“Impressions completely new to me” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 185

andresidedinanarid,lostdetourinthelargerhumantrajectory.Herehewasconfronted
with the vast apparatus of creation and emergent history. But his magnificent emotions
were soon to be counterposed by the tedious details of government bureaucracies and
thousands of daily frustrations as he moved to the staging point of his expedition.
Figure 12.1. Jacques Huber, da Cunha's “thinking Titan.”
“There will be a book . . .”
In Manaus, da Cunha moved to the lovely chalet, Vila Glirícia, of Alfredo Rangel, his
friend from Praia Vermelha, in a suburb that abutted the forest. Rangel had been making
his fortune as a surveyor for rubber estates, a profitable and necessary task. Although
thelargerinternational boundariesremainedsketchy,theurgenciesofprofitrequiredde-
tailed property lines. Rangel was away, and da Cunha was reading, doing errands, and
waiting.
Euclides hoped that his Amazon writings would become a companion volume to his
Os Sertões .
So here we are, still waiting for our departure day . . . it perhaps will still be further delayed, so
sluggishly are our difficulties being redressed. It suggests an eloquent contrast: The great English ex-
plorer Chandless, when he arrived in Manaus to explore this exact same Purús, encountered the most
efficient and efficacious help from the highest provincial authorities to the most humble caboclos .
And this was when we were in the heat of the Christie Question! 8 And Chandler was British! And
merely a traveling member of the Geographical Society of London! We, Brazilians, invested with an
officialcommission,confrontendlessobstacles.Timeshavetrulychangedagreatdeal,myillustrious
friend . . . 9
And to his friend Artur Lemos he wrote:
Were I to write you now I could only sketch miniatures of Chaos, incoherent and tumultuous—an
incredible mixture of endless flooded forests and vast resplendent skies: between these two extremes
there are innumerable modalities and a new world completely unknown to me. . . . The news by tele-