“Such is the river, such is its history” - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 198

theAmazonwellreflectsitsphysiognomy:itissurprising,precious,disconnected.Thosewhorushto
misread her will at the end of these efforts only linger at the threshold of this marvelous world. . . . 16
This phrase by Frederick Hartt reveals how even the most robust spirits quail when faced with the
Amazon'senormity.HarttstudiedthegeologyofAmazonia,whenhediscoveredhisprecisescientific
formulas so shaken, so structured by dreams, that he had to quickly draw in his sails of fantasy:
“I am not a poet. I speak only the prose of my science!” He then continued to write, devoting him-
self further to his rigorous deduction. But two pages on he could not face the new excitements and
reinitiated his enchantment. . . .
It is the great river, notwithstanding its overriding monotony, which evokes all manner of marvel,
and which equally inspires the innocent chronicler, the romantic adventurer, or the informed scholar.
TheAmazonsofOrellana,theCurriqueres,theGiants,ofGuillaumeLisle,andtheLakeofElDorado
of Walter Raleigh all created out of our past such a dazzling and almost mythological cycle that these
emanations still inhabit the most imaginative hypotheses of science. There is a hypertrophy of the
imagination that cannot adapt to the incongruity of the land, and this unbalances the most staid men-
tality. In the realm of objective endeavors are the visions of von Humboldt and a series of conjec-
tures where all sorts of concepts are advanced or refuted, ranging from the dynamics of earthquakes
of Russel Wallace to the formidable biblical forces of the antediluvian ice ages of Agassiz. It seems
in Amazonia that the magnitude of the questions implies a certain languid discourse: inductions fa-
vor flights of fancy. Truths are hidden in hyperbole. In its inflated idealizations, tangible elements
of Amazonia's surprising reality are portrayed such that the most unfettered dreamer can easily find
himself in the company of the most exalted scholars.
Map 8. Map of tropical travelers.
One could go, for example, with F. Katzer 17 to find, classify, measure the ancient petrefate and
gratolites in a lengthy pilgrimage ideal for encountering the remotest points of distant epochs—for
a long time people debated about the classification of the massifs, enmeshing themselves in the web
of Greek nomenclature, and surprisingly, the maxims of science unfolded into a kind of fantasy: the
cold analyses ended as marvels. The condensed vistas of microscopes unleashed discoveries of a past