The Riches of the Amazon

The Riches of the Amazon

In the 1840s, amassing plants, birds and insects was both a scientific and a commercial adventure.

By Andrea Wulf in the Wall Street Journal

In the late 1840s, three intrepid British explorers set out to collect zoological and botanical specimens along the mighty Amazon in South America. Over the course of the next few years their paths crossed many times as they searched the world’s richest ecosystem. All three went for the declared purpose of amassing plants, birds and insects to sell to British collectors—a commercial enterprise that they hoped would bring them an income but also increase their reputations in the scientific world. John Hemming’s group biography, “Naturalists in Paradise,” tells their story.

Of the three men, Alfred Russel Wallace is the most well-known—the man who in tandem with Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution and spent much of his life in inhospitable environments, first in South America and then in Southeast Asia. The other two, Henry Walter Bates and Richard Spruce, are almost forgotten today but are equally fascinating. Apart from their adventures and the collections they brought home, Bates was the first to describe mimicry among insects, while Spruce gave the British Empire seeds of the cinchona tree, from which quinine was harvested, the only treatment against malaria at the time.

Born in 1817 in Yorkshire, Richard Spruce was the oldest of the three. Mainly self-taught, he was a talented botanist with a particular passion for mosses. Though his health was delicate, Spruce wanted to follow the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt, the most famous scientist of the age—a German explorer who had traveled through Latin America for five years in the first decade of the 19th century.

Henry Walter Bates was born in 1825 in Leicester. His father ran a small hosiery business, and Bates was apprenticed in the same trade. In his spare time, though, he read voraciously and declared: “I am as fond of Latin, as women are of satin.” At 15, he fell in love with insects and became determined to be an entomologist.

Two years older, Wallace also came from what Mr. Hemming describes as a “lower middle class” background. From the age of 14, Wallace assisted his older brother, a surveyor, spending many years on the road crisscrossing Britain—which, as it turned out, was the perfect training for a future explorer: It made Wallace physically strong but also nurtured his interest in nature and gave him a basic knowledge of geology and mapmaking.

After reading Charles Darwin’s “Voyage on the Beagle” and Humboldt’s best-selling “Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,” Wallace suggested to Bates that they organize their own expedition. They would sell the specimens to cover their expenses. As few foreigners had been allowed by the Portuguese into Brazil until a few years before, Wallace reckoned that there was an untapped treasure trove of unknown species. Wallace and Bates invested £100 each, found an agent who would handle the sale of their specimens in Britain and then set sail in April 1848 for South America. They arrived exactly a month later in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon on the east coast of Brazil.

Within three months, they had collected almost 4,000 insects and filled 12 chests with plants, which they duly dispatched to England. Bates and Wallace separated after only four months, though they remained friends—Mr. Hemming convincingly suggests that this break was due to their different collecting methods. Bates preferred to stay in a few places for a long time, thoroughly exploring one region, while Wallace was more adventurous, often forgoing the commercial aspects of the whole enterprise. Wallace would go on long expeditions that often yielded relatively few specimens, but he ventured deeper into the unknown, driven by his insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm.

In July 1849, a little over a year after Bates and Wallace, Spruce arrived in Belém and then sailed west to Santarém, a small town of 2,500 inhabitants on the Amazon where he spent a few weeks with Wallace, who had arrived a couple of days earlier. There Spruce and Wallace became close friends, and after they parted they happily recommended rich harvest areas to each other. As the three men traveled thousands of miles back and forth, they sometimes met but often narrowly missed one another because communication was impossible. On one occasion Bates even sailed past Wallace’s boat, which was moored on the river bank; on another Spruce, Bates and Wallace all stopped in Santarém—but a few days apart.

I can’t imagine a better biographer for these three men than John Hemming, former director of the British Royal Geographical Society, expert on the indigenous people of Amazonia and an explorer himself. Mr. Hemming’s firsthand knowledge shines through this book. When he describes how the Amazon turns into a torrent during the rainy season, the image is all the more vivid because he has swum and been swept along “at Olympic speed.” When he writes about Spruce getting lost in the rainforest, it’s not just Spruce’s account that evokes the terror of that moment but also Mr. Hemming’s descriptions of the impenetrable darkness of the forest even on a moonlit night.

When he writes about Bates, Wallace and Spruce’s never-ending battles against pernicious insects such as mosquitoes, wasps, ants, vampire bats and dusk ticks, Mr. Hemming’s own suffering adds another dimension to the narrative. The reader feels the bloodsucking, the pain and bites, as well as the swollen ankles and sharp pain that feels like a “hot needle.”

Mr. Hemming’s most evocative accounts concern the many indigenous peoples that the three explorers met. He describes the lives of the tribal societies in the rainforest—from their hunting techniques and festivals to their food preparation and use of hallucinogenic plants such as ayahuasca. There is a great tenderness in his descriptions, mixed with an immense respect and appreciation for their customs and traditions. Wallace’s reward for battling against the strong current of the Uaupés River, for example, was “to see unspoiled indigenous peoples living according to their magnificent traditions.”

Hemming has a great eye for detail, in particular for the practical aspects of these explorations. He writes about the perennial problems of food provisions, night camps, local hospitality, and the bureaucracy of procuring passports and licenses. The reader learns about how Spruce carried 50 kilos in copper coins on one long excursion in order to pay for food and wages, but also about the problem of finding paddlers for boats. Local people were reluctant to work for foreigners who were thought to be “strange in our habits,” as Wallace explained. The Indians were astounded that these odd Englishmen would risk their lives for a few “parrot and pigeon skins.”

There is Wallace catching a firefly and using its light to read his newspaper, or Bates downing a half-teacup of neat cachaça—a strong Brazilian spirit made from sugar cane—before eating an almost unpalatable fish stew. There were of course accidents—boats capsized, precious collections were devoured by insects, humidity covered the dried plant specimens with mold and the explorers’ possessions were stolen. The three men encountered terrifying weather, contracted life-threatening diseases and faced dangerous animals, but they never neglected their collecting. Despite being desperately hungry, Wallace, for example, first dissected and scientifically described the fish that his Indian guides had caught before handing them over to be cooked for supper. When Spruce ventured from the Amazon to the Andes, he climbed the steep slopes in incessant rain. It was freezing cold and wet and a terrible trek, but he still enthused about “the most mossy place I had yet seen anywhere.”

“Naturalists in Paradise” is a story of adventure and tenacious endurance, told by an author who underpins the research with his personal knowledge of the Amazon. The result is a book that delights in the details of the explorations and reflects Mr. Hemming’s deep admiration for Bates, Wallace and Spruce’s achievements. They were brave and daring, yet also painstaking collectors and scientists who diligently wrote, packed, labeled and described their specimens. Most of all, they displayed a stoical attitude that allowed them to survive hardship, accidents and danger. As Wallace said, “voyagers on the Amazon must not be fastidious.”

—Ms. Wulf’s forthcoming book,
“The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World,” will be published in September.