Argonauts of the Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 234

was how Bates, Wallace, Spruce, and Clements Markham, men of humble beginnings,
paid for their tropical explorations. Even those from modest backgrounds like Bates
and Markham were launched into aristocratic realms and could be knighted and become
heads of the most important colonial institutions: Bates became the director of the Roy-
al Geographical Society. Markham headed the India Company, Britain's most import-
ant charter, and later the Haklyut Society, devoted to the publication of global travels
by British subjects and translation of relevant works on overseas nature and culture as a
means to enhance the tropical colonial archive and inform its practices.
If von Humboldt was the progenitor of the modern scientific field naturalist, Joseph
Hooker (1814-1911), the director of Kew Gardens (a very close friend and well-placed
allyofCharlesDarwin),canbeseenanagentthroughwhichscientificinstitutions(espe-
cially the botanical garden) shifted from being depositories for specimens and attractive
destinations for weekend outings to active sites for the creation of new knowledge and
“imperial natures.” Hooker, who himself carried out collecting expeditions in the Him-
alayas, the American West, Morocco, and Antarctica, had a powerful vision of a “botan-
ical empire.” 14 He subsidized many tropical collections and was especially interested in
a“philosophicalbotany”thatwouldanswerquestionsabouttheinteractionoforganisms
and their relation to place (and how these might be replicated elsewhere on the planet,
an issue of interest to Imperial England) rather than focusing on the simple craft of col-
lection. In this sense, as historian of science Jim Enderby has argued, the collectors and
naturalhistorianssupportedbyKewandkindredinstitutionsmovedfrombeing“passive
providers of specimens or inert recipients of metropolitan knowledge . . . to becoming
active participants in the making of new scientific knowledge.” 15
The naturalists' enormous scientific efforts contributed to the genre of nature writing
that had shifted from extolling God's greatness to more secular scientific description as
well as the Humboldtian and romantic adoration of nature itself. The “prospect” and the
aesthetic of the individual experience of nature nourished the uplifting possibilities of
spiritual, scientific, and artistic impressions. These could inspire poetry and, at the very
least, stir noble feelings. In writings about New World nature, these approaches were
infused with exoticized landscapes and mysterious perils that seemed to many of these
writers to cry out for the generous guiding hand of Northern colonialism.
These works also helped nourished Victorian ideas of masculinity in the Anglophone
world. If Africa had its big game hunts, Amazonia was a worthy proving grounds for
the mettle of young men with its giant forests, many insect discomforts, monstrous al-
ligators, piranhas, native savages, and tiny candiru fish that could swim up the urine
streamintoourintrepidtraveler'spenis.Whiletheseadventureslackedthecarcassesand
trophiesofAfricanexploits,theywerereliablyunpleasantandproducedampleevidence
of manly toughness. Both Africa and Amazonia had cannibals, serving for some travel-