more useful
guide, not the popular Herndon account. Euclides da Cunha would laud Gibbon's carto-
graphy as one of the few authentic efforts in this land of lying maps, and coincidentally
the one that best corresponded with Brazilian positions. 53 Maury wrote no letter telling
Gibbonwhattolookfor.Intermsofmeasurementandobservation,Gibbon'ssurveywas
more precise and his judgment less clouded by an external agenda. The more reliable
technical content of the travels lies within Gibbon's volume. 54
Gibbon'snarrative,incontrasttoHerndon's,isnotastoryoftheprimitivesandyokels
yearning for American salvation. He describes a dinner party in La Paz where the lovely
hostess engages him in a lively conversation about politics: “She expressed approval of
the American people but not some of their actions. . . . She asked me to explain to her
the meaning of all the articles she saw in the La Paz newspapers on the subject of Cuba.
Turning suddenly, she looked up and said 'what are you doing here Senhor Gibbon, do
you want Bolivia also?'”
The answer, although Gibbon did not know it then, was yes.
Tropical Dixies
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