Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Silva Coutinho, in addition to the interesting formal data he disclosed, substantially revealed the
destiny of these areas. In spite of having ascended the river only as far as Huitanãa, as he turned back
for lack of supplies, he outlined with eloquent simplicity the importance of these unknown outposts:
The importance of the Purús is too great to abandon its reconnaissance. When Europe discusses
withimmenseinterestthe“QuestionoftheMadredeDios”weshouldnot,withourspecialconcern
in this issue, remain indifferent. The richest regions of Peru and Bolivia can only connect with the
AmazonasbymeansofthePurúsandtheJuruá,riversthathavenosignificantfallsandwhichoffer
easy travel along their entire course.
Thus came Chandless, one year later, specifically to resolve the “Madre de Dios Question”—one
aspect ofthe old problem oflinking the Amazon basin to that ofthe La Plata. Even though Chandless
left without this crowning achievement, he carried out the most serious of all the explorations of
the great river. For the first time, fixed astronomical coordinates of its principal points were carried
out, and while various other tasks were not completed, that simple contribution suffices to place him
among the premier scientists of Amazonia, if not among the top ranks of other observers who have
studied our country. It is difficult to encounter anyone else so persistent, so conscientious, so lucid
and so modest.
His extremely arduous voyage of eight months, assisted only by some Bolivians and Ipuriná Indi-
ans who rowed his canoes, was probably the calmest of all the great geographical expeditions. There
werenomajorcalamities, noemotionalepisodesorunexpectedincidentslikethosethattypicallyem-
bellish expeditions into the “unknown.” It is striking and interesting for the remarkable results gen-
erated by this expedition: the extremely rigorous but clear barometric readings and determination of
coordinates. In this last aspect especially, it is the best model of geographic work in our country.
Compare him with anybody who was charged with the same task of exploring any one of the
Amazonian rivers. Few other areas match the obstacles for an observer: the extreme humidity that
clouds the skies at exactly the hours most apt for measurement, even when the weather is clear and
stable;eventhebestdaysalwaysbegininhazeuntilabout8o'clock,obscuringthepositionofthesun
fordetermining the hours, and at the end, the sky is veiled in mists and vapors through which one can
barely make out the stars. At the headwaters, the narrowness of the channel, choked by large trees,
limits the choice of stars, closing the skies to a 45-degree angle, and basically undermines the best
situations for these survey tasks; the logs that choke the riverbed, from the middle section up to the
headwaters, result in ceaseless jolts and shocks that are very damaging to the chronometers, already
impaired by portages around the worst rapids and cataracts. The capricious and sinuously twisting
channel demands constant attention and an exhaustive reading of the watercourse, which changes
from one minute to the next, and one must record all these innumerable observations in a field book.
There are ever-increasing causes for error in the ultimate results—the barometric anomalies, still in-
explicable today, not only make attitudinal readings dubious but diminish the importance of correc-
tions to the calculations of altitude. And as if there were not already enough difficulties, the observer
(regularly obliged to veil himself in mosquito netting) is often denied the indispensable serenity ne-
cessary for these endeavors because of the onslaughts of a succession of biting gnats in the day and
the stings of mosquitoes at night, the welts of chiggers, and the torture of the “no-see-ums” that one
has sometimes has to endure, stoically immobile, in order not to lose the precise moment of the pas-
sage of a star or contact with the sun. 11
Chandless overcame these difficulties alone. He had no one to even read his chronometers. Balan-
cing the inevitable errors that increasingly add up in calculating longitudes by means of distance in
such disadvantageous conditions, he not only observed these by means of absolute longitudes at peri-
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